“When we put the businesses together, we only had one thing in mind, which was global domination,” he says.

HerdWhistle was started in 2019 to monitor the feeding and drinking of an entire feedlot, 24/7. Using ultra high-frequency (UHF) and RFID ear tags, HerdWhistle created the longest RFID antenna in the world to monitor the entire feedlot.

Behan, now CEO of HerdWhistle, says HerdWhistle had a lot of talented engineers and an operational platform in the feedlot space, but the company was missing highly educated scientists in the animal science sphere. Alpha Phenomics brought those people to the table.

Braden Bjornson, the chief experience officer at HerdWhistle, says having those types of experts at their company is changing the game for HerdWhistle.

“I come from a family of farmers as well,” Bjornson says. “And they’re like, ‘Yeah, we’ve tried every tech, but we’re back to the same thing we’re doing today.’ So it’s just a bunch of noise… But the differentiator is with Alpha Phenomics and Jack’s side. If you look at the advisory board and the team that he brings, these are all PhDs in animal science. So there’s that legitimacy behind it. We’re not just creating things in our garage.”

With the merger of Alpha Phenomics with HerdWhistle, the company is busy rolling out new products.

UHF tech

Most of HerdWhistle’s products use UHF or RFID tag technology.

Behan says he believes there is a big opportunity in the industry with UHF technology. He says because all of a producer’s cattle in Canada are outside, UHF needs to be prioritized over low frequency.

“We also see a huge disparity between what farmers need in Canada and what people like the (Canadian Cattle Identification Agency) are advocating, which is sticking to short range,” Behan says. “It’s just not of interest practically if you have animals outside.

“We are pushing these different places like the Canadian Cattle Identification Agency and other people that we’re talking to with new ways to think about technology,” Bjornson says. “And it’s catching on because they keep coming back to us with more tag orders, more questions.”

Behan says when it comes to the work HerdWhistle is doing, the main goal is to minimize the amount of labour producers must do on their operations.

“You’re trying to remove labour all the time because nobody wants to work on farms anymore,” he says. “We have to be really looking at how we can reduce, not add, labour.”

Animal health

Behan says a benefit of UHF and RFID technologies is that they can be used to identify illnesses in cattle.

In the feedlot, water trough and feed bunk sensors track each animal’s ear tag as it eats or drinks, notes the HerdWhistle website. According to the website, with the extra-long RFID antenna, the system can detect early signs of illness before a calf succumbs to the disease. Because cattle don’t eat or drink at the same frequency they would if they were healthy, they’re easy to pick out as sick.

Behan says while this technology can minimize the labour of producers and other professionals such as pen riders, it also is more efficient.

“Often the poor guys have got 15,000 animals, or whatever it is, 300 a pen. And they probably see animals far too late to make a difference if those animals are sick,” Behan says.

“So what we have now is a system that identifies an animal as sick, and then it also tells the pen rider which pen it’s in. And then with the ability we’ve got through mobile phones, they can actually track it with the antenna, where the animal is within the pen.”

In 2024, HerdWhistle will also be releasing new technology that focuses on identifying illness in livestock.

Eye on cattle

One of HerdWhistle’s newest technologies is known as the BigEye, a product that contains a multispectral camera and built-in UHF tag readers.

Behan says the BigEye can scan the animal and get its measurements. The camera also contains a thermal technology that can detect the heat output from the animal.

Behan explains that infrared thermographic imaging is primarily used to indicate if the animal is sick. He says the BigEye focuses on the eye of the animal because the eye is the most sensitive to heat in the body. He says the BigEye would be able to identify illness in animals up to six days before a person would usually notice it.

“When you have a cold, what generally happens is your eyes water, you get a stuffy nose. And that’s because the heat has been generated in your head. Exactly the same with cattle, pigs, sheep, goats, whatever. Then it says this animal is outside the normal range, it’s at risk.”

The BigEye will cost around $1,500 to purchase, with a $700 subscription fee to follow every month. However, Behan says the price would be offset by how much he believes producers would save treating their herd.

“Instead of spending $40 or whatever it is on an antibody cocktail, you spend on average $4 because you’ve only got one in 10 that is sick. And you start to do things that are adding up,” Behan says.

CattleShield

HerdWhistle also has a virtual fence, known as CattleShield, which sets the virtual fence using GPS. Cattle wear collars that emit a sound when they get close to the fence, then a shock. The batteries are solar charged and can last up to nine months.

Behan says they wanted to create a virtual fence made for, and in, Canada, designed for the needs of the Canadian landscape. The initial study was funded by the B.C. government to try to prevent forest fires. The goal was to use virtual fence to get cattle close to the brush under trees so they could graze it down.

“The problem when you tried to move those systems to Canada is you haven’t got internet here,” Behan says with a laugh.

Behan says their collars connect to satellites. From there, producers can move their cattle with the virtual fence from their phones.

This is similar to the NoFence brand of collars, based out of Norway. This type of virtual fencing collar requires only a cellular network and an app on the producer’s phone to monitor and move their virtual fence. The main difference is that HerdWhistle’s virtual fence may be better suited to producers in areas that struggle with cellphone connectivity, as their collars connect through satellite.

Behan says now that the study is done, they are waiting for groups they’ve reached out to, such as RDAR, to come into the project with them and provide funding. After that, he says the plan is to manufacture 100 collars.

Future products

Since Behan’s company merged with HerdWhistle, it’s been full steam ahead. The company is making new products that use the skills of both Behan’s researchers and the engineers at HerdWhistle.

One of those products is the LittleEye, a smaller, handheld version of the BigEye intended for smaller producers.

Behan says the LittleEye will recognize eight species of animals, including cattle, dogs and cats, plus humans. This means people can identify illness not only in their livestock, but in their pets.

