That’s according to Dr. Robin White, assistant professor of integrated beef production systems management at Virginia Tech, who spoke at the 2019 Beef Symposium in Guelph, Ont., this past winter.

“We want to influence the feedback loop of how an animal interacts with its environment through feed, feed additives, housing, pathogens, antibiotics and even other animals,” says White. “At the same time, we recognize that economics is the biggest factor in that feedback loop between management, animal biology and environment — so if we can do things to reduce the cost of affecting that environment and increasing the animal’s response, you’ll be better off.”

According to White, there’s a big role for precision technology to influence a range of things such as reproductive success, mortality, forage quality, growth rate, feed efficiency and genetic merit.

Currently, most management is focused on the average or lower-producing animals, which results in over-management of the higher producers. A move towards precision management in beef cattle, however, means animals can be treated more as individuals with consideration given to their diversity in size, shape and genetics. And this, argues White, can reduce waste in the system, which enhances both efficiencies and a farm’s bottom line.

So what are some of the precision applications out there for beef producers?

GPS trackers are one of the more widespread technologies available for extensive or low input cattle systems. Each animal wears a GPS unit — neck or feet are popular locations — that keeps track of its location, as well as being able to monitor its body temperature, daily movement rate, and how often it has eaten, gone to the waterer or taken mineral licks.

Activity monitoring is a good indicator of animal health and productivity as movement changes quite a bit before and after disease events, giving producers a chance to manage animals before they start showing visible disease symptoms. GPS tracking systems can also help with security by providing alerts when animals move outside of designated areas.

“An important consideration for this technology is how far away your pastures are from your physical location. If you see each animal daily in a meaningful interaction because you manage them, it might not be worth it,” says White. “Do you need information on how your animals are using the land — is it worthwhile to move to rotational grazing, for example? You can get information on your grazing patterns to help you decide what to do.”

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones can also be useful tools to help with activity monitoring. According to White, there’s quite a bit of research underway currently to establish good algorithms that can clearly identify cows from other animals like coyotes, for example. As the technology evolves, it could generate important data about how cattle are moving around and how they spend their time, and could also support visual health and pasture monitoring.

“This is still a developing area for agriculture but the theory is that it doesn’t require a person to fly the drone; you can pre-program a path for that drone to fly,” says White, adding drones could also be used to scan for pasture quality or quantity and uniformity of available forage.

An important consideration for producers is determining whether they’re legally allowed to fly a drone over their property — drone traffic is prohibited on land within airport flight paths, for example. Other important factors include whether the UAV will be flown manually or autonomously and how much property it will need to cover.

Systems are also evolving to monitor cattle methane or carbon dioxide emissions. Although not yet at a price point for production agriculture, the technology might be of value to producers on special niche market programs or could become more important if methane reduction takes on a greater role in the future.

There are precision technologies for more intensive beef production systems too. Ear tags, for example, can monitor animal health and provide alerts for early detection which could help producers address morbidity and mortality problems.

“If your workers aren’t skilled at identifying animals on a regular or consistent basis, technology can get around that problem,” says White, adding electronic tracking can also help producers manage sick or treated animals.

In-rumen monitoring lets producers track rumen temperature and pH, as well as drinking activity and heat detection. It’s a device that doesn’t need to go in every animal, but can be used on a “one per pen” basis to serve as an indicator of something that could be affecting a group of animals, like acute or subacute ruminate acidosis.

“These boluses are about $500 each, so you need $500 in return on that pen to make it worthwhile. But you can look at daily variation and it will send you an alert to your phone that tells you what the data says,” explains White.

On the robot side, Cargill has introduced a robotic cattle driver than can minimize worker injuries when moving cattle. In Australia, a robot can read a feed bunk and make recommendations on feeding based on what it has detected.

It’s worth noting what other livestock sectors are doing, says White. Animal health monitoring is moving particularly quickly in the dairy industry, for example, and automated precision feeding lets each cow get a precisely tailored ration each time she visits the robotic milker.

