Ontario association lauds traceability funding

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

by SUSAN MANN

The federal government is helping Canada’s livestock industry establish a national traceability organization and has contributed $765,000 to set up the system.

That’s a good start, says Ontario Cattlemen’s Association vice-president Bob Gordanier. But ongoing funding to run the livestock tracking system would be needed too. “It takes a lot of money to keep these programs going” and he doesn’t “believe that producers should be the only people that are financing it.”

On behalf of federal Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz, parliamentary secretary Pierre Lemieux announced on Friday at the Calgary Stampede the creation of Canadian Agri-Traceability Services.

Lemieux says in a press release that a national traceability system allows Canada to demonstrate “our solid farm practices in animal health, our zoning capabilities, our emergency management and our food safety systems.” The government’s “investment will help track information, ultimately protecting the bottom line of beef, dairy, bison, sheep and other producers.”

Gordanier says when countries closed their borders to Canadian cattle and beef because a cow in Canada was found to be infected with BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) in 2003, it cost the Canadian beef industry a lot of money. “We’re hoping that a system like this would maybe open the borders faster and find out the problem faster.”

Lemieux says Canadian Agri-Traceability Services will bring together the combined experience of the Canadian Cattle Identification Agency and Agri-Tracabilite Quebec (ATQ) to reduce costs and simplify data reporting. Once established, Canadian Agri-Traceability Services will provide traceability data services for the cattle identification agency, ATQ and other stakeholders.

Gordanier says the cattle industry has spent a lot of money at the cattle identification agency “and rightfully so but we need something that costs less and just basically simplifies data reporting by producers.”

The cattle identification agency and ATQ have set up a joint project steering committee to guide the creation of the new integrated data service.

Gordanier represents Ontario Cattlemen’s on the steering committee and is also on the board of the cattle identification agency. He says they’re at the very beginning of setting up Canadian Agri-Traceability Services and “there’s so much to iron out here.”

It isn’t known yet how long it will take to set up the Canadian traceability services organization, he says.

In its July 13 press release, the government says it’s providing grants of $500,000 to create the single data system and $265,000 to help the cattle identification agency and ATQ improve their data management capabilities. The money for the project comes from Growing Forward, Canada’s national agricultural policy framework. In particular it comes from the Industry Traceability Infrastructure Program, designed to support development of industry-led systems that collect and verify identification and movement data and that accelerate and increase industry’s tracking and tracing capacity. The program is part of the Canadian Integrated Food Safety Initiative.

Spokespeople for the cattle identification agency couldn’t be reached for comment. BF