“Often where we live in rural communities, we want to know whether or not we should go into town and take the dog in for something wrong,” Behan says, acknowledging diagnosing illness is not just about temperature. “But the idea of being able to give a biosurveillance check on your animals before you spend that money can be very comforting.”

Behan says they are also making large investments in the plastics machine in their Calgary shop that produces ear tags. He says the goal is to be able to produce 86,000 tags per day. However, this will require a large investment.

“We’re going into ultra-high-frequency tags. And we’re going into genomic tags, so the concept of being able to take genomic samples every time I tag an animal that can be stored in nitrogen so that we can do genomic testing. We see that as a big area. We also see ultra-high-frequency tags as a big area,” Behan says. 

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“The goal of these technologies is to make data capture easy so that you are better informed to help you make the decisions that you need to make — and make more money at the end of the day,” says Almond, the general manager of AgSights. Almond presented at the Grey Bruce Farmers Week Beef Day. AgSights is a not-for-profit co-operative that provides data capture and analysis tools to the food supply chain.

The tools

Almond outlined some of the tools currently available. There are livestock collars that have RFID and sensors that can take biometric scans of the animals — the information collected can then be turned into insight into management directions.

There are also RFID boluses, which are more prevalent in the dairy industry. The boluses are ingested by the cow and monitor rumen activity to warn of potential illnesses early.

Camera technology has taken two tracks. There’s a kind of facial recognition camera that notes marks on the animal’s body to identify it. The camera connects to the RFID tag and can track the animal and its movements. In this case, the camera tracks movement and can detect, for example, how often the animal lies down, or whether it’s limping.

The thermal imaging camera can detect whether an animal is in heat or is sick. A company called Alpha Phenomics has a 3D imaging machine that can also do weight measurements and calculate average daily gains.

Almond points out that all of these products have to go through a three-step process: proof of concept, validation and commercialization.

“These tools exist, they are there for your use,” she says. “The question is, when does it make sense to add them to your farm?”

Deciding what’s needed

Using the Eisenhower principle, a decision-making matrix that uses important, unimportant, urgent and not urgent filters, Almond demonstrated how the technology could help free up time and improve production.

The urgent and important tasks such as calving, breeding, health treatments and nutrition management can be better accomplished if the farmer has useful information coming directly from the cows early on.

The technology can also make tasks that are not urgent but important such as business planning, genetic improvement and record-keeping more easily and quickly done with accessible data.

She then listed several questions for the audience to consider when deciding on technology tools.

“What is your big-picture goal?” she asks, adding it’s a good idea to have it written down. “If the tool doesn’t get you where you want to go, it’s probably not the tool you need today.”

She says farmers should know what kind of information they should be collecting to achieve their goals. These are divided into mandated, needed and desired. For example, RFID is required by the government for all animals leaving the original herd, along with deadstock records, treatments, livestock movements and financials. The needed information includes herd productivity, data for culling decisions, selection criteria, feed inventory and rations, and mortality rate health records. The desired data could include pedigree tracking, performance records and genetic evaluations.

Almond advises producers to know how the tool would help them achieve SMART production targets: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. She says it’s important to have RFID tags attached to calves right after they’re born to take advantage of any of the newer technologies.

“How do you record information when you’re on the go?” she asks, noting that, to get the full value of information in, say, calving records, producers must be able to incorporate the technology into how they do their business.

Information security is something that should always be considered. Whether it’s copies of paper records, computer backups or cloud storage, producers should be asking questions about how the data is collected and used, who owns it and whether they can get it back out.

Adding value

Beyond collecting the data, Almond says the technology should create value.

“Data should produce insight and there’s software available that can do that for you,” she says. “If it’s good and working well, it should provide suggestions for action.”

She provided some examples of how the technology could help. For instance, a producer could select a cow because she has the highest adjusted weaning weight, cull a poor-performing cow, or see the need to talk to the nutritionist about increasing feed efficiency to reach an average daily gain of, say, two pounds a day.

Once the tool is selected, she says it’s important for producers to know they will continue using it. She notes sometimes the advantages of technology aren’t realized because they don’t get used enough — such as weigh scales or RFID readers. She suggests scheduling a time of day to check in with your technology.

“You don’t have to use all that some technologies offer all at once,” she says. “You can start simply, and tell yourself, ‘This is what I can handle today’ and move on from there.

“Make sure the technology gives a quick, easy way to monitor what’s going on and a way to compare one animal to another or one season to another.” Finally, she advises producers to ask the seller about technology support — and whether ongoing services are an added cost.

Almond points out her own organization’s BioTrack program offers a whole suite of solutions, but producers can start with one and grow into others over time. The tools include everything from simple inventory tracking to reproduction records and body condition scoring to genetic evaluations.

AgSights also has a system for small and medium-sized processors called BioLinks. It connects animal and premise identification information with the carcass and, finally, the finished meat product. It also includes an e-commerce option for selling meat online.

The post Buying and using technology on the farm the right way appeared first on Canadian Cattlemen.

Chaos follows: borders slam shut and the government pledges millions in aid. The border to the United States will remain shuttered until 2005, when it opens for young cattle. Older cattle won’t cross the border until 2007.

The task to reopen borders, overcome trade barriers and reinstate trust in the beef industry was a monumental job that has stuck with many people in the industry, even 20 years later. Now, it’s imperative to everyone that nothing like that happens again.

This is where traceability comes into play.

According to the government of Canada, “Cattle identification directly contributes to traceability in BSE investigations and thus to the control of BSE in the Canadian cattle herd. This component also contributes to the control of other diseases by enhancing the traceability of animals.”