In the pig and poultry sectors, systems are evaluating vocalization inside barns to identify animals in distress, although it remains to be seen whether that could have application in the beef industry too.

There are challenges to implementation, though. Cost is a significant factor. Ensuring that sensors are working correctly and that systems are providing the correct metrics and analytics are critical to seeing a decent return on the technology investment.

“It’s important to ask yourself — does it solve a problem that is costing you money? If you want to invest in something, it should make your life better,” she advises. “Don’t buy technology because it is fun; buy it because it does something for you.”

Lilian Schaer is a freelance agricultural journalist and communications professional based near Guelph, Ont. You can follow her on Twitter at @foodandfarming.

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Canada’s PigTrace program will be raising ear tag prices as of Aug. 1.

Prices will go up 20 cents for every small ear tag and 35 cents for every large ear tag, a release from the Manitoba Pork Council said.

The Manitoba Pork Council is urging producers to buy into the program, despite the increased cost. Both the provincial and national pork councils cite PigTrace is Canada’s effort to prepare for African swine fever and limit impact if the deadly disease is found in Canada.

The program will be critical for zoning, both the Manitoba council and Canadian Pork Council say.

Canada has renewed or updated zoning understandings with both the U.S. and European Union in recent months as fear of African swine fever grows.

The virus has yet to spread to North America, although Reuters recently reported outbreaks in China may have claimed up to half that country’s hogs, flying in the face of the much lower official estimates.

“With increased foreign animal disease risk putting traceability at the centre of preparedness and zoning activities, PigTrace is more important than ever,” the Manitoba Pork Council said.

“These price increases are a necessary step towards maintaining the long-term financial sustainability of the program due to increasing operational costs.”

The jump will not apply for any order made and paid for by July 31, the council said.

— Reporting for the Manitoba Co-operator by Alexis Stockford.

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More recent studies have focused on the retention issues, and better materials will probably improve that weakness in the future. With the abuse these tags face is it any wonder they get ripped out or simply wear out? A 100 per cent compliance rate is almost impossible to attain in cattle with short, frozen ears or hard-to-tag bulls. A small percentage had defective chips that were not picked up by the readers.

Enough said about some of the obstacles we face. There are still many positive uses for the tags.

A tag reader will make your job a lot easier. They can be a great time-saver if reading tags on fractious or flighty cattle. Some readers have been developed so they can be mounted on chutes. Make sure if you purchase one that it has a long wand so that it’s safe to use. Also ensure it can store a large number of tag numbers and that the information can be downloaded.

Most readers on the market can now read both the full-duplex and half-duplex fairly well. Readers seldom have incompatibility issues these days, although they do seem slower to read the full-duplex.

A great number of progressive producers have set up scales in their chutes. Many of these scales include programs to input data so having chute-side readers tied in to the RFID tags makes total sense. When cattle are first age-verified, many programs allow for additional identification information. Handlers can enter both the description (colour) and the dangle tag. The reader can then pick up the RFID tag and the computer program can often automatically enter information such as weight, health information and vaccines that have been given. Producers can enter this information at the start of the day if they’re giving the same thing to every animal. Then each time the reader scans an animal that data is entered into the database.

On a simpler, practical scale, the RFID acts as a second, cross-reference tag. If the dangle tag is lost it can be found when cross-referenced to the RFID tag. In the past community pastures often used the clip-on metal tags to accomplish this. We now have a built-in cross referencing system.

For that reason, most purebred breeders individually age-verify their calves at birth and cross-reference the ear tags to the registered tattoo. Often purebred calves are not tattooed until later in life. Age-verifying at birth ensures this critical information is not lost. Gone are the days when a good memory would help with identification based on colour. So many herds are solid black or solid red or all red-white faces. Identification is critical on these high-pedigreed cattle.

In the dairy industry, large transponders are still used to individually meter out feed in the milking parlour or at feeding stations. Sorting gates leading from the parlour automatically separate cows requiring palpations for herd health. This same function can be achieved now with the RFID tags and readers at different feeding stations and gates. Robotic milkers also register how often and for how long cows are milked daily, as well as whether milk needs to be discarded from treated cows. All these new advancements can piggyback the technology available in the RFID tags.

