Source: Saskatchewan Agriculture and Food
Age verification is the way of the future for Canada’s beef industry, as both the country and Saskatchewan rebuild their export markets, according Saskatchewan Agriculture and Food (SAF) Livestock Development Specialist Bob Klemmer.
“Saskatchewan, like elsewhere in Canada, is very dependant on export markets," he says. "When BSE came along, we lost all of those export markets, and we are just starting to gain them back. Prior to BSE, Canada exported over 60 per cent of its annual beef production.”
Several of Canada’s main export markets, including the USA and Japan, have requirements around verifying the age of animals or the age of beef from animals for import.
“Dentition, of course, is available to identify cattle/beef under 30 months of age destined for the U.S.," he explains. "Japan, however, requires that imported beef be verified as being under 21 months of age, which requires other methods of verification, such as the Canadian Cattle Identification Agency’s (CCIA) voluntary and free-of-charge birth-date registration system and database.”
While Japan and the USA accept the CCIA’s birth-date registration system for age verification for export, Cam Daniels, the vice president of the Canadian Beef Export Federation (CBEF), says that, currently, there are not enough age-verified cattle to fill Japanese orders for beef under 21 months of age.
“We need more birth-date-based, age-verified beef to be available for export," Daniels says. "So I invite all beef producers to get their beef cattle and calf birth dates registered with the CCIA database. Indications are that age-verified calves are receiving a premium in some markets”.
One of the reasons why producers should register the age of their calves is that more young beef will then become available for export.
Producers will benefit from this, especially if they retain ownership through to slaughter, comments SAF’s Klemmer.
“The registration makes sense, especially to people who hang on to their calves because they will get direct benefit from it. But for producers in general, it also makes sense because you just don’t know what will happen next year in terms of your calf crop. You may decide to hang on to some of them, or you may decide to take an ownership position in a feedlot. In that case, you need to have those numbers in the database.”
Producers should know that feedlots with ties to beef packers trying to fill the Japanese export market will be looking for age-verified calves, and may have to bid more aggressively for these calves, he says.