Thursday, April 30, 2015

Hey, Ontario…I’m back!

I am embarking on another great adventure.  Being a Nuffield Scholar has a way of putting some crazy ideas in your head.  I have heard that people have gotten divorced after being named a scholar, others have completely changed their operation production model and/or sector of interest.  I, in contrast have decided to move back to Ontario from Calgary and take over the family farm along with my sister.  As of this past weekend I am once again living in the farm house where I grew up near Oakwood, Ontario.  It has been 12 years since I last lived here.

Blame it on Nuffield, blame it on a need for a change, blame it on a recent run of motivation speakers I have heard talk about following your dreams, or just blame it on the fact that primary production agriculture is the best job in the world.  There have been a number of factors that have lead to this decision.

There is no time better than now to be embarking on a career in agriculture.  Markets are strong, optimism is high and there are many people my age getting back into or taking a leading role in their own family operations.  Not to mention that the world is starting to take notice of Canadian agriculture like never before.  Initiatives like Farm Voices and #farm365 are inspiring and had me thinking over the past year about ways to get back to the farm.  I have been sitting behind a desk for almost nine years now and I was ready for a change.  Luckily, I have the support of a wonderful family, great friends and an understanding boss who is letting me keep my job and work remotely from Ontario.  The timing couldn’t have been better for me to seize this opportunity and embark on a this new adventure.  Am I scared?  Of course, but wise advice once told me to not let fear stand in my way.  


My Nuffield travels continue shortly when I head off to South America for a six week voyage through Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Chile.  Stay tuned as I explore agriculture on another continent and work toward finishing my Nuffield study and navigate these new waters.  In the words of Debbie Travis; Dream it. Do it. Live it!

Sunday, April 19, 2015

Traceability beyond the ear tag.

As I’ve been travelling this past year I have been astonished by the level of traceability in the  processing plants abroad.  I was welcomed into two plants, on two different continents, with open arms and fantastic hospitality with the only request being I leave my camera outside.   Geographically these two business couldn’t be further apart but their similarities caught me off guard, their traceability processes are fundamentally similar.    

I first came across this in Australia when I had the opportunity to tour what we would consider in North America a mid-sized packing plant (which processes 200 head per day).  In Australia they have a similar Animal Health traceability system called NLIS and they use a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tag exactly as we do.  The beauty of the system happens after the animal is killed and the processing begins, the traceability stays with the animal throughout it’s journey through the plant and is continued all the way to the grocer’s shelf.  The NLIS system tracks the animal until the tag is removed, then the plant’s own internal system takes over; the data from the kill floor, the bone room and the packaging room all talk to each other and maintain the traceability component.  The plant is required by the Government to maintain this data for international marketing requirements and food safety.  Carcasses are tagged on each quarter with information including kill date, carcass weight, detention information, grade and an internal tracking number which is linked to the NLIS tag number.  A portion of this data is also transferred to the box label and travels with the product on the packaging to the retail outlet.  

I came across a very similar traceability system while touring a plant in the United Kingdom.  This specific plant was in Northern Ireland,was part of a large corporation with locations across the UK and processed between 400 - 500 cattle per day.  The United Kingdom ear tag system is a mandatory system that uses a double visual tag system with a 15 digit tag number printed on them.  Sheep are required to use Electronic Identification (EID) tags but cattle are not, so these plants have to manually type in the number of each animal that crosses their floor.  This particular company of plants uses a specialized in-house software system to track the data on the animals after the tags are removed, the tag number is again correlated to a kill number which is assigned by the plant.  This new number stays with the product until it is purchased, it is attached to each quarter with the same information used in Australia, it appears printed on the box label and finally on the consumer packaging during the final stage of fabrication.  The tracking and printing of this  information is required by the Government and “born in” and “raised in” data is required to be printed on all labels until the product is sold.  Even grind is fully traceable back to the animal and therefore the farm of origin.

Both of these visits were excellent examples of how traceability can go beyond the live animal and provide authentic, meaningful information to consumers.  While government regulated this in both cases, I was told repeatedly that the domestic and international customer had been the main driver for the implementation of the system.  It feeds into the reoccurring theme I witnessed in every country I have visited so far; that consumers want to know where the food comes from and they want to be assured that what they are eating is safe.  It really is a basic right to have access to that information.  Even us as producers, working in the industry want to know that information, which is a significant reason why we consume our own product.  

It really hit home for me while I was travelling in France.  At a hotel I was staying at near Borges, I came across a notation in the menu for the hotel restaurant.  The menu in the room said “Information regarding the origin of our meat is on display in the restaurant.”   Down in the restaurant there was a sign that had each cut of beef on the menu along with the born, raised and killed information, clearly accessible and available to any inquiring customers.  This is now required by law in all restaurants in France.  In this instance each cut was born, raised and killed in France but the sheet could easily be updated when the supply changed based on the information provided by the processing plant on the product packaging.

Over and over again, I found myself wondering if we are putting ourselves at a disadvantage by not voluntarily tracking this data, some will argue that our international customers are not requiring it yet and that is valid.  Others still will wince at the extra cost, the inability to keep up to the speed of commerce or the further imposition of government regulations.  If we know our competitions are providing this information and the customer wants more and information information as each year goes by, is it not better to voluntary begin the process instead of waiting until our export markets get closed or the government forces it upon us after a food safety scandal? 


I have also learned over the past year that no animal traceability system is perfect, each country I have visited has very interesting and unique ideas on how it should look and what is required by the producers.  Each country has producers who loathe their system and want for what someone else has.  The best we can do is work with what we have and learn from others.