A&W TV media advertising new egg source.

[kato]

From what I've been reading, it hasn't gone away yet.... There are still plans

[grassfarmer]

It's one of those things that needs to be decided one way or the other. We either pursue a working program or we don't. Seems pointless to me to incur some of the costs (CCIA, ranchers buying tags) and have nothing to show for it.

If we commit to a system then we could attempt to capture value from that but it is unrealistic to expect the market to reward us with premiums now to encourage us to at some point in the future to maybe implement a traceability program.

[smcgrath76]

Kato, I agree somewhat, but I also know folks that estrumate every cow with hormones prior to breeding season, folks that AI using CIDRs and multi-shot protocols, etc.
Without tracability and market segregation, the general cattle population in the commodity beef business can't readily service a "hormone free" market.
I also think that being undercut on price is a reality of the program as well.

[Happytrails]

Sean you are well versed on our offending practices although I could point out that only a tiny portion of our kill cows have them in their background.

To restate my question, what documentation do the aussies have? My understanding that the outback is NOT populated with millions of ID'd cattle. Their traceability starts when their (the cattle) lives end. If I'm wrong straighten me out. Propaganda won't cut it tho.

Our ID tag system is useless by design. All of the very limited information associated with a tag is a CCIA secret not to be shared. If I want to know who tagged a cow, sorry we can't tell you. If I want to know who reported it last, sorry can't tell you. Useless by design.

Beyond that it is almost completely redundant. You can run a cow in and scan the tag. Voila, it is cow #99. I can see that. Virtually all the pertinent information concerning cow 99 is available by examining her physically and researching her recent history. That would include how she got to the present location. Sources for that information would be her owner, sales records and LIS. If they would, CCIA could tell you who tagged her and when they reported she was born. The latter info is iffy. A pretty incidental contribution not worthy of the bother IMO.

Sorry for the rant. I wish cattle people a good fall for marketing, weaning, shipping, processing and not for quite a while, feeding.

[grassfarmer]

HT here is a quote from the New South Wales Gov website re the National Livestock ID system:

"NLIS Cattle was introduced in NSW on 1 July 2004 and involves electronic identification of cattle and centralised recording of movements on a national database. NLIS Cattle uses approved NLIS ear devices or rumen boluses and reporting all movements of cattle between properties with different Property Identification Codes (PICs)."

The website is
http://www.dpi.nsw.gov.au/agriculture/livestock/nlis

[Happytrails]

I don't mean to be flippant GF, but I don't see how being able to trace a burger back to the various properties that the donor bovine occupied is of any significance to me the consumer. As a matter of fact I don't see anything at A&W that identifies even what continent my burger came from.

On another note I caution that it is easier to make claims than produce results. NLIS might be all a story for as much as I know. The aussies are good salespeople. They certainly sold the concept to Alberta Ag bureaucrats a decade back. Even today our CCIA states some pretty lavish goals. Talk is cheap.

On that note I wonder where the premises ID requirement on livestock manifests went. I was told that in August of this year we would have to include premises ID on manifests. I have delivered several loads of cattle to auction markets lately and it hasn't been needed. Our late and great Kathy would be pleased and so am I.

[greybeard]

I'm betting you need something similar to this to turn the trick:www.thousandhillscattleco.com/files/THCCAffidavit2014.pd
Not real high tech but a much more advanced economy happens south of the medicine line using these.

[grassfarmer]

That is a good enough affidavit Greybeard as long as the company selling the product polices it somewhat to maintain credibility. I think that should suffice for most "value added" programs.

Another way to go if you only want to know herd of birth/origin is to issue a simple tag (doesn't have to be electronic) bearing the farm premises ID # and allow it to be attached at time of leaving farm.

What I want is a system that specifically traces herd of origin and animal movement as that is crucial to have for animal disease outbreak control e.g. foot and mouth. The stupid thing is all the money we have spend putting e-tags on cattle we could already have been capturing that information as they go through auction, feedlots or collection yards.
Unlike HT I think the current LIS paper system of brands/manifests is a joke and absolutely full of holes. That's the system I think needs replaced for producer protection not so much consumer protection.

Point is we have choices to make as to what system we need/want and I see no progress on this front - we are not really even discussing requirements 10 years after we started into this.