Tagging charges 'totally bureaucratic and totally unfair'

Monday, December 6, 2010

So says one livestock executive about the penalties levied on producers who inadvertently market untagged cattle. Moreover, he says, the technology isn't there yet to match the regulations

by DON STONEMAN

The equipment and technology that regulations rely upon for mandatory tagging of cattle, sheep and bison in Canada is not "a permanent and infallible system," according to a recent decision of the Canada Agricultural Review Tribunal, which reviews appeals to administrative monetary penalties laid by inspectors from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA).

Nevertheless, the tribunal chair, Donald Buckingham, ruled in late September that Saskatchewan farmer Cecil Coward failed to take all possible steps to ensure that cows were tagged when he loaded them onto a truck to move them from his Hodgeville farm to a community pasture 40 miles away in May, 2009. The rancher said he had put ear tags in all of the cows 19 days before, but didn't check each animal as it went onto his truck. His wife testified she was most concerned with making sure that mothers were paired with their calves. CFIA inspectors found nine cows that did not bear CFIA- approved Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags at the community pasture. There was no evidence that Cecil Coward looked for lost tags or buttons in his loading corral or in his truck. Buckingham found it "likely" that at least one tag fell out of a cow's ear in the 19-day interval between tagging and loading.

Coward's argument that RFID-CCIA tags have retention problems – and producers carry all of the liability if a tag falls out – fell on deaf ears. "Fair or not, this . . . is the regulatory burden that Parliament and the Governor-in-Council have placed" on the rancher, Buckingham wrote in his ruling. "The Act creates a liability regime that permits few tolerances as it allows no defence of due diligence or mistake of fact."

Buckingham fined the rancher $500 under the Administrative Penalty System that the CFIA uses to encourage compliance with food safety regulations. He made a similar ruling the same month against another Saskatchewan rancher, veterinarian Ken Habermehl, who trailered some cattle which were missing tags to another community pasture in May of 2009.

Animal identification provisions of Part XV of the Health of Animals Regulations enable CFIA to trace the origin and movements of individual farm animals destined for human food, says the Coward ruling. "Part XV of the Health of Animals Regulations envisages a closed system for identifying production animals, such that their movements from birth to death can be monitored by a unique identification tag which, for designated animals, is placed in one of their ears, ideally at birth. When the tagged animal dies, either on the farm, in transit or when slaughtered, the tag is recorded and that animal is withdrawn from the animal identification registry."

But this is far from the reality of the situation as far as cattle owners and sellers are concerned.

Paul Stiles, assistant general manager of the Ontario Cattlemen's Association, says a number of producers in this province have been caught when cattle left their farms untagged. "There are retention problems and everybody knows that," Stiles says. The two-part RFID tags are not supposed to be reusable. "They don't stay in and it's almost impossible to see the tag when it is in the ear." Bar code tags had more retention problems than RFID tags but were easier to see, says Stiles.

One of the advantages of the RFID tags is that they can be read with an electronic reader as well. But not all producers can afford the readers and studies show that readers miss 10 per cent or more of the tags.

The CFIA announced May 28 that bar code tags were delisted as of July 1. Many cattle were already in community pastures and had to be retagged. "We have a mess on our hands," says Stiles, who gets calls from producers. He says the Canadian Cattle Identification Agency is looking at the cause of failed retention.

Auction market operators also face fines if they allow untagged cattle to be sold on their premises. Many auction yards in Ontario are designated as registered tagging stations, says Jim Wideman, executive director of the Livestock Markets Association of Canada, based in Waterloo. Cattle can leave a producer's premises without an ear tag as long as their destination is a tagging station.

Wideman says several auctions in Ontario have been charged for letting untagged cattle through their systems. "It is totally bureaucratic and totally unfair," Wideman says.

According to the decision regarding Saskatchewan veterinarian and rancher Habermehl, witness Roy Rutledge, owner of a large auction market in Western Canada, testified that in his opinion tags fall out 10 to 30 per cent of the time in sorting alleys and holding pens and that the current animal identification process has unrealistic expectations.

Habermehl was fined $500 earlier in September. BF