More paperwork on the way for Canada’s livestock producers

by SUSAN MANN

The federal government plans to make animal identification and the recordkeeping of livestock movements mandatory for several species, including ones where farmers currently need only to identify their animals.

The species are: cattle, bison, sheep, goats, pigs and cervids (farmed deer and elk). Under the proposal, identification, traceability and movement recordkeeping throughout the animals’ lives will become mandatory under federal Health of Animals Act regulations.

Proposed amendments are slated to be published on Canada Gazette, Part 1, by the end of the year. The new regulations will likely be in place in 2017.

Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada spokesperson Patrick Girard says by email there are already mandatory identification requirements under the Act’s regulations for cattle, sheep and bison. For pigs and cervids, identification along with requirements to report animal movements throughout the animals’ lives are currently mandatory under the regulation.

Joshua Belinko, executive director for Trace Canada (also known by its corporate name as Canadian Agri-Traceability Services), says what the government is “looking at under the new system is a much broader framework for movement reporting that would be able to trace an animal throughout its life.”

There will likely be some exemptions, such as farm-to-farm movements if they’re not considered to be high risk, he notes. “The expectation is there will be some combination of individual animal movement and group animal movement” recordkeeping needed for livestock going through certain locations, such as feedlots, auction facilities or fairgrounds.

Trace Canada was established in 2013 to set up and operate the national livestock traceability data service. The federal government provided funding of $7.5 million to the non-profit corporation in 2014 for it to build and maintain the data service. Once the database is up and running, Trace Canada’s operating costs will be shared equally by the industry and government.

An October 2014 federal government press release says as part of Trace Canada’s responsibility for the database, the organization will “collect, maintain and manage information in accordance with national standards, federal and provincial regulations and the specific needs and requirements of industry.”

Belinko says Trace Canada will not be replacing administrators Pig Trace Canada and the Canadian Cattle Identification Agency. Those administrators will continue to exist and interact with farmers to, for example, sell ear tag identification.  

“We’re not looking to replace the role of the administrator,” Belinko says. “We’re just looking to offer a shared service for information technology infrastructure.”

Belinko estimates Trace Canada will be finished the first phase of the traceability database development for all sectors in nine to 12 months.

He says the database is built and two data centres are in operation. What they’re doing now is fine-tuning how users can interact with the system, such as reporting through the Internet via computer or cell phone or calling the information in to the administrator.

“The producer would still go to their administrator’s website to enter their information into the system,” he notes.

Phase two will be getting the database up and running, which will occur toward the end of this year, Belinko says.

Girard says Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada has approved funding of more than $30 million for livestock traceability implementation programs since 2003. The goat sector was the most recent recipient. On Feb. 17, Federal Agriculture and Agri-Food Minister Lawrence MacAulay announced funding of up to $255,487 to help the sector prepare for the new mandatory national identification and traceability requirements.

The government has also introduced:

• A national traceability secretariat.
• Communication tools industries can use to communicate traceability to their members.
• A national traceability information portal. BF