The same technologies are used for automatic sorting gates in the sheep industry and a system was recently deployed over a large walk-over scale placed in a bison pen. Bison can be trained to walk over it, allowing handlers to sort the pen by weight, for example. A signal triggers a gate to open, and a certain weight range can be collected. Essentially, a whole pen is sorted without doing anything. This same technology could prove very useful in the feedlot sector as well. It could eliminate any chance for processing or sorting injuries.

I know of several researchers using GrowSafe feed stations with RFID tags to identify individual animals and measure each animal’s feed consumption. I was involved with a trial using an infrared camera to measure eye temperature. When cattle came to a watering bowl each animal was identified by the RFID tag linked to the dangle tag. This trial looked at early identification of bovine respiratory disease. Water consumption, movement of animals and many other applications can all be linked to the RFID tags.

Veterinarians have developed customized herd health programs and the ability to cull based on performance by using RFID tags as identification tools. As they treat each animal, they scan the tag. They can then easily calculate treatment outcome parameters.

Since each tag number is unique it is the trump card for identification when it comes to export testing. The same cross-reference can be applied to all the other production animal species with the exception of chickens. Other diversified livestock species such as elk, bison or deer are also using the technology and it works well as a cross-identification indicator.

Bison seem to wear the tags out. Perhaps longer shafts on the buttons will allow freer movement and less tag loss in all species. As better materials and applicators are tried perhaps the retention rate will improve. This will give everyone along the food chain, from producer to consumer, useful information.

There have been instances of community pastures or pasture co-operatives wanting to access tag information from CFIA to help identify owners of lost calves. They were denied this information. I know the original purpose was to help in trace-outs with reportable diseases. However, I wish the government would allow certain exceptions, as this is information the public does not have access to. Rules need to change with guidelines.

I’d also like to see the owner identified in specific instances such as disease outbreaks in feedlots, belly nuts, or lost cattle. When a few producers don’t vaccinate for bovine viral diarrhea or don’t carefully band castrate young calves, it leads to major problems in the feedlot. This would help the whole industry. This second stage of identification could also eliminate the need for branding. In the rare event of a dispute, we could take DNA from the hair.

Researchers are currently working on ultra-high frequency (UHF) tags where multiple tags can be read simultaneously and from a greater distance. This would allow auction markets and feedlots to process cattle quickly. It would also be useful when transporting cattle. We could potentially read the whole liner. When exporting cattle, it may eliminate the need to unload at the border, which is a wasted procedure in my opinion.

Once we have tags we can read from a distance, inventory control or identifying cattle with drones may become commonplace. Let’s keep finding ways to use this RFID technology. Doing so puts us far ahead of the U.S. in terms of herd identification and movement.

Roy Lewis is an Alberta-based veterinarian specializing in large-animal practice. He is also a part-time technical services vet for Merck Animal Health.

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Some members were clearly worried by the new requirements that a vet-client relationship be established before drugs are prescribed for livestock. The meeting agreed that the SCA should be involved in defining the nature of this relationship on behalf of producers in Saskatchewan. Chief veterinarian Betty Althouse noted these new rules are set by the federal government in consultation with the veterinary profession but the members still agreed with the sentiment behind this motion.

Another motion expressed concerns by producers that all drugs under this new regulation will be priced according to a minimum price schedule set by the Saskatchewan Veterinary Medicine Association. To that end, the SCA was instructed to investigate the possibility of a pharmacy-style retail market to foster competition for livestock drugs.

One motion called for Canadian Agriculture Partnership funding for perimeter fencing on land not used for livestock to encourage farmers to return to cattle or expand their present herds.

Another wanted the province to investigate the use of attractants on pastures. The idea would be to encourage severe grazing and thus lower the fuel load on grazing land. The fact this motion passed in a room full of ranchers offers some idea of the anxiety generated by the horrendous wildfires last fall.

