An Internet-based traceability system for small and medium-sized farm businesses

Friday, April 4, 2014

Using iPhones and an off-site server, this Norfolk County meat processor can trace an individual cut of meat back to the animal and farm it came from and also to its genetics. 'It creates a huge opportunity for making the best beef in the world,' says the operator

by DON STONEMAN
 

Cory Van Groningen is well-connected, in more ways than one. The farmer and operator of VG Meats in Simcoe, Norfolk County, depends heavily upon the Internet, at least in part because Simcoe is far away from major centres.

As well, Van Groningen spans the gap between small meat packers in Ontario and the province's beef producers association. He is the president of Ontario Independent Meat Processors, the southern director on the board of Beef Farmers of Ontario and is also a director of Beef Improvement Ontario (BIO). The VG packing plant his family founded is a pilot for BioLinks, a beef traceability scheme that was to be launched officially in March.

Many traceability systems have an intranet – information gathered from computers throughout a plant and centralized on a computer in-house. That doesn't work for VG.

"First, we don't have the space for an in-house computer system," Van Groningen says. "Second, we don't have the people here to do the service" for a system like that in Simcoe. If an intranet system failed, "we would essentially be shut down."

Instead, information gathered from the traceability program is uploaded and stored on a server offsite. "It's important that we rely on people in major centres to keep things up to date," Van Groningen says.

VG Meats' Internet connection is a line-of-sight wireless connection to a provider's tower. (The service is not available at Cory's father's farm two concessions away.) "It's not necessarily smoking hot Internet we need. We need reliable 24-7 service," he says.

VG's Internet is mostly reliable, except for when there is ice on the antenna in the winter. "We talked to Bell a few years ago," Van Groningen relates. "We are a few hundred metres from their fibre optic line, but they wouldn't bring it in to us."

That reliable Internet system is essential to making a new program called BioLinks work.

BioLinks is an Internet-based system for small and medium-sized processing plants. Using a barcode system, a cut of meat can be traced from the consumer back to the animal and farm it came from, to the veterinary treatment plan, and also to its genetics. Using a QR (quick response) code on the label, a consumer can get as much information on the meat in the package as the packer and producer want them to see, and the consumer has an opportunity to provide feedback about that particular cut of beef.

There is an individual barcode for each cut of meat. Van Groningen says that, depending upon how a carcass is cut, there could be as few as 70 and as many as 350 individual barcode outputs per carcass.

BIO acquired and modified the software that is the basis for BioLinks from the Alberta agriculture ministry. "The intention is to make it reasonably priced," Van Groningen says. The system runs on iPads and iPhones, which he describes as "low-capital technology."

The scanners in the plant are iPhones, easily replaced if they break down or are dropped. "You can have two or three extra ones sitting in a desk drawer," Van Groningen says. The phone "synchs" to an online database every six scans; a minimal amount of data is lost if the scanner-phone is lost or damaged. A barcode scanner integrates with the iPhone.

One purpose of the iPhone is to take an image of a ribeye on a hanging carcass. A graphic analysis software program determines the size of the ribeye, the amount of marbling and the amount of back fat, using a $2 coin in the same image as a sizing reference. Ultimately, output from this program can be integrated into the payment system. "We can pay producers based on actual lean meat yield, not estimated lean meat yield," Van Groningen says.

The amount of information collected has the potential to be staggering. "We are identifying things we didn't have data on before," Van Groningen says. There are opportunities to research starch versus sugar in rations, for example. "It creates a huge opportunity for making the best beef in the world. That's where we are going."

Using a smartphone on the farm with BioTrack, the livestock management system, allows a farmer to add information to the database on the spot, rather than dealing with "notes in tractor cabs and truck dashboards" or the pockets of coveralls.

"The washing machine is the biggest risk for data integrity," Van Groningen says, only half joking. Moreover, the information put into BioTrack is immediately useful for decision-making.

Genetic information can still be submitted to BIO on paper, but it's more valuable to the producer in an electronic form, says general manager Mike McMorris. The paper file costs more to deliver to the producer; there is less value in the information and therefore a reduced payback for the effort of collecting it. BioTrack information can be uploaded using the web browser on the phone. Cow-calf operations that don't have access to high speed Internet are at a disadvantage, McMorris says.

BIO isn't just beef, and it isn't just in Ontario. It also operates traceability for systems linked to food safety for meat sheep, milking sheep and meat and milking goats, and for FeatherCentral, a traceability system for poultry. It recently opened an office in Alberta.

While sending information to the database is a form of "cloud computing," McMorris doesn't like the term, arguing that it implies no one knows where the data is kept. He says one of BIO's databases is at a data storage company in Mississauga. The other is in Alberta. He is investigating possible savings if the data were to be stored with a single company. BF