However, not all industry organizations agree with all the regulations put forward throughout the 20-plus years of traceability.

Livestock Markets Association of Canada

It’s May 2023 in Olds, Alta., and producers and professionals from across the country fill a conference room in the Pomeroy Hotel, on the Olds College campus. Rick Wright, CEO of the Livestock Markets Association of Canada, stands at the front of the room and talks about the association’s current perspective on proposed changes to traceability regulations. After years of traceability changing, this isn’t a new conversation at the association’s conventions.

“I know you guys all say, ‘Rick, you guys have talked traceability until we’re blue in the face here and we’ve been doing it for 15 years.’ But it’s here, this is the start of what’s happening,” Wright says at the conference. “So it’s not going away people, it’s coming.”

Partway through, he convinces Anne Brunet-Burgess, general manager of the Canadian Cattle Identification Agency, to sit on the stage with him and provide her input from the agency’s perspective.

“We’ve talked about this for a long time, so this is not a surprise. Of course, there’s some details that are surprising, but the overall concept has been in the works for many, many years,” she says.

Tag dealers

When asked about the proposed changes to traceability, Wright sees some positives. However, he has concerns with suggested restrictions around who can sell RFID tags. The proposed change would mean that only designated “tag dealers” could sell tags. Tag dealers also would have to keep track of their information and then send it to the Canadian Cattle Identification Agency.

Anne Brunet-Burgess has concerns regarding tag dealers as well.

“Buying tags is an asset, just like any other commodities a producer would have,” she says. “And if they’re no longer needing them … they should have the ability to sell them like any other asset. In the proposed regs, they would take that ability away from the producer, so you’d have to be a tag dealer in order to sell. So, we’re saying, with the proper paperwork to change the ownership of the tags, there should be no trouble at all.”

Reporting group movement

Reporting animal movement is one aspect of the new traceability proposals Wright says is a win.

Now, with the proposed changes, livestock markets would only have to report group movement, as opposed to reporting individual tag numbers upon arrival. Move-out information will not have to be reported.

“We have been able to get group movement reporting coming in,” Wright says. “And that was a great compromise for the CFIA and for the government, and we appreciate the fact they did listen to the recommendations.”

However, Wright wants to ensure they are doing what they must, while staying in their lane.

“We’ve told them all along that we will do passive reporting of what is sent to us at the intermediate sites and what is at the markets,” Wright says. “And we’ll send that in but we’re not their enforcement agency. We’re not the policemen and we’re not going to run out and have to track all that information down.”

Reporting is still a concern for the individual producer, who would have to report move-in information when they purchase cattle such as bred cows, stockers and feeders that are delivered to operations that are not intermediate sites.

The Livestock Market Association of Canada has said smaller operators won’t be able to handle scanning individual cattle that come to their farms because they don’t have the equipment.

Brunet-Burgess also has concerns regarding this.

“For a primary producer, again if they don’t buy anything but maybe the odd bull or the odd load of replacement heifers, the reporting impact is less but there nonetheless,” Brunet-Burgess says. “So all these regulated parties will have to report something if they are receiving livestock. And currently, there’s nothing so it’s from zero to a hundred because there’s no in-between.”

Tracking information

The proposed changes would require a more active role in tracking information, increasing the workload for the Canadian Cattle Identification Agency.

According to Wright, the proposal for tracking information isn’t specific enough, leaving a lot of wiggle room for how people submit their data. He says that reporting needs to be streamlined for the agency.

“Realistically, right now, the way the proposal stands is that the administrators … they have to receive it. If I put it on the back of the cigarette package and pop it in the mail, they have to receive that. And that’s not efficient.”

Brunet-Burgess also has concerns with the amount of stress and unnecessary work it will pile onto the Canadian Cattle Identification Agency.

“Regulated parties are not prescribed to reporting in any particular way. So they can report electronically, they can report via a management software, but they could also report on paper. So if it comes on paper it requires a … resource of some sort on our part and that’s where the impact is.”

Cost

In addition to these issues, the Livestock Market Association of Canada is concerned with the cost-benefit ratio. Wright says the proposed changes make things more expensive for the industry.

“Cost-benefit ratio has been grossly underestimated. The cost of this program is going to be considerably more than what they have, and that industry is going to get saddled with the cost,” he says. “If it is for the public good, then the government should pay for that.”

Ryder Lee, general manager of the Canadian Cattle Association (CCA), says currently, 80 per cent of the cost would fall on the cattle sector.

“What we’d like is some programming to be in place prior to going to Gazette to help with getting to compliance,” Lee says.

Waiting game

The comment period for the proposed changes to traceability ended in June 2023. Following that period, the Livestock Market Association of Canada, Canadian Cattle Identification Agency and CCA were waiting to see what would come after Canadian Food Inspection Agency looked through all of the comments.

“We hope to see our comments taken into account. There definitely needs to be partnership with industry to get us from where we are today and our current traceability system to where we will be in the future under this new one,” Lee says, adding he hopes to see “a good traceability system” that “isn’t overly complicated or overly costly for cattle producers.”

According to the Livestock Market Association of Canada ’s 2023 annual report from May, the proposed changes will be published in the Canada Gazette Part II in 2024. The proposals will become law and there will be a year of soft enforcement for implementation. However, both the CCA and the Livestock Market Association of Canada are recommending two years of soft enforcement.

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Heather and her husband Brenton, who run a cow-calf operation and grain farm at Oyen, Alta., were interested in GPS ear tags for identification and financing purposes, as well as simplifying the process of checking their cattle.

“We’re spread out over 55 miles and seven different pastures, so for us to go check our cattle is pretty much a six- to eight-hour project,” says Brenton. “If we could have constant awareness of where our cattle are, then that would save a lot of trips.”