Mark Elford, chair of the Canadian Cattle Identification Agency, put in a plug for cattle producers to order their CCIA ear tags directly from the agency website. The site offers every approved tag and applicator plus tag readers, with the added bonus that revenue raised by the e-store will help offset any added costs the agency faces when traceability comes into force later this year or early next.

“If we could handle 50 per cent of the tags through the e-store I can see that we would never ever have to raise the (management) price of our tags again,” said Elford.

Jason Pollock, the CEO of Livestock Services of Saskatchewan (LSS), came to the meeting looking for producers to test the new electronic data base called CHIP that will run electronic manifests and permits. The CHIP portal gives producers access to the manifests and permits and their own data.

The electronic documents can be created online, doing away with the need for inspectors to transfer the same information from written manifests. It also provides fields to record traceability data plus the identification services that LSS is set up to provide. E-manifests offer access to other approved users so the document can be updated at every stop along the marketing chain.

An app for smart phones is being developed so manifests can be created or updated more easily wherever cell service is available.

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The world-class SAIT RFID test lab is now in full swing gathering clients and new business. A unique combination UHF (ultra-high frequency) RFID-DNA tag for management purposes has progressed to the field-testing stage, and anticipation was building for the first RFID drone test flight to launch sometime near the end of April.

The UHF-DNA tag project got underway in 2015 and some of the resulting tags designed and manufactured by lead researcher Sherry Yang and her team were applied to heifers at CL Ranches west of the city. The remainder will be tested at other ranches over the next year and a half.

When a UHF-DNA tag is applied, a small punch of ear tissue is taken to match an animal’s DNA to its RFID number.

The tag is made from a basic thermal polyurethane material that has been treated with chemicals to make it more flexible and durable when exposed to cold and ultraviolet light.

Glen Kathler, the applied research chair in RFID application development, says there are upwards of 50 chemical combinations with differing properties to choose from, so part of this project’s mandate is to find out if they chose the right mix.

Their initial UHF tags designed in co-operation with the beef industry, resulted in two popsicle-stick models and one hoop along with a reader to capture the data. Cattle at co-operating ranches and feedlots were tagged with these initial products in 2011.

This project earned Kathler the 2015 Alberta Science and Technology Award for innovation in agriculture, but in practical terms, UHF tags still remain on the workbench when it comes to traceability.

“The popsicle-stick form factor still exists, but we are not the manufacturer of commercial tags,” explains Kathler. “If a manufacturer wanted to consider our design, that would be great.”

The reality is low-frequency (LF) RFID technology introduced about 35 years ago, remains the most mature and widely accepted solution for animal traceability across the globe.

No country to date has adopted UHF technology for traceability in beef cattle, although three styles of UHF tags have been approved for cattle and are being used for management purposes in the U.S.

“All of the large tag manufacturers have UHF tags ready to go to market once a global numbering system is approved so that they know how to program the tags at the factory,” Kathler adds.

Creating a numbering system for UHF-RFID tags is easier said than done. For one thing it must meet all international RFID requirements and be compatible with manufacturing processes for low frequency tags.

This work is already underway by a team of international experts set up under the International Standards Organization (ISO) that is looking into potential numbering schemes for ISO countries. Kathler, Guillaume Parenteau, CEO of Quebec high-tech firm PLURITAG, and Canadian Cattle Identification Agency tag and technology manager Paul Laronde are members.

In the meantime Kathler can see commercial opportunities for UHF tags in the cattle sector.

In feedlots, for example, every animal receives a new dangle tag at entry linked to its national RFID number in the feedlot’s database. If the dangle tag has a UHF transmitter, it would allow for automated reading of these animals at sorting and loading.

Range cattle carrying UHF tags could be scanned by drones passing overhead so you could track your herd in the most remote of locations. This is the essence of a three-year UHF-UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) project that Kathler is working on in collaboration with Dr. John Church’s team at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, B.C., and Jeff Braisher of Kingsclere Ranch near Golden, B.C., where a UHF tag reader will take flight this spring thanks to an Idea-to-Innovation grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council.

