Alternative Birth Info

[kato]

April 11, 2005
Author: Canadian Cattlemen's Association


This is the daily update for Monday April 11 brought to you by the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association and BMO Bank of Montreal.



The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has informed the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association that the agency will accept birth date information submitted by producers to a website administered by the Canadian Cattle Identification Agency as an alternative to dentition for domestic meat inspection purposes and live animal or meat exports.



Cattle producers are strongly encouraged to submit either the actual date on which a calf is born or the first day of the calving period along with CCIA tag number to the website www.clia.livestockid.ca/producer. CFIA is finalizing an audit sampling plan for birth dates submitted to the website.

Up to now, the teeth took precedence over any other record of age as far as the CFIA was concerned. They didn't care if you had registration papers right there, the teeth were what counted.

[grassfarmer]

Talk about suing Government for not implementing laws adequately is kind of funny compared to this one. This nonsense about accepting "actual date or the date the first calf was born" is crazy.
So any farmer that wants can say his first calf was born April 1st and this protects all calves born January 1st to March 31st from being declared over 30 months even if they actually are 31, 32 or 33 months at time of slaughter. What a joke of a system - just to appease a few ranchers that are too lazy to do the job properly the credibility of the whole scheme is jepordised.
I think we should have an exact date of birth or the cattle will be deemed "not birth verified" - let the market decide which kind they want to buy. The way it is set up at the moment offers no incentive for the producer to go the extra mile and correctly record birth dates. How's that for a "communist" or "anti-capitist" program? Irony is I'm guessing the guys behind the lazy option are those bastions of the free market system with their heartland in the foothills ranches.

PS. I note my neighbour that has been calving since December hasn't got a tag of any kind on a calf yet so I guess not everybody is eager to jump on board this ID program.

[kato]

I think if you use the first date of calving, all your calves are assigned that age. They will be assumed to be no younger than calf number one.

If your calving period is lengthy, you can divide your calves up into groups, each having a start and end date, with the oldest calf setting the ages for everyone in that group. That means you can group them by month, week, or individually.

It's all voluntary anyway, but some day I think we'll be happy to have the verification, especially if it gets us some market access.

[SASH]

From what I understand, you can still register last years calves on the site. I've got a few on the ground that haven't been tagged yet because of 'Mad Cow' and I don't mean the BSE kind either. They'll get tagged next time I work them through the chute. So I don't think calves in December being not tagged would be a problem. I imagine that by giving accurate birthdates it should help the CFIA become more accurate in assessing what age the cattle are according to other factors whether it be under 30 months or under 20 months depending on the market.

[grassfarmer]

Kato, don't get me wrong I'm not against age verification - if Canada doesn't do it they will be left behind by many countries that already have such systems. I'm just peeved that we have started with the right tools (EIDs)
but have failed to carry the system through to it's full potential. We could be accused by others of having a system that is a joke because you don't use actual birth dates.