Just watch

[pandiana]

A good description of how it should work, cowman. I agree, however, that nothing is perfect and, as with gun legislation, it only the effects honest person. There remains many ways to beat the system if that is your business.

[kato]

Scenario

A steer comes in to a packing plant and tests positive for some reportable disease. He had been bought from a feedlot where he was one of 300 head in a pen. Those 300 all need to be traced back. Say they were all bought at different auction marts and assembled before going to the feedlot. Now you have to go to, say, 10 auction marts and they each had sales of two thousand head on the days when these 300 were bought. Now you have to check the origins of twenty thousand cattle. Just eliminating the obvious ones would take days.

Or you do it the other way. You find the owner of the original tag. He sold calves at two sales that year. You eliminate the heifers, that cuts it in half (more or less). Then you check with the buyers of the steers, and trace forward. The numbers are much much lower in a trace forward than they are in a trace back.

It's as simple as that.

[grassfarmer]

Kato it's as simple as that with calves sold to a feedlot from a ranch but not so in the case of an old cow that turns up with a problem at the packing plant. She has been through many herds potentially and if she isn't branded she can be tough to trace - look at the black cow that started all this mess. It's a passable system for young animals but not great for older cows that may have been in six or seven herds in their lives.

[ALICIA]

I'ds know good for young calfs eather because I know that my calfs go to the sale barn, to a dealer that takes them to howards station (nother sale barn) makes 5 or 10 cents more, another dealer that takes them to Kitchener and may be from their they get to a feed lot to be put on feed till they are say 1200 pounds, then off to a nother dealer that sends them to the packer for processing. AND I'LL JUST BET THERE ARE NOT THAT MEANY TAGS IN HIS EAR. also just how many animals has he been exposed to.

[grassfarmer]

If it is like the UK this ridiculous amount of trading will stop - post BSE with tighter margins people realise there is not enough to be made off animals to cover 5 or 6 lots of trucking and selling expenses. Also more farmers will retain the cattle on their farms for longer and cut down on changes of ownership

[ALICIA]

grassfarmer: I just can't see that happening. There are just to many middleman and they work to gether at the sale barns. This is were I have witness the price fixing.
They divie the cattle up amonugst them selves so they all make a pit of money and If a new buyer comes in from out of town, they gang up on him, and if he wsnts any cattle then the rest run the price up and soon he just stops coming to that sale barn.
Its like cornering the market. But you have to prove it and someone has to lay a complaint and no one does (don't make waves or you pay the price by not any one buying your cattle for any price.

[cowman]

Grassfarmer: I suspect that is probably the future, but not before there is a fairly large exodus out of the industry? I mean let's face it a lot of these old boys have all they can handle as it is?
It seems to me that there are a lot more real estate signs up this spring and a lot of them are on beef farms? I suspect a lot of people are just about at the end of the road? I suspect if something doesn't happen by this fall we'll see a lot more? A whole lot of this land was bought at very high prices that assumed a certain level of profit, that just isn't there anymore? In fact a whole lot of high priced cows were bought with borrowed money...and they just can't pay for themselves?
Someone is going to get the shaft, whether it is the banks or the feeder/cow associations? Not a very pretty picture is it?