One of the advantages to UHF technology is that it can read up to 500 tags a second making it very adaptable to managing large groups of cattle whereas low-frequency tech operates off a magnetic field and is more suited to reading tags one at a time. Another plus is the small size of the wire antenna needed to pick up the signal, which allows for almost endless design possibilities for UHF transmitters.

Our RFID testing lab

SAIT’s RFID test lab is one of only three in the world accredited to perform official standardized electronic tests for RFID tags.

Revamping the lab’s equipment started in 2013 with a $475,000 grant from Alberta. By 2015 it was accredited by the International Standard Organization (ISO), and the International Committee for Animal Recording (ICAR) in 2016 .

“At first we were focusing on the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) framework requirements, but then decided to build an ISO/ICAR accredited lab so manufacturers would have a one-stop shop for Canadian testing,” says Bob Davies, the test lab’s quality manager and lead developer.

ICAR is the global registration authority for animal traceability equipment.

All livestock RFID tags must meet ICAR standards before the CFIA will approve them for traceability in Canada.

Once a tag passes the standard electronic tests for reading range, transmission frequency and accuracy, the durability and electronic performance of the tags are tested at -35 C as required by CFIA.

Full conformance testing of 50 transponders is required when manufacturers apply for a new ICAR registration on a tag, an integrated circuit or new technology. Limited testing is done when approved transponder coils and integrated circuits are added.

“The logical and most likely next step to expand our scope is testing transceivers that read the tags and also adding some mechanical testing capabilities like abrasion, shock, impact and accelerated ultraviolet aging to simulate degradation of the tag package under sunlight,” Davies says.

To maintain its ISO accreditation, the lab is audited every two years but the accuracy of its results are monitored continously by ICAR.

Davies now sits on an expert subcommittee that reviews ISO proposals for testing standards.

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In regulations now being developed, both premise identification and animal movement are expected to become mandatory in all provinces across Canada by 2018. Along with animal identifications (those electronic ear tags) premise ID and livestock movement are considered the three pillars of an overall effective traceability system.

While animal identification has been mandatory for the main classes of cattle for several years, the other pillars had looser applications. Some provinces adopted premise ID and animal movement systems earlier and others are either at different stages or don’t have systems in place. Under the proposed regulations now being considered, more species of animals will be covered by animal identification and all provinces will be required to have premise ID and animal movement systems in place.

CFIA is the national lead for the whole livestock traceability system, with other players responsible for making sure different components of the system are implemented.

The national ear-tagging system, requiring electronic (RFID) tags in one ear of most classes of livestock, is administered nationally by the industry-led Canadian Cattle Identification Agency (CCIA). CCIA launched the identification program in 1998.

Premise ID and animal movement actually falls under the jurisdiction of each province. The new CFIA regulations will make it mandatory for each province to have a premise ID system in place and be active in getting all producers of livestock and poultry on board, says Veronica McGuire, executive director of the CFIA’s regulatory and trade policy program. She spoke at the first-ever Canadian Traceability Symposium recently held in Calgary. Along with producers, cattle feeders, packing plants and retailers it also brought together officials from the various federal and provincial regulatory agencies.

The provinces are at various stages of implementing premise ID systems. Alberta, Manitoba, Quebec and P.E.I. all now have mandatory provincial premise ID programs, while the remaining provinces, for the time being, operate with voluntary reporting systems. On the animal movement front, B.C., Alberta and Saskatchewan have systems in place — shipping manifests filled out when animals are moved — while the rest of the provinces from Manitoba east don’t.

In developing regulations, the CFIA has already gone through an extensive consultation process with all sectors of the livestock industry. That input will lead to the development of draft regulations probably by mid-2017. The proposed regulations will then be reviewed further, and if all the political stars line up, the regulations could come into effect in 2018.

“The new regulations will amend and strengthen the whole traceability system,” says McGuire. Along with mandatory premise ID, “the proposals will include more classes of livestock and also call for reporting requirements for the domestic movement of animals.”

