It would seem some issues within the beef industry continue to just simmer with occasional flare-ups. That would be the case with traceability.
It caused a lot of consternation when the concept was first proposed, particularly as it was being imposed by the federal government by a certain deadline. If there is one common trait the cattle and beef industry has from top to bottom, it’s an acute sensitivity to new regulations. Howls of protest emanated from various sectors — most of them related to costs. The feds certainly stumbled on getting the industry to co-operate and tried to mitigate a bad situation by pouring millions of dollars to get the program going at different levels in the marketing chain. The problem for the industry was that there was not unified political consensus on how to handle the issue. One would hope the Straw Man Beef Industry Strategy would resolve that perennial problem. But I digress.
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What needs to be accepted is that traceability is a fact of life for the cattle and beef business, and the feds are not going to retreat. If resistance continues, you can expect regulations will rain down from above.
Some in the marketing side of beef have stated that traceability is of no value in the export market outside of it being traced to “Canada.” That would be similar to what our export competitors do in foreign markets. If that’s all offshore buyers want to know about traceability, then so be it.
But I expect that will not be the situation with domestic and U.S. buyers. Maybe not immediately, but it’s sure to come as consumers/buyers want more meat “attributes.” One can almost certainly expect a complete traceability requirement for future beef exports to the EU with the pending CETA agreement. In fact, it’s all but guaranteed to be demanded if crafty EU negotiators see it as a possible trade restriction. Remember they beat us on the hormone issue. This is just another skirmish for the EU to win.
The time is over to complain about traceability and give false hope to producers at meetings that somehow the feds are going to relent in their drive to impose this program. I expect marketers will use whatever aspect of traceability that they will need for competitive purposes and that’s as it should be. It’s better to have the program make that information available, than to lose markets because the info was not available.
