Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development (AARD) has updated its premises identification online registration system to make it more intuitive and user-friendly.
The system allows ranchers to comply with safety regulations surrounding movement and traceability of animals in case they become diseased.
In the event an animal or animals become diseased, the system allows veterinarians and other government officials to isolate those animals and cull them from a herd with minimal disruption to a rancher's operation.
“We enhanced the application to be a little more user-friendly and improve some of the data that's being submitted. Users can (now) see where they are in the application and it does a lot of self-validation of that information as they're going through that application,” Allan Pelletier, director of AARD's traceability branch, told the Gazette.
Another change that was made was that ranchers will now be required to include their premise identification number on documents relating to purchasing medicine for animals from an authorized animal medicine retailer.
“Basically, it's a compliance activity to ensure that we get high compliance in the premise ID system. It's a way of tracking livestock and poultry to the geographic location so that in disease response, we can be a lot more effective in responding to that,” he said.
Some producers that AARD heard from told officials that the previous online registration system wasn't as intuitive as it could be, so AARD officials went ahead and made the changes.
Another change allows users to input their land location into the system and then map it so they can visually see the location to make sure the information is accurate. The changes to the system went live Oct. 2.
The government also developed a new video available on YouTube detailing industry and governmental efforts to maintain the current BSE testing regime. Veterinarians across the province test dead, downed, distressed and diseased cattle or other animals showing symptoms of central nervous system disease.
The provincial government is part of the federal BSE system, working in conjunction with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, to test 10,000 animals in Alberta per year.
The criteria are based on the guidelines developed by the World Organization For Animal Health.
“We take it quite seriously because the beef industry is very important in Alberta,” said Dr. Gerald Hauer, chief provincial veterinarian. “We're targeting animals that are most likely to have BSE in the country.”
Hauer said that in the years immediately following the crisis that gripped the cattle industry, officials were meeting that 10,000 tests per year goal. In recent years, the number of tests had dropped off.
The video explains to potential beef customers that the provincial government is now back on track and meeting that 10,000 per year test objective.
“We want to raise the awareness that BSE testing is still important and that we still need producers' help to get the (adequate) number of samples tested. We look at this very much as a partnership between the government, private veterinarians and individual producers. Any one group can't do it by themselves, but collectively, if we all work together, we can accomplish our goal,” he said.
The video was developed earlier this fall.
Hauer said the testing helps in the traceability of animals by having a system showing where a diseased animal lived during its first year of life – the time when a diseased animal develops the condition – and identifying all the animals that shared the diseased cow's feed during its first year. Once those animals have been identified, they can be taken out of the herd without destroying the entire herd and devastating a rancher's bottom line.
“It's demonstrating to the rest of the world that we have a system in place that not only do we find cases, but we can also effectively reduce our risk even further. The traceability system is very important in the response part of the BSE program,” he said.
"We enhanced the application to be a little more user-friendly and improve some of the data that's being submitted."Allan Pelletier, director