When Heather came across Australia’s Ceres Tag, she learned it could provide the solutions she was looking for, as well as numerous other opportunities. Marketed as the world’s only direct-to-satellite smart livestock ear tag, Ceres Tag is on track to be a game changer. Along with its GPS capabilities, Ceres Tag is an accelerometer with RFID technology, the first of its kind designed to meet accreditation guidelines with national livestock traceability programs.

“Ceres Tag is years ahead of anybody else,” says Heather. “We’re so excited to see what they can do on our farm.”

Need for better data

David Smith, CEO of Ceres Tag, was raised on a large beef operation in Australia and worked as an engineer on projects around the world. When he returned to his family’s farm, he noticed a lack of cattle-specific data that could be used to drive their business.

“We’re running 1,000 head of cattle, and we saw that there was a need for better data to be able to make better decisions,” says Smith.

After a year of investigating the possibilities, David and Melita Smith established Ceres Tag in 2016. In 2018, the company partnered with Meat and Livestock Australia and CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency, to create an ear tag that could measure data on several fronts, and the first prototype was developed that year. Funding from the federal and Queensland governments helped move the product towards the commercialization stage.

With a solar panel on its face, the tag sits on the back of the animal’s ear for optimal sunlight exposure and low-orbit satellite reception. The back of the tag has a twin pin and is designed to require less application force, with the security to keep the tag intact for the animal’s lifetime. Each tag lasts more than 10 years to ensure lifetime coverage.

In addition to having multiple capabilities, Smith wanted the tag to operate in a specific way for ease of use. “It had to be satellite-enabled so you didn’t have to put up infrastructure,” he says.

As well, tags are sold without ongoing subscription fees. “It’s scalable that way so you can just buy as many tags as what suits you in boxes of 24. So if you can only afford a certain amount one year or you only want to do a certain number, then that’s okay.”

Information is reported multiple times daily and transmitted to a central data platform. From there, data is transmitted to partnering software platforms, allowing the producer to access this information using their existing data management platform of choice.

By monitoring livestock through GPS, Ceres Tag can be used to locate individual animals, track pasture use and alert producers to breakouts, theft or predation. As well, it can provide more accurate asset records, which can easily be sent to an insurance company or financial institution.

The tag’s advanced accelerometer monitors and characterizes animal behaviours, from everyday functions to behaviours that indicate estrus, stress or the animal’s health status. The tag also includes Bluetooth technology to allow new algorithms to be uploaded to an individual animal’s tag, measuring performance at each stage of the production process.

More recently, Ceres Tag announced the addition of eGrazor technology. This technology, developed by CSIRO, is a sensor that uses specific algorithms to monitor a wide variety of cattle behaviours, including pasture feed intake.

“There’s a range of different algorithms that contribute to the feed intake,” says Lewis Frost, Ceres Tag’s chief operating officer. “We’re looking at the relationships between eating and grazing behaviours, so they’re actually slightly different if you’re eating ration… and actually plucking and consuming forage from the pasture.”

By tracking other behaviours, such as drinking and ruminating, it improves the accuracy of recording an animal’s feed intake, narrowing in on the actual time an individual spends grazing.

“Accurate measurement of pasture intake using the eGrazor technology holds the key to more efficient cattle through monitoring feed efficiency, providing valuable phenotypic data to aid in selection decisions,” states a recent press release.

Although the pasture feed intake algorithm was designed for grass-fed production systems, such as the extensive open grazing systems used in Australia, the team is developing new algorithms to fit different types of cattle, production systems and environments.

With this advanced level of monitoring, Smith predicts producers will find value in having this data that they may not have anticipated, contributing to an operation’s profitability.

“It has a pretty powerful impact, and no matter whether you’re a producer, a government department, a financier or whatever it is, everyone needs the data to be able to improve what they do.”

Creating new market opportunities

The Mundts plan to make the most of the potential impact of Ceres Tag, using the data collected to create a new market for their beef with a direct line of communication to the consumer.

“We’re planning on tagging not only some of our cows but some of our calves that are going to start into this marketing program, and once they come to market, that’s going to be a big play for us, I think, financially,” says Brenton.

Smith directed them to Aglive, an Australian blockchain software company, as a platform to transfer the data collected on their cattle down the supply chain. The couple has already lined up a processor for this venture and are hoping to tap into the growing number of consumers seeking locally produced food.

“When it does get to the customer — whether that’s in a restaurant or a store, wherever it is that they pick up the meat — they can have a QR code showing them where that meat came from, and that is something we’ll be able to use to communicate with the customer,” says Heather.

The team at Ceres Tag is excited about this opportunity to leverage management practices into consumer connection. “We have the technology to generate so much information on these animals on-farm, but we’re not seeing that translate into consumers’ understanding how those animals are produced and the effort and quality that’s gone into putting that steak on their plate,” says Frost in a June 2020 webinar.

“So we really want to do that by tracking our devices and taking that data right through the entire supply chain to really look at a provenance, traceability and welfare layer of data that’s like a golden thread throughout the industry.”

To allow for this and the tag’s other capabilities, the development process has been a global collaboration. “To be able to put something together as complex as this to make it look so simple, you have to use the best people from around the world,” says Smith.

The team partnered with New Zealand’s Rezare Systems for the tag’s security and back-end data diagnostics and Global Star in the U.S. on the satellite capabilities. After a series of successful trials at home in Australia, the next trial period will focus on international markets. As a lead-up to the tag’s commercial launch, trials will take place in early 2021 in nine different countries, including Canada.