Beef and dairy cattle, along with bison were the first classes of livestock covered in the national identification program, since then sheep and pigs have been added. The coming CFIA amendments will cover goat, and farm-raised deer and elk. The regulations will also cover the domestic movement of animals to “improve timeliness of information and geographic precision,” says McGuire.

While a lot of feedback and consultation will help shape the coming regulations, she says the key as far as implementing an effective traceability program is proper communication with producers and others in the handling, feeding and processing sectors. She says it will be important to explain the need for the traceability system, and to also work with producers and others as they provide the information required. She says getting the industry to understand and buy into the system, is much more preferred than enforcement measures.

The importance of what was then Canada’s relatively new livestock traceability system really caught traction during the BSE crisis in 2003. Symposium speakers repeatedly emphasized the importance of having a complete national livestock traceability system in Canada, for several reasons. Food safety is an ongoing and increasing public or consumer concern — if there is a problem with a meat product at the retail level, for example, it is important to be able to trace it back to the processor, cattle feeder or farm of origin.

It is similar for animal health concerns. The recent case of an Alberta-raised slaughter animal found to have TB at a U.S. packing plant, is a classic example. Being able to trace that animal back to its farm of origin was important in the investigation to determine if other animals were infected. It becomes a huge concern to beef operations in a regional area, but doesn’t shut down the whole Canadian beef industry.

And having a functioning and effective traceability system is also important to maintaining and expanding international meat and livestock market access.

A disease outbreak can go from being minor to a disaster in short order, with devastating social and economic consequences, the symposium was reminded. Dr. Tony Britt, former director of animal biosecurity and welfare in Victoria, Australia pointed to the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in the United Kingdom in 2001. That started with sheep on one farm being fed some contaminated feedstuffs. Sheep aren’t affected by foot-and-mouth disease but they are carriers. From that sheep operation it spread to another nearby farm where a single pig was infected and from there it eventually led to the slaughter of 6.5 million head of cattle, sheep and pigs with an estimated cost of 10 billion pounds (about C$16 billion) to the U.K. economy.

Australia calculated a “what-if” scenario for a similar disease outbreak on that continent, figuring it would cost about $50 billion today, and Britt guessed there would be a similar cost if an outbreak happened in Canada.

Broad value of premise ID

While no one is hoping for a disease outbreak, premise ID and tracking movement of animals are important tools in managing and controlling a disease outbreak or helping manage all species of animals during natural disasters, says Rick Frederickson, director of animal welfare and national traceability with Alberta Agriculture and Forestry.

Premise ID requires all landowners to register the legal description of all land where livestock is raised and also report the types and numbers of livestock being raised on that property. It isn’t a complicated or difficult process to get a premise ID number — it may take 10 minutes on appropriate computer websites.

And premise ID doesn’t just apply to commercial livestock producers, but all acreage owners and hobby farmers as well. And the emphasis is on ALL species, ALL animals not just cattle, sheep and pigs, but also all classes of poultry, commercially raised fish, horses, llamas, alpacas, rabbits, yaks and even pigeons, to name a few.

The idea behind this is to have a comprehensive record of what animals are out there, what property they are raised on, and how many there are. This isn’t about the government wanting to know your business.

Aside from managing disease outbreaks, premise ID is an invaluable tool in helping manage natural disasters.

“We’ve already seen the benefits of the system put into action here in Alberta during events of floods and fires,” says Frederickson. “When a natural disaster occurs we can go to the maps, go to the database and know where and how many livestock are in the path of this disaster and then send out alerts or warnings to these landowners.”

On the disease front, for example, if a case of avian flu was detected in a small flock of chickens, the premise ID database can be used to determine the location of properties around the infected flock that might be at risk, that need to be investigated or quarantined to ensure the disease doesn’t spread further.

The premise ID will help create a centralized database in each province so officials know what type and number of animals are on each property.

B.C., Alberta, and Saskatchewan each already have shipping manifest systems, which are filled out any time livestock are loaded into a truck or trailer and moved from the farm of origin to a different location. If not already included, these shipping manifests will be modified to accommodate the appropriate premise ID numbers. Under the proposed regulations all provinces will be required to have some type of system for recording livestock movement in place.

