Cattlemen oppose traceability costs

Saturday, February 27, 2010

by BETTER FARMING STAFF

Ontario’s new agriculture minister Carol Mitchell is sure that traceability is going to be good for the beef industry and extolled its virtues when she spoke to the Ontario Cattlemen’s Association at its annual meeting in Toronto on Wednesday. She may have a selling job ahead. 

A few hours earlier, delegates to the convention, which represents beef producers across the province, made it clear that the benefits of traceability are still up in the air as far as they are concerned. “We aren’t interested in regulations that make Ontario producers uncompetitive compared to producers in other provinces and other countries,” Kent County producer Mike Buis told voting delegates. They subsequently passed a resolution that reflected Buis’ concerns.

Beef producers in Canada are going to be dealing with mandatory traceability some time in 2011. “We as producers don’t know the details,” Buis said.

Nor did Mitchell provide any in her speech. The provincial government is committed to traceability. Mitchell said. OMAFRA recently hosted a traceability forum. She says it will help producers “capitalize on new market opportunities,” She pointed out that MacDonalds Canada, one of Canada’s largest fast food companies and a major user of beef “has put its full support behind” traceability in the food industry. McDonalds is not a new customer for Canadian beef.

Later, Mitchell’s chief of staff, David Spencer, said the province is promoting traceability as a voluntary measure, for now.

“Once people think about it, the value of it is self-evident,” Spencer says. “People know that if a problem is found there is a way to trace it back to the source in a way that would otherwise not be the case.” He described the traceability forum sponsored by the province in late January to talk about what traceability means to producers as “quite well received and quite well attended.” BF