Smith explains that North America will be an important market. The company has been working with partners in Alberta and Saskatchewan to better understand the needs of Canadian beef producers. The Mundts will be part of this large-scale trial in February and March. As part of their specific trial, they have applied for funding to start the testing required for Canadian Food Inspection Agency tag accreditation.*

“From a company point of view, we want to be seen as a local company acting locally. We don’t know what the full benefits are in every region of the world in which we’re going to operate,” says Smith.

“That’s why reaching out to Heather and Brenton to collaboratively trial these tags together will provide not just the feedback for our company to continuously improve what we do, but hopefully it will also help the local producers.”

While cattle are the primary focus for the tag’s launch, the upcoming trial will include other species. In Australia, a number of feral pigs will be tagged and tracked for biosecurity purposes. Tags have also been sold for some protected giraffes and rhinos in Africa to prevent poaching. The company aims to develop a miniaturized version of the tag in the next few years for small ruminants.

Although the next trial phase will help determine how the tag can be used around the world, Smith sees value no matter where or how it’s used. “Although it is initially the producers who will be paying for the tags, eventually that cost will transfer down the supply chain because people will seek out to have that ability to gather the data along the way,” he says.

“It will become a supply chain necessity not just for the end product but also the way in which you do business from… People will make decisions and get the benefits from the information that will be now available.”

The tags will be widely available to purchase on the Ceres Tag website in May 2021.

*Note: The story originally stated that tag accreditation was handled by the Canadian Cattle Identification Agency (CCIA). Although the CCIA facilitated the testing, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) developed the accreditation standards for tags through a committee. 

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A blockchain is a web-based record-keeping system used to share data through a computing network that is either public or private. When information is added to this system, it is encrypted and becomes a new “block” of data added to the “chain” of records. Each partner involved in a blockchain has a copy of this database.

Blockchain was used in 2008 to develop cryptocurrency Bitcoin, a digital monetary system. Traceability in the agri-food industry is another application being explored. Using radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags or quick response (QR) codes, products can be scanned at each point along the supply chain, providing information to a blockchain. If there’s a recall or food safety issue, product can be rapidly traced to its point of origin and each location entered.

Tech giant IBM is working with agri-food companies to adopt blockchain technology in its tracking systems. The company’s IBM Food Trust aims to increase transparency and leverage this information into premiums. Wal-Mart is also developing food traceability systems that use blockchain, and Tyson Foods has partnered with several food companies to create a similar record-keeping system.

Blockchain promoters suggest that it may help bridge the gap between producers and consumers through increased food security and transparency, as well as establish standards to earn premiums for quality. However, many people developing blockchain platforms believe that most industries, including agriculture, will not see this technology used full-scale for several years.

A relatively new technology

Vitalik Buterin, a web developer and co-creator of blockchain platform Ethereum, has suggested in interviews that blockchain is still in its infancy for uses other than cryptocurrency.

“I’m not claiming that this model is going to be viable in every industry,” he told online news outlet Quartz. “That’s clearly something that still needs much more time to be worked out before we can see (whether it) makes sense at scale.”

Other experts indicate that uncertainties around blockchain make it difficult to determine whether or not a company should use it. In a recent Country Guide article, Karen Hand, director of research data strategy at the University of Guelph’s Food from Thought research program, stated that “just implementing a blockchain for the sake of blockchain isn’t an intelligent strategic move. It has to be like any technology where you consider what’s already working, look at the blockchain and see if it would improve efficiencies.”

There are several aspects to consider. While full transparency is promoted as a blockchain benefit, this is only the case for a public blockchain, in which each party can access a copy. In a private blockchain, not all participants will have a copy, and the party that created it will establish the rules.

While some consider blockchains unhackable, Dave Rejeski, director of the Technology, Innovation and the Environment Project at the Environmental Law Institute, has highlighted security as a challenge. The many layers in blockchain systems are, in fact, susceptible to hacking, Rejeski said.

There’s also the question of whether this technology is best suited to the beef industry. In the case of companies developing blockchain platforms for beef traceability, Deborah Wilson, senior vice-president of TrustBIX Inc., raised concerns that they may not be familiar with the scale of beef production. When she spoke with representatives from IBM Food Trust, they were not aware of many factors that would be tracked in a blockchain, such as health and welfare practices and how often an animal is moved during its lifetime.

“They honestly believed that an animal is born on one operation, lives there its whole life eating grass until it goes to become meat,” she recalled.

Questions surrounding beef traceability blockchain startups

In the United States, private startups that use blockchain for beef traceability and verification are receiving attention. One such company is Wyoming-based BeefChain, a partnership of six ranches, traceability experts and technology specialists, including those from IBM Food Trust. BeefChain uses a blockchain, as well as cryptography tools such as digital signatures, to enhance traceability and prove humane handling, according to its website.

“It’s a digital ledger, so essentially what we do is take our data points along the supply chain and hash them into the ledger, and then that creates the immutable trail of data,” said Rob Jennings, CEO of BeefChain. Around 1,600 calves on six participating ranches have been tagged, to be harvested in fall 2019 and marketed as Wyoming Certified Beef.

Producers will scan calves’ RFID tags again at weaning and transport, providing information such as geolocation, ownership and vaccination details to the blockchain. The information is carried through the supply chain, in the hopes that feedlots, processing plants and others will share information up and down the chain, said Jennings.

One goal is to “create efficiencies for the producers so they can spend less time on paperwork and more time on ranching and raising animals and doing what they do best,” he said.

Another major goal is to share data to support claims about beef raised through the program. “We think it’s important, particularly with export markets and increased consumer interest and demand to validate the data points that are behind claims.”

Eventually, BeefChain plans to provide premiums to producers. Jennings said they also want to improve price discovery for producers and create a more direct relationship between consumers and producers. The plan is to allow consumers to scan QR codes on menus to learn where their beef came from.

