Age Verification Up and Running

[kato]

Just checked out the CCIA producer website. We can submit ages on our calves now.

https://www.clia.livestockid.ca/CTS/public/user/postLoginProxy.do?nocache=1110300924213

Let's get at 'er.

[grassfarmer]

It's strange how this animal ID has happened in Canada. I recognised as soon as I came here that we needed to get on and get some kind of national ID program going and was reassured that it was being led by industry and wouldn't go down the road of the European system that uses individual animal numbers. The reasoning was that we didn't have the subsidy systems requiring individual numbers so a herd of origin system would suffice. Many producers fought tooth and nail any move to a compulsory tagging system but in the end were fairly compliant.
Look now at the system in place - EIDs compulsory yet Government is too cheap to install readers at auctions to actually record numbers and make the system work - but the packers have got a handier system for their needs and it didn't cost them a cent.
Now this voluntary age verification scheme wants us to record individual eartag numbers off the EIDs onto a website again for no gain to producers - the packers may find it a useful marketing toy but they sure aint going to pay us for it. It seems unlikely that slaughter information will be returned to primary producers. And producers still have to add management tags so they have something to actually work for them when treating, weighing or sorting their calves. What a waste of a potentially good system - what percentage of producers will upload dates of birth I wonder?
Oh, by the way, using the European experience you will probably get at least 15% errors in recording numbers - farmers with poor eyesight, taking a pocketful of tags out and mixing up who wears which etc. I can't see this whole scheme being any better than a manifest book and a calving record book properly policed.

[kato]

It could come in handy when a cheque comes back on a rail graded animal that they 'say' is too old. They can't just arbitrarily deem it too old when they have the birthdate on record.

It'll also come in handy in negotiations with Japan etc. Puts us a jump ahead of those guys down south, and that can only be a good thing.

[blackjack]

grassfarmer... I think we are just being snookered again...costs just keep on coming back to the primary producer...