Mandatory animal traceability arrives in Ontario's dairy sector in 2017

Thursday, January 14, 2016

by SUSAN MANN

Dairy farmers will face some tight timelines for reporting their cows’ movements when mandatory animal traceability for the dairy sector becomes effective in fall 2017.

Animals arriving at farms, sold for export or ones that die on the farm must all be reported within seven days of arrival, sale or death. Animals born on a farm must be reported within 45 days or before they leave the farm.

Neil Petreny, general manager of CanWest DHI, said in an interview at the Dairy Farmers of Ontario annual meeting Wednesday that in addition to reporting the animal’s ear tag number some other information may be required, such as the licence plate number of the vehicle delivering animals when cows arrive, along with the farm premise ID number, the date and where the animals being sold for export are going.

CanWest DHI was established in 2004 and is a partnership of Western Canadian DHI and Ontario DHI. Its head office is in Guelph. It provides herd management products and services to about 4,000 herds across five provinces, from Ontario to British Columbia. In Ontario, there about 3,000 herds using DHI services. There are about 4,000 herds in total in Ontario.

Petreny said “typically the heifers (born on a farm) just say on the farm so there’s not a rush to register them. But the challenge will be with bull calves because they typically leave very quickly so they will have to be reported within seven days of when they leave. Somebody else will have to report that they arrived on their farm.”

CanWest DHI is exploring using the computer infrastructure it already has in place for its customers to automatically submit animal movement data directly from a customer’s farm. BF