While such programs are promising, it is only the platform itself — the blockchain — that is new, Wilson pointed out.

“They’re doing exactly what we do in BIXS, which is if they’re treating the animal with a vaccine or an antimicrobial, they’re just putting it into the blockchain,” said Wilson. “Feedlot software has been doing that for years… All of that information, from a Canadian perspective, we’re already capturing.”

Wilson raised concerns that state-specific startups using blockchain for traceability may be overlooking aspects related to food safety and animal disease outbreaks.

“It’s for the benefit of their business only,” she said. “They want to garner new markets by using traceability, but they aren’t delivering on what is really required, and that is animal health traceability, disease traceability, how (you) keep your borders open in the event of an animal health event.”

Wilson compared this to the Canadian Livestock Tracking System (CLTS), which has to share information with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) in the event of such an issue. She predicts communication issues between different blockchain platforms used by startups.

“They’re going to realize they have as much interstate movement of cattle down there as we have inter-provincial movement of cattle here in Canada,” she said.

“There is a lot of different languages you can build technology in,” said Wilson. “There’s a lot of different platforms you can use for blockchain, too. So if there is no way for them to share information and there’s no central hub that allows all of these different platforms to talk together, I don’t know what they’re going to do.”

When asked about these concerns, Jennings stated that while BeefChain is currently working at the producer level, he wants the program to be part of the solution surrounding recalls and disease tracking.

“These are problems in the industry, and from our perspective we don’t have the answer to everything and blockchain’s not the answer to everything. It’s not a one-size-fits-all, but it is a good aggregator of how can we collect these data points and make them in a public, sort of transparent way along the supply chain, and then how can we start to try and solve some of these problems. And that’s really the conversation that we’re in,” he said.

“I think the rancher ultimately benefits the faster we can quarantine and cut off a disease outbreak,” Jennings added. “Then there’s less likelihood that markets can fall and entire herds have to be killed, and that’s really what we’re aiming for on that front.”

Can startups deliver the verification of beef production practices that they promise? Jennings sees the use of blockchain as an advantage compared to other verification systems. BeefChain is currently in the process of becoming certified as a USDA Process Verified Program (PVP).

“The difference between what us and the other companies are currently doing is that we’re validating on blockchain, so we’re actually putting our data forward and hashing it and creating that immutable chain,” he said. “What we hope to do by digitizing all of this and then using geolocation and date stamps and digital signatures for verification purposes is to create a better audit system that is based on real data points, not paperwork filled out.”

On the other hand, critics state that the use of blockchain alone will not provide actual verification of these practices.

“To me, verification is a third-party process,” said Wilson. Whether it’s traced with BIXS or CCIA or a blockchain, it’s not a verification process unless it’s audited by a third party, she said.

But Jennings sees this technology as a chance for BeefChain to act as a third-party auditor for other programs. In addition to using its USDA PVP certification to audit and verify beef that qualifies for standards such as Wyoming Plus, all-natural or AngusSource, BeefChain will be able to verify ranches for programs that require specific management practices.

“In some of those instances they’re verifying the ranch, but what they’re not doing is verifying the cattle on the ranch,” he said. “What we think we can do in helping with that is not only creating a digital trail of the data points that would complete a protocol for their ranch certification, but we can also then AngusSource the cattle on that ranch. So if you want to sell your beef as being bird-friendly or carbon neutral or whatever it may be, your ranch would be certified for those things and then we would come in on top of that and AngusSource the cattle as being from that ranch… We can help be a validator of that information and the first place to start is tagging animals in with an RFID tag and then collecting their data points from there forward.”

Future opportunities

The Canadian beef industry can expect blockchain technology in traceability programs in the future, as existing organizations are exploring these possibilities. Wilson reported that BIXS has spent considerable time researching the platforms, models and languages of blockchains to learn how the technology could be used in their system.

“We do have a couple of proof-of-concept blockchains developed; we just need to find the right situation to deploy them,” she said. “They’ll be private blockchains for specific purposes.”

In the case of BIXS, questions remain as to whether blockchain will be viable for its purpose.

“Right now, we’re not 100 per cent convinced that a blockchain can store the huge amount of data that BIXS is currently capable of storing,” said Wilson, citing concerns about the sustainability of a large, complex blockchain that requires a huge amount of computing power. For example, it is estimated that Bitcoin consumes the same amount of energy each year as all of Ireland.

While Wilson predicts the Canadian agri-food industry will adopt this technology, how this may look for the Canadian beef industry is still up in the air.

“I don’t ever think it’s going to be a fully transparent public blockchain. I think it will be a number of private blockchains developed for specific use or specific case purposes,” she said.

It may also be an opportunity to strengthen the Canadian brand on a global scale.

“The demands coming from Europe and the Pacific Rim countries is for traceability, full traceability, and for additional information about how that animal was raised…There’s going to be a global expectation that we understand where these animals have been or where we sourced the food products to make a wine, a juice, a package of mixed vegetables in the freezer at the grocery store,” said Wilson. “All of that’s going to have to be tracked ultimately.”

The post Questions remain around blockchain and beef traceability in Canada appeared first on Canadian Cattlemen.

The impetus for this renewed enthusiasm is the result of several positive meetings with key Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) and CFIA officials late last year where long-serving industry representatives on the Cattle Implementation Plan (CIP) committee became convinced that CFIA is now prepared to align its regulations with recommendations detailed in the CIP.

“Industry is 100 per cent behind the CIP, it always has been,” says longtime committee chair Steve Primrose, a cattle buyer and feedlot and cow-calf operator from Lethbridge, Alta., who has represented the Canadian Livestock Dealers Association and the Canadian Cattle Identification Agency (CCIA) on the CIP committee since its inception.

