• Resolution of deficiencies understood since 2016 in Canadian livestock animal traceability have once again been delayed.
• The deliverables, technology, and stakeholders of this initiative are obsolete.
• Three substantive corrective actions are required.

On 2026-01-08 a petition was launched at change.org soliciting signatures to “Stop the new regulations for CFIA traceability”. As of 2026-01-16 the petition had 14,000 signatures.

On 2026-01-13, hundreds of Alberta ranchers gathered in Innisfail. AB and called for the federal government to halt its plans to change the animal traceability system.

In response Alberta Minister of Agriculture RJ Sigurdson issued a statement “asking the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) to take the necessary time to ensure the proposed changes are understood and allow concerns to be heard.” and the Alberta Beef Producers (ABP) issued a statement “recommending that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) halt the finalization of the upcoming federal traceability regulation changes”.

In response, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency issued a statement that “The CFIA will pause any publication of the regulations until the proposed changes are more widely understood and concerns are heard and taken into consideration.”

Flokk Systems response:

• Delay and consultation will achieve nothing because positions of the change.org signatories and CFIA are irreconcilable.
• Delay has been the singular, ineffective, and negligent strategy of the CFIA on this file for more than a decade.
• The majority of ranchers, from direct experience surviving the Canadian BSE crisis, appreciate the necessity to resolve deficiencies in Canadian livestock animal traceability and it is negligent to continue to intentionally expose the majority of Canadian ranching families to this risk.
• The CFIA and CCIA’s implementation strategy has, and will, fail.
• Decades of delay has led to all of stakeholders, outcomes, technology, and strategy becoming obsolete and no longer fit for purpose.

Four Alberta ranching families launched Flokk Systems in 2020 because we saw opportunity in closing the gap between the requirement for livestock animal movement reporting (“imminent” in summer 2020, yet still “imminent” in January 2026) with the constrained technology and communication infrastructure and support available to ranching families.

To ensure Flokk was prepared for capitalization and success, Flokk:

• designed, developed, and proved a solution that, with unprecedented affordability and ease of use, secures rancher compliance with the proposed livestock animal movement reporting,
• actively engaged every stakeholder in Canadian livestock animal traceability; Minister Sigurdson, the Canadian Cattle Identification Agency, CFIA, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, and ABP,
• engaged with thousands of ranchers at conventions, animal exhibitions, and trade shows across western Canada.

Flokk is uniquely positioned to understand this challenge and advance independent, entrepreneurial and actionable solutions.

Flokk’s synopsis:

1. The sentiment expressed by Ms. Fairbrother’s change.org petition is legitimate. Canadian ranchers are being mandated, under threat of financial penalty, to take on cost and effort without clear justification, without compensation, without support, and with access to only expensive, obsolete, often unusable, technical solutions. The strategy of the CFIA and CCIA is obsolete, heavy handed, unresponsive, un-resourced and punitive and was always, and remains, doomed to fail.
2. The outcome Ms. Fairbrother’s change.org petition requests, “stop the implementation of these new CFIA traceability regulations” cannot be realized. Industry consensus was established following the BSE crises, and has been sustained, that resolving known deficiencies in Canadian livestock animal traceability is necessary to ensure domestic food safety and sustain and expand export markets.
3. No actor is prepared to own a decision to sustain the unresolved known deficiencies in Canadian livestock animal traceability.
4. Peer pressure is the only incentive that can secure universal rancher participation in animal movement reporting. Effective support to ranchers digitizing traceability and productivity of their herds would secure voluntary participation from the majority. Peer pressure would then bring on the majority of ranchers now objecting to participation.
5. Continuing the current strategy to implement the traceability regulation amendment; threatening ranchers with fines to force them to adopt obsolete single outcome tools not providing a return, will only result in expanding and entrenching the resistant minority.
6. No solution is possible while accountability to realize livestock traceability remains diffused across 36 independent, uncoordinated, and un-resourced authorities and stakeholders.

Three actions are required:

1. Establish a single entity holding the influence, resources, and accountability to secure and sustain the comprehensive data reporting required of Canadian ranchers.
2. Set and execute a national livestock herd digitization strategy.
3. Mobilize and resource the Canadian AgTech innovation ecosystem to deliver globally competitive, and globally marketable, livestock herd digitization solutions.

Necessary outcome 1: Establish a single entity holding influence, resources, and accountability to secure and sustain the comprehensive data reporting required of Canadian ranchers.

In his statement Minister Sigurdson wrote:

" I have been in direct contact with the federal Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food, Heath MacDonald, to share Alberta’s concerns and to reinforce the importance of collaboration with provinces and industry before moving forward with any amendments."

Minister Sigurdson’s initiative is appreciated. But Minister of Health Canada Marjorie Michel is accountable for this file, not AAFC Minister MacDonald. The CFIA reports to Health Canada, not AAFC.

This is not ignorance of the part of Minister Sigurdson; Minister MacDonald has accepted accountability for traceability and AAFC is engaged with the traceability file. Yet Minister’s MacDonald capacity to influence adoption of the regulation is limited because the file is not theirs.

In Flokk’s paper “There is compelling opportunity in digitizing Canadian cow/calf ranching.”, we wrote:

" Canadian ranchers face classic Canadian impediments to productivity; uncoordinated requirements and processes administered by multiple institutions, designed first for institutional convenience without regard to collective impact to the entrepreneur.

