For some time, there has been a growing sense that the livestock traceability issue has been drifting along without any clear sense of direction or purpose.
A recent Canadian Cattlemen’s Association (CCA) committee meeting seemed to highlight the need for someone to be in control and make sense of all the various interests that have their own agendas. The meeting saw various reports, presentations, discussions and ruminating over who was or was not doing something or doing nothing about some aspect of traceability.
There were talks about creating a company to manage data aspects. There also seem to be studies into the cost/benefit of various aspects of the issue, new tag technology considerations, the impact of electronic manifests and on and on.
Consultants have been hired for various purposes by different players. Then, there remains the neverending mystery as to what the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) and Agriculture Canada really want to do, or not do, with traceability.
Who funds what and why remains a frustrating topic at virtually every meeting and this has been the case for many years.
At last count, there seemed to be more than 10 government departments and their agencies, producer organizations and their agencies, and other advisory groups involved with traceability. And that’s just the cattle sector — never mind what goes on with the sheep and hog sectors.
In Alberta, we have competing interests from Livestock Inspection Services (LIS), who manage the long-established provincial brand-inspection service. On the one hand, they are perceived as managers of an outdated inspection tradition, but on the other they are by far the most technology advanced cattle ID organization on the continent using mobile electronics, real-time reporting and even GPS location. They are also early proponents of the electronic manifest — a technology that is not just common sense, but its use will be inevitable across the country.
LIS is also an early advocate of switching ID and traceability to the ultrahigh frequency mode, a technology that will soon be embraced by the retailing industry and become commonplace in the marketplace. Yet, those advances seem to be thwarted by other organizations and government agencies (yes, that’s you, CFIA).
I should say there does seem to be some (formal or informal) general oversight, roundtable, advisory committees or other ad hoc groups that provide some input on the issue to whomever wants to listen.
But therein lies the rub — the entity that in the end pulls the strings and provides most of the funding for the traceability initiative — the CFIA — does not seem to be under any obligation to listen to anyone. It does give them the power, but their lack of common-sense leadership and bureaucratic inertia is the root cause of much of the problem. Needless to say, being safely hidden away in faraway Ottawa doesn’t help matters.
I expect producers are growing leery and weary of this disjointed exercise that seems to have lost its way. All they are sure of is that in the end they will have to pay much of the cost. It’s become so confusing that what is needed is a road map and guidebook as to the who, what, where and why of livestock traceability. Millions of dollars have been spent on this issue if one starts with the implementation of national cattle ID tags over 10 years ago.
What might be useful is for all the stakeholders, bureaucrats, and industry politicians to create the office of “national traceability dictator” so that we just might have someone in charge to sort out the confusion and politics and get traceability back on some sort of realistic direction.
For starters, we could all use some sort of chart that links all the stakeholders, their role and their responsibilities. That would be useful in finding out who is of use and who is irrelevant.
A better idea of where money has been spent or should be spent would sure help. But don’t hold your breath for common sense to break out soon — after all, if the history of the issue is any indication, such an idea would probably need another study.
Will Verboven is the editor of Alberta Farmer.