“Government is 100 per cent moving forward in tandem with industry. It’s looking like the regulations will align with the CIP but interpretation of some of the points from industry’s perspective and the government’s perspective might end up being different. The wording will be important. We know we have our points made to the CFIA and Minister MacAulay is aware of the plan.

“This is one situation where all of industry, and the provincial and federal governments have to buy in with everyone working toward the same goal or it won’t work.”

• Comment: Let us slash some red tape

Volumes could be written about what went on behind the scenes to get the Cattle Implementation Plan to this point since 2011 when then agriculture minister Gerry Ritz called the cattle industry and government to a summit in Saskatoon to agree on a plan to turn full traceability into a reality.

The result was a step-by-step plan to create a voluntary, phased-in approach for premises identification (PID) and movement reporting.

Seventeen major industry groups finalized the details with government consultation and presented what they believed was a final plan to CFIA in 2012 to begin preparing the regulations.

The plan mapped the transition from a proven traceback system, based on cattle identification tags, to a full movement reporting system which appreciates the realities of how cattle are handled and shipped and the limitations of the current technology.

Obviously there have been some delays since then. One big hurdle, says Primrose, occurred when AAFC pushed the implementation of premises ID onto the provinces. It has taken until now to get every province on board, and none have 100 per cent of their producers signed up.

Another setback occurred in 2014, when CFIA went off the Plan and proposed introducing a requirement to read tags in and out of every site with a different PID. The industry balked. This wasn’t in the CIP all had agreed to.

“The beef cattle industry has so many moving parts and since the applied research project to test reading equipment at sales venues across the country showed there isn’t a system that can get 100 per cent (of RFID numbers), the thinking is we can get a big chunk and that’s better than nothing,” Primrose says.

Delegations were sent to other countries to examine different tag reading technologies, but the consensus always came back to the agreed upon CIP as being the best way forward for Canada.

“The CIP has always been about working together to get an understanding of what’s needed and what we can do, and it has always been about the money. Especially now with government cutbacks, there is only a small pool of money, so we have to make sure traceability is affordable. There’s no sense having an elaborate scheme (if) nobody can afford it.”

Looking ahead

The CIP is updated every couple of years as circumstances and technology change, so it has always been a work in progress, but it’s now at the point where not much more can be done until the regulations lay out what will be required.

Once the regs are written, Primrose says the industry focus will shift to one of making producers aware of their responsibilities under the new rules. Industry associations can spearhead this effort and Primrose views the mobile field representative program in Aberta as a good example to follow. The CIP recommends a similar nationwide approach for movement reporting.

Defining the cost-sharing principles for implementation and the ongoing cost of traceability as well as negotiating an accord to ensure future governments honour the principles of the CIP are a few issues currently being looked at by industry representatives.

“Our understanding is that when legislation for movement reporting is introduced it will be as agreed in the CIP,” says Sask­atchewan rancher Pat Hayes, another CIP committee member.

“What we have to do now as an industry is to make sure we can meet it. It’s important that industry is doing its part by using PID numbers and movement documents to prove CIP works over the next three to five years, or we might end up with an elaborate version,” he says.

While there is general agreement on using the current CIP to craft the regulations, there are still federal-provincial jurisdictional issues to do with premises ID and movement reporting to be resolved, plus a few grey areas surrounding when RFID tags need to be read.

Hays says a substantial investment will also be needed to develop an electronic manifest that ties in with CCIA’s Canadian Livestock Tracking System database and employee training at locations required to read and report RFID numbers to the CLTS database.

A manifest, or movement document, in paper or electronic form, will need to accompany cattle transported from the farm of origin, linked premises or linked commingling premises (private and public community pastures, Crown grazing lands). Producers may choose to link their primary premises to other owned, leased or commingling premises to identify one animal health unit in a PID database.

At a minimum the proposed manifest would require the shipper’s PID, species, head count, loading or unloading date, and license plate of the transport. Each province may include additional information as needed to facilitate commerce.

It wouldn’t be mandatory to report this information to the CLTS database when shipping cattle because all of it will be reported along with the receiver’s PID when the RFID numbers are read at the next farm, feedlot or other intermediate site.

Federally and provincially registered packing plants, dead-stock operators, renderers and exporters, are already required by regulation to read and report RFID numbers to retire them from the CLTS database.

“The CFIA suggests a review three years after the regulations come into force, but industry has asked for five years to get PID databases populated and movement documents in place to create a baseline,” says Sask­atchewan rancher and current CCIA chair Mark Elford.

All are in agreement that the first move from the farm of origin or its linked premises will be caught on the movement document. The first reading of RFID numbers to be reported to the CLTS database would be after the cattle are read at the receiving premises, the exception being for sales venues.

Manifests are already in use in Sask­atchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia, administered by inspection agencies. It will be a much bigger change for producers, marketers and transporters operating from Manitoba, Ontario and the Maritimes. Quebec already has its own system.

One issue Elford says CFIA is working on, is the tag-reading requirement for cattle crossing provincial borders. Many ranches operate on both sides of a border and in some places cattle graze freely in pastures that span borders. In Saskatchewan, almost all cattle cross the Alberta border to feedlots or packing plants, so there should be no need to handle them when the tags will be read by the receiver.

Simply put, mandatory use of a movement document is a tradeoff for not having to read RFID tags again at sales venues when shipping cattle, says Rick Wright of Virden who represents the Livestock Markets Association of Canada (LMAC) and the CCIA on the CIP committee.

