I know that I’ve written about this issue before and have to admit that I made a mistake- kinda’! I had said that the Canadian Agency, the CFIA, would dismantle the new tracking system and age verification programs. I was wrong. The USDA has abandoned their program - - first! At least they were open to listening to the people in the know- the Producers- who didn’t want the tracking system that was in place and had it shut down. Don’t get me wrong. I do believe that we need a way to back trace ownership on cattle in case a transferable disease should ever break out. The level of tracking that the CFIA has put forth is totally ludicrous! If a disease should ever break out- the border would close again. How long did it take the last time to track the source of disease down- not that long and the border still stayed closed and hasn’t got back to the free trade we had prior to it closing. If you want to know how I feel, the Producers were making money, money that the “higherarchy” felt should be in the hands of the conglomerates and not in the hands of the lowly Producer so this is one way to change the course and break the will of the Producer which they almost succeeded in doing! The CFIA has come out with the Age Verification Program- for what?? Nobody accepts it! The Packers don’t. The U.S. doesn’t! We still can’t get our beef into Japan- so they don’t believe in Age Verification! Why do we have a program in place that does not make sense and costs millions of dollars every year- to the Producer?? I think it’s because the CFIA does not know the front end to the back end of a cow. These people are the ones that put policy in place but they don’t know the business of raising cattle. At present, there is so much fighting and miscommunication within the different agencies of the CFIA that the policies are not and will not work. In closing, when Government only listens to the bureaucrats that have no idea about raising cattle, only what looks good on paper, along with the policy setting CFIA, that has no idea what direction they should go and are fumbling around in the dark for a easy fix, put with the lack of competition on the kill end- - this Industry is still in for some tedious times.