Alberta's mandatory age verification by 2007

[JD4ME]

Good Morning all,

It's been announced that Alberta will mandate primary producers by 2007 to supply birth date information to a database to allow customers to verify an animals age at slaughter.
Now while I understand and accept this as a new reality, what has got me bothered is in his comments Ag. Minister Doug Horner stated that they will be working with feeders and processors to try and get carcass data back to producers.
This is the same thing that was said when Bar tags and the added expense that came with them was introduced.
If Doug Horner and the ABP is interested in truly improving the Alberta and by extension the Canadian Cow herd it is time for mandatory individual carcass data avaibility for producers too.
I would and do try on my own to make sure all my animals are traced in this way but all that would happen is the processors would implement a fee of some sort which would make my animals less profitable. At this time I get lot reports but not individual animal data.
If we are going to be stronger going forard as an industry, we need to all make this a priority going forward and call on all the various stakeholders to make this a priority for themselves too.
I will be writing Minister Horner with my thoughts on this and maybe some additional letters would be of help.
Thanks and give it some thought please.

[grassfarmer]

It will be interesting to see how this program is to be implemented. Anyone owning cows other than ones born on their farm may have a difficult time knowing their birth date, unless they were purchased privately.

[JD4ME]

Thats a valid question but the one then that should be asked is will producers be allowed access to the data to check ages of cattle as well or will it be only processor/enduser accessible.

[JD4ME]

Thats a valid question but the one then that should be asked is will producers be allowed access to the data to check ages of cattle as well or will it be only processor/enduser accessible.

[campbellc]

My, how times change ...... do any of you remmeber the organization called CBI - Canada Beef Improvement. Back in the mid 90's, this organization under the umbrella of CCA had a mandate to identify animals individually, track and report data on the animal to the individual to purchased the tag. The concept of the unique animal identification which is now CCIA took over 10 years plus to become a working reality and it never would have save for BSE.

With so many positives for the sector engendered within the concept of unique animal identification, why has it taken a crisis which has the industry at its knees to achieve this end? Are we as an industry so shortsighted that we can not see beyond the present crisis?

[grassfarmer]

It seems an inevitable move - it's being done in other parts of the world too. Individual IDs to verify date of birth but more to the point any treatments with antibiotics or hormones that the animal may have had are meant to reassure consumers of the health of their beef. Actually any customers of mine from an urban background want to come and see my calves skipping around in the grass and they want to buy my beef but they tell me they do not want to connect the two or know what goes on on the farm.
Regardless it's the way of the future and it would benefit the industry to get carcase feedback to benchmark what they are producing. Although if you sell small weaned calves who should get the information - the breeder or the feeder who actually fed out the animal and was probably as much responsible for the grades as the breeder was? I understand at the moment the packers are dead against returning this information - affects their ability to steal cattle I guess.

Emrald1 age verifying cows isn't a big deal - it is phased in as each new crop of calves gets eids put on them the database builds up. The older bulls and cows already on farm can be given an arbitary age and issued with ids if producers don't know the ages. It isn't critical to age these cattle as they are all OTM anyway and will be treated as such. There isn't really much prospect of a date based export scheme for cattle born before the feed ban so it's no big deal.

[cowman]

Age verification is probably a good thing, but once again who has to pay for it? The primary producer.
It's just like the bar code tags when they were first introduced. Who paid...the cow/calf guy.