Reading tags at locations where cattle are normally handled in large groups not only slows down trade, but creates bottlenecks that contribute to stress and shrink. Even one per cent additional shrink amounts to a significant loss on each animal for every producer. The losses become staggering when multiplied across a couple of thousand animals per sale at every sale across the country during the busy fall run.

Another important project will test the ability of the CLTS database to accept information from scanned movement documents. Vendors at a November symposium gave assurances that they could create software to scan and automatically upload the required information.

The CFIA has also indicated intermediate sites would not be held responsible for manifests not filled in correctly by producers.

“As an industry, we have to work together to get this done in three years and we might be able to string it out to five. If we don’t, we won’t have a choice,” Wright says. “From Manitoba east, it will take time and a lot of education to get producers and everyone up the line on board with movement documents. It won’t happen without a lot of effort.”

Larry Witzel, of the Ontario Livestock Exchange, who also represents LMAC on the CIP committee, says some preliminary work on manifests is already being done in Ontario. In the past, Ontario markets, dealers and truckers relied on their own documents to collect the basic information they needed to transact business. About two years ago, Beef Farmers of Ontario, and the provincial cattle feeders, markets, dealers and trucker associations along with Ontario Agriculture got together to create one common manifest for deliveries of cattle, bison, sheep and goats to markets, dealers and assembly yards, and another for the delivery of those species to farms, feedlots and packing plants. These manifests ask for the same key information that will be required when movement reporting becomes mandatory.

Currently Ontario manifests are voluntary but uptake by the producers has been progressing, albeit slowly.

More than 50 per cent of Ontario producers have voluntarily registered their PID already.

“The CIP is designed so that we aren’t duplicating what others down the line are doing because it all comes down to cost,” says Witzel.

“I’m hopeful that the regulations will follow the CIP because we need to get to that sweet spot for traceability where we can efficiently get what the CFIA needs to do the job of traceback, but not at a high, high cost for producers, industry or government, regardless of how the cost-sharing works out. If it can be low cost and efficient, it will be a win-win for everyone. It is difficult to do, but hopefully we are getting there because whatever we end up with will be in place for future generations because these things can’t be changed easily after they are in regulation.”

The CIP roadmap was vetted through the CCIA board, which represents all industry sectors, but it is not a lobby group, and last summer the CIP committee felt it needed to provide a more consistent message on traceability in Ottawa, so the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association (CCA), the producers’ chief lobbyist, and well-known on Parliament Hill, took on this role.

CCA executive vice-president Dennis Laycraft and president Dan Darling, led the industry delegation at the meetings with the CFIA last fall that appeared to put full traceability back on the rails.

“We do feel there is an effort to try to get the regulations moving, but making regulations is a long process,” cautions Laycraft. “It could be spring, summer or into fall before we see them.”

He views the Cattle Implementation Plan as a good foundation that gives the industry the capability to handle situations and yet allows people to operate in a practical way. The CCA will be working with LMAC and all associations representing the other sectors on the CIP committee to focus on the most practical method possible to capture RFID numbers. Electronic manifests will become an important tool to capture the rest of the information needed to follow the cattle because it is the best way to create fast data.

Now that the ball is rolling again, the CCA will focus its lobbying efforts on moving the CIP along and making sure the regulations align with it, while keeping provincial cattle organizations informed and engaged. Meanwhile, officials must be reminded of the limitations to today’s technology when it comes to tag retention and reading individual tags under varying conditions without compromising the industry’s concern for animal welfare and meat quality.

“We can’t apply perfect solutions to imperfect problems,” says Laycraft. “The CIP is a work in progress. If we get the right process moving forward, industry will be strong and competitive and we will strengthen the traceback system.”

A copy of the Cattle Implementation Plan can be found on canadaid.ca.

The post Identification: Full traceability… we have a plan for that! appeared first on Canadian Cattlemen.

RFID tags certified by the Canadian Cattle Identification Agency (CCIA) have been tested for retention under cold temperatures, readability and their ability to withstand tampering.

However, a research team working with PAMI decided to use an engineering approach (pictured above) to test the mechanical strength of six types of RFID tags while following best practices for application such as using compatible fronts and backs and the correct applicator for each tag.

In measuring the force needed to break the tags apart, the team found the different tag types all met CCIA’s basic requirements for tag strength.

However, temperature was shown to have a profound effect on the tags in terms of strength and tag retention.

PAMI’s testers brought both the tag and the applicator down to -30 C, then inserted the tag and brought it back to ambient temperatures before testing its strength.

“We found that if the tags were inserted cold, they were much weaker than those inserted at room temperature,” says Joy Agnew, PAMI’s project manager for ag research services at Humboldt, Sask. The tags were also more difficult to insert when cold, and broke apart “far more easily, even when back at room temperature.”

• On the Alberta Farmer Express: Calgary lab will put ear tags to the ultimate test: Canadian winter

The lesson learned, PAMI says is that it’s best to avoid tagging animals in extremely cold temperatures. If the job can’t be avoided, both the tag applicator and the tags themselves should be kept warm while you are working the cattle.

Paul Laronde, a member of the CCIA technical advisory committee, says all tags approved by the agency were subjected to cold down to -35 C in laboratory conditions, equivalent to the severe environmental conditions faced by beef cattle across Canada. That also exceeds known standards for all other jurisdictions that operate animal identification programs.

New testing standards will include additional environmental testing of tags, including accelerated aging of tag plastics and resistance to ultraviolet light degradation.

A new national tag testing framework has reached the final stages of development where tag manufacturers must assess the cost of meeting to new standards for RFID tags.

Laronde says CCIA follows the International Committee of Animal Recording (ICAR) standard for approving tags and tag manufacturers.

Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT) has received funding to build and certify an ICAR-approved tag testing facility in Alberta to test new ear tags for CCIA and other livestock identification programs.

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