Friends like these?

[cowman]

I've said this before...and I'll say it again: We MUST be honest with the consumer. The idea of shoot, shovel, and shut up...should never be a option!
I think everyone knows the US has been practicing the "three S" policy? The fact is they should have found a lot more cases...but if you don't look...you don't find?
I find it kind of funny they are concerned about letting in any cows born before March 1999...because they might contaminate their "pristine" beef industry...but have no idea how many thousands of pre-1999 Canadian cows are alive and well, living in their country! They don't want to talk about that?
One of the mentioned resolutions that I really support is the government paying for the RFID tags? Food safety, health issues, and international trade are all Federal responsibilities? It was the federal government who let those European cows and protein meal into this country? It was the Federal government who said it is okay to feed cows to cows? Do you think they should have some responsibility? Do you think it is only one segment of the cattle business that should bare all the cost, labour and liability of ID traceback?

[farmers_son]

The removal of SRMs is what provides food saftey, both in Canada and the United States.

The reality is that one sector of the livestock industry ended up bearing all the cost of BSE and still is. Is that fair? No but that is how it is.

However the opportunity is there to get $30 a head if you retain ownership of your calves, I did and others did too. I think the answer is figure out ways to make those tags pay rather then set up a bureaucracy to distribute the cost of traceback "more fairly".

[grassfarmer]

Presumably you are only getting a $30 premium on your fats because a minority of producers are age verifying their calves. At the point most, or all, producers get with the program either voluntarily or otherwise the premium will disappear but the cost will remain. We feel we are getting a premium built into our calf price at this moment also because ours are age verified where few others seem to be. It needn't take a complicated beurocracy to implement this program - when tag sellers have to notify the sale of each bag of tags to a registered holding already how hard would it be to have this trigger off a refund of the price from Government?

[farmers_son]

I checked with the UFA and the RFID buttons are coming on sale for $58 a bag or $2.32 each. I am not sure where the burning issue is with that.

For my $2.32 I get $30 bonus on every fat calf I sell, I have a double tag (with my ordinary Allflex tag) which guarantees that I can identify each calf for my own record keeping purposes and there is the potential for value adding with the tag (e.g. carcass feedback).

When I weighted my calves this fall some calves had lost their Allflex tag yet I was able to replace their tag with the right number because I could cross check with the RFID tag. That helps my herd records.

On a ligher note, if those RFID tags were good enough they will let me track those darn coyotes who are coming around. The tag is the first thing they eat.