What happened to age verification with this falls calf run in Saskatchewan

[15444]

I agree 100% ProFarmer. I won't lie. I have cut out tags that aren't age verified and replaced them with ones that are. I don't cross reference tags. If I have extra age-verified tags left over, I use them in whatever is going to market. When I still had pre-1999 cows, I aged them as 2000 cows and sent them south. I wasn't about to take a 20-30 cent price hit on the account of the government not doing their due diligence in preventing the BSE crisis. I know piles of other producers that do as well. A very small majority do follow the rules, and then whine about how much regulations are on the industry and how the world is unfair to them. I own the animal. In many cases, I bought the tags that are in that animal. I can do whatever I like with 'my' tags.

Like one old fellow told me once, "Rules are for the stupid and ignorant who don't have an opinion".

I only tag when I ship to market, so the only animals that have had button tags in them are ones that I bought (breeding bulls, open heifers). So far the longest lasting button has lasted 2 years, and it is so badly deteriorated that if I blew on it too hard, it would fall out too. These are Allflex tags and isn't a new problem to them.

[grassfarmer]

Oh well - there goes any shred of credibility that the Canadian beef age verification system may have claimed. I hope you are real proud of yourselves guys because there is nothing that will bring a rigid, strictly enforced audit/financial penalty system as quickly as this type of blatant cheating the system.
I don't see what the problem is with age verifying your animals date of birth. Most farms already keep calving records that would make it easy.

[SADIE]

Lets go back to the topic of this thread.

In Saskatchewan we do not get paid for our RFID eartags when we age verify these animals via the tag numbers. Now when we sell them at an auction market like I do and most others there is no premium---The price is paid on the quality of the animals and not one extra cent paid whether they are age verified or not.

Why should one do the extra work and put data into a data bank to get a piece of paper that has no value.

Nothing but a "GONG SHOW".

[15444]

GF,

You can't honestly be as blind as you are portraying yourself to be to think that a few meager individuals on a agricultural website have destroyed a government system of livestock identification, can you?

In the real world, many, many producers have been doing these same practices, and it will be the continued actions of these people that (I hope) will bring down the system.

A independent person won't go quietly into the night and roll over when something is shoved down their throats.

I haven't met a farmer/rancher/producer in the last 10 years that has told me that they specifically asked their regional/provincial/national representatives for a national ID system. Yet it magically appeared and has a whole conglomeration of rules and stipulations that have been added to it over the years and into the future. Did I miss those votes?

Some people like being controlled by their governments, it gives them a kind of security blanket. I'm not one of them. Down with the system, and if it results in closed borders again, so be it. I wasn't for opening them back up anyways.

[kato]

What? You've got to be kidding.

Age verification and ID are two different things. Whether we asked for it or not, we've got ID. If you don't want to follow the rules, then work to have them changed. In the meantime, screwing things up for everyone else is not the way to go.

I don't mind slapping a tag in for tracing. It would be nice if they would stay there, but that's another topic.

The fact is that we're not getting paid for the age verification. We verify ours, but that's mainly so we have age verified cows in the future. Cows are the one animal where it pays. Unless someone specifically asked for the ages on our calves, we keep the papers at home.

[smcgrath76]

I definitely think tagging for
traceability is important and I have no
issues with the original intent of the
program.
I have always thought age verification
should be optional and if there was a
competitive advantage to doing it, then
it would be done. I definitely do not
support the legislated approach in this
regard.
I can say that while we use Calving
Start Date, we try our best to
accurately and honestly age verify our
calves (not our tags). I promote the
heck out of this fact, and I am
convinced that pre-legislation it was
one of our competitive advantages for
our cattle.
I do agree that buyers pay for quality.
The real challenge is that people see
quality objectively and are often
emotionally attached to their own
cattle.
I think age verification should be
regulated by the marketplace.

[grassfarmer]

SADIE, Who says you need a visible monetary sum to earn a premium? discounting the ones that don't comply has the same effect and it's a concept producers are familiar with through every day cattle selling so it shouldn't be difficult to understand.

15444,
As Kato stated the national ID and age verification process are two different things.
The age verification benefit was brought on post BSE by customers seeking to know the age of our cattle - that remains the case. Future exports to the EU and some Asian countries require this information. They also require it to be honest information. If you or anyone else is caught cheating the system you risk financial penalty but more importantly you are cheating customers who may very well react by stopping buying Canadian beef in future.
I'm more aware of the opportunities to cheat the system than most having seen it once around already in Europe. I know of a cattle dealer there who was charged with forging a dead person's signature on a document to earn premiums on cattle that he was not entitled to. The opportunity exists here to go out and buy cattle that are not age verified, bring them home and retag and age verify them. There is likely potential for a good profit in that but it is criminal activity and you are in fact stealing from the person who sold the un-age verified calves at a discount. If you want to make a stand against the system fair enough - don't age verify your calves but don't cheat the system by taking advantage of fellow producers who are more honest than yourself. Where do you draw the line? are you happy with falsely age verifying cattle or will you move onto forging dead people's signatures?

[15444]

You might consider ID and AV separate, but I don't. Can't have one without the other.

I would really prefer not to ID at all. Make it optional like in the US. In which case the ID itself, let alone AV might actually fetch a premium.

It's mandatory in this country and look how many in the industry are slaves to the cause. Paying outrageous prices for everything from readers to tags, when the system is not even working (i.e. reading results for community pastures in Cattlemen's). Just looking in my catalogue for US RFID tags, the price for a YTEX RFID tag is $2.50. In this country I have heard quotes as much as double that price. In our area, the price is between $3.20 and $3.80 a tag. In the US, you can buy a RFID/Dangle combo for what we pay.

Absolutely ridiculous. Nope, I don't think twice about working this system. If I can make a buck from an idiotic program, I'll do it. Bureaucratic programs shoved down my throat can burn with the rest.

[kato]

So do something to change the rules. It can be done.

[topper]

Found this article on meatingplace and thought it was relevant to this discussion: A Manitoba, Canada, veterinarian has pleaded guilty to two counts of contravening the Health of Animals Act after having admitted to falsely claiming that he inspected them before deeming them suitable for export to the United States, the Toronto Sun reported.

Early Van Assen received a $10,000 fine for taking the owner’s word regarding the age of his cattle instead of performing a proper inspection, the newspaper reported. USDA requires Canadian veterinarians to certify that cattle to be exported to the Unites Sates were born after March 1999, a provision put in place following BSE issues in the early 1990s.

Van Assen claimed he had inspected 42 cows, deemed them suitable for export and filed certification documents. He admitted later in a subsequent interview he did not inspect the cattle and rather took the owner’s word, according to the Sun.