The role of premise ID and tracking movement of animals isn’t about invading people’s privacy, say officials, it’s about protecting livestock that might be in the path of a natural disaster, and protecting the whole animal industry in the event of a disease outbreak to minimize its impact on the rest of the industry.

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Well, maybe not, according to Darling. His basic message is that the cattle industry can’t implement what Ottawa wants and remain competitively viable. In short, something needs to change.

It’s hard to believe we are still talking about this issue. Way back in 2011 the whole industry sat down with government staffers and worked out a Cattle Implementation Plan (CIP). That was supposed to be the road map to putting this new-age system into operation.

Unfortunately the message that went back to Ottawa from that meeting lost something in the translation, because here we are in 2016 and, as Darling puts it, there are still gaps between the CIP and the government’s proposed regulation.

It’s been a moving target ever since. In 2014 the CIP was reworked, then last year the Canadian Food Inspection Agency held a series of consultations with each livestock sector. But in the case of cattle, the messages keep getting mixed up, or ignored.

Early this month another meeting was scheduled in Calgary to once again try to fill in this gap between what the industry says it agreed to and what the bureaucrats say is needed to track an animal from birth to death and everyplace in between.

The industry’s position on traceability really hasn’t changed much over the years. The technology must accommodate the pace of normal business, the changes should be phased in, and costs shared according to the benefit derived by having an animal identified. Traceability will expand as the appropriate technology becomes available. It must be market neutral. And there needs to be a reasonable tolerance for missing tags on delivered cattle.

Rick Wright says the proposed regulation misses the mark on quite a few of these points. As the livestock markets’ association rep on the Canadian Cattle Identification Agency board Wright has been at the table on this issue almost from the beginning.

One of the big issues, he says, is the requirement to scan cattle as they pass through auction markets or buying stations. The current technology won’t support individual scanning of cattle but Wright says the government is now willing to accept the resulting variable read rate when cattle are herded past passive scanners at the market.

That may sound like a compromise to a bureaucrat but Wright says the markets are still expected to buy these scanners and pay people to maintain them. Also the markets are expected to scan the cattle and report the results to the Canadian Livestock Tracking System within 48 hours. That translates into extra handling, added stress, and shrink, and more costs to the market and its clients.

Ironically most of these cattle go right from the market to a feedlot where they will be scanned again within seven days as they are processed.

A valid alternative, Wright says, is to track cattle movement in auction markets by manifests. The information for each load could easily be passed on to the Canadian Livestock Tracking System as the cattle are being sold. And manifests are already inspected in B.C., Alberta, Sask­atchewan, and are available in Manitoba and Ontario.

Another concern is the technology itself. Tests have shown that a 100 per cent read rate is far from a certainty.

Then there’s the issue of lost tags. The industry is asking for a tolerance level of 10 per cent on shipped cattle.

Then, of course, there’s the even bigger issue of who is going to pay for it all.

Ottawa has already put up money for auction market studies and to offset some of the cost of readers for producers. But it could be argued that improving the control of devastating livestock diseases is a national responsibility. So Ottawa has received some benefit for its investment.

To date Canadian beef producers have purchased 96 million national ear tags at $3 a pop or $288 million. And that total is growing by about $15 million per year. So you’d have to say producers are doing their part.

But you don’t get the impression that they are willing to spend much more on this national system to protect the national herd, and possibly gain access to new markets around the world.

To date, the payback has been minimal but I suppose national ID was always viewed as an insurance scheme, rather than a marketing add-on.

There’s still hope. In a recent article Mike McMorris, the general manager of BIO in Ontario, wrote about discussions to create a Canadian Beef Improvement Network. It would gather genetic data on animals and then generate genetic evaluations that could be shared, based on their national ID number. If widely used, he says, it could be a first step to providing “supply chain genetics.”

For now, Ottawa should be careful about pushing too hard on its dream of a national traceability system for beef cattle. We already have one of the best national ID programs in the world.

We can afford to wait on traceability until we get it right.

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