Anyone tried to remove cattle from an auction since the new "A" forms came in? I did yesterday and was rather surprised at the development.
Works like this - go to office and pay for your purchases, get usual invoice and load out slip duplicate copy. Go to load cattle and be told you also need an "A" form, go to brand inspectors office, present invoice so they can create and print off 2 "A forms". Go back to loading bay present one to market worker, load cattle and take the other form home.
Now what information does the "A form" contain?? basically it would be the same as a manifest that you filled in to haul cattle home from an auction except the brand inspector has a copy of it. A rather pointless exercise in my opinion as it doesn't show which lot # you bought at auction, which farm they came from but more importantly there is no cattle ID info - no CCIA tag numbers.
Yes, congratulations we have just created the same stupid paper system they use in Europe. Despite every animal having an EID in it's ear we choose not to utilize these to properly track animal movement. What the h@#% were they thinking?
I've said it before and I'll say it again there was a perfectly good system demonstrated in Europe in 1995 that would read cattle EID numbers in and out of the auctions and with the computer software to tie this to seller of the cattle and buyer of the cattle they had every animal tracked from home to auction to final destination. It was simple, instant and there was no paperwork involved - unfortunately they were too cheap to install the system in Europe and it seems the same is the case in Alberta. This is a big failure in my mind - these "A forms" are a pain in the a@# and they achieve nothing. Stupid, stupid, stupid!
Works like this - go to office and pay for your purchases, get usual invoice and load out slip duplicate copy. Go to load cattle and be told you also need an "A" form, go to brand inspectors office, present invoice so they can create and print off 2 "A forms". Go back to loading bay present one to market worker, load cattle and take the other form home.
Now what information does the "A form" contain?? basically it would be the same as a manifest that you filled in to haul cattle home from an auction except the brand inspector has a copy of it. A rather pointless exercise in my opinion as it doesn't show which lot # you bought at auction, which farm they came from but more importantly there is no cattle ID info - no CCIA tag numbers.
Yes, congratulations we have just created the same stupid paper system they use in Europe. Despite every animal having an EID in it's ear we choose not to utilize these to properly track animal movement. What the h@#% were they thinking?
I've said it before and I'll say it again there was a perfectly good system demonstrated in Europe in 1995 that would read cattle EID numbers in and out of the auctions and with the computer software to tie this to seller of the cattle and buyer of the cattle they had every animal tracked from home to auction to final destination. It was simple, instant and there was no paperwork involved - unfortunately they were too cheap to install the system in Europe and it seems the same is the case in Alberta. This is a big failure in my mind - these "A forms" are a pain in the a@# and they achieve nothing. Stupid, stupid, stupid!
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