The outcome? These institutions, initiatives, and expenditures will all, understandably, continue to be ignored by most cow/calf ranching families because from their perspective it is un-engaging and un-actionable chaos."

Canadian livestock animal traceability:

• is a Federal responsibility because it involves interprovincial trade, with the file held by Federal Minister of Health Marjorie Michel,
• entails Federal regulation created and sustained by the CFIA, an independent federal agency led by president Paul MacKinnon,
• is administered by a “responsible administrator”, the CCIA, appointed by the CFIA, (The CCIA as responsible administrator is analogous to the Canada Revenue Agency.)
• is of concern to Federal AAFC minister Heath MacDonald, with AAFC actively engaged in implementation,
• is being independently addressed by each provincial Department of Agriculture in managing impact, and providing support, to ranchers in their province,
• requires ranchers acquire a premises identity (PID) an (ineffective and obsolete) identifier for location and actor administered independently by each province,
• is independently addressed by each provincial producer association, as in the Alberta Beef Producers example,
• is on the agenda of the national industry association, the Canadian Cattle Association,
• and provides the chain of custody for the Certified Sustainable Beef Framework of the Canadian Roundtable for Sustainable Beef.

The result is more than thirty six entities, many holding authority but taking no accountability, many with accountability but having no authority or resources, and many offering neither, all claiming to be legitimate stakeholder.

From the ranchers perspective livestock traceability entails their producer association advocating for something different from the national industry association while a Minister of Agriculture argues, in the same statement, the urgent need for traceability and the need to delay traceability while PID’s are administered in isolation from every other process while Federal minister for AAFC MacDonald holds accountability but no authority while Federal Minister of Health Michel holds authority but refuses any accountability, deferring to the CFIA, who defers to the CCIA, who holds neither resources nor incentive to constructively engage ranchers to realize traceability.

Under the circumstances Ms Fairbrother is to be commended for her restraint.

The primary organization engaging ranchers is the CCIA. However the CCIA:

• Has no incentive to be responsive, provide quality service, or innovate because it can impose financial penalties to secure compliance.
• Has obscure and unaccountable governance.
• Refuses to engage with innovators seeking to provide affordable and effective traceability solutions.

The outcome was predictable; with no single individual accountable and no resources asssigned there has not been, and never will be, progress realizing livestock animal traceability.

Action item 1: Lock Marjorie Michel, Heath Macdonald, the provincial Ministers of Agriculture, Andrea Brocklebank, Kevin Boon, Brad Dubeau, Christina Patterson - Betker, Carson Callum, Richard Horne and Steve Harrison in a hotel until they identify a single entity accountable for, and holding resources necessary to, comprehensively set, realize and sustain mandatory data reporting requirements for Canadian ranchers.

This accountability must be comprehensive, i.e. not just addressing traceability. Canada’s ranchers, and companies seeking to support them, need a single authoritative entity to define and realize all mandatory data reporting requirements of Canadian ranchers.

Flokk’s recommendation is collaborative standards; ranchers must take ownership of the industry’s practices just as any profession does. Time to pull this calf ourselves: Canada’s livestock industry must find our own path to traceability

Necessary outcome 2: Execute a national livestock herd digitization strategy.

Recent reports have identified comprehensive deficiencies in innovation policy and outcomes, and lagging digitization, in Canadian ranching and rural communities:

• The Simpson Centre: “From Fragmented Program to a Digital Framework: Rethinking Canada’s Agriculture Policy”
• Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute: “The future is digital: Digital agriculture and Canadian agriculture policy”
• FCC / FAC: “Boosting Canada’s agricultural productivity through investment and innovation”
• RBC Thought Leadership: “The Next Generation of Growth: Cultivating a new crop of agriculture talent and innovators”
• RBC Thought Leadership: “Food first: How agriculture can lead a new era for Canadian exports”
• Bioenterprise Canada: “A National Call to Action Elevating Canada to an agri-food innovation superpower”
• Alberta Ministry of Jobs, Economy, Trade and Immigration: “Seeding Rural Innovation: Nurturing the Tech Frontier in Alberta”
• Flokk Systems Inc.: “The compelling opportunity digitizing Canadian cow/calf ranching”
• Flokk Systems Inc.: “Segregating public and private Canadian AgTech innovation is ineffective waste that must end”

Digitized Canadian ranches could trivially report current, reliable and immutable livestock animal movement while disclosing personal information only as necessary.

But addressed in isolation, without affordable and universal connectivity, limited and obsolete digital solutions, no affordable or ready access to technical support, and a responsible regulator (CCIA) sustaining obsolete processes and technology, animal movement reporting becomes a significant burden providing no return

With herd digitization, traceability comes free with returns realized from digitizing sustainability and productivity. Traceability without herd digitization is, as Ms Fairbrother identifies, a pain in the ass.

Action item 2: Review, consolidate, and act, on identified deficiencies in Canadian AgTech innovation and mobilize a national initiative to realize digitization of Canadian ranching.

Necessary outcome 3: Mobilize and resource the Canadian AgTech innovation ecosystem to deliver globally competitive, and globally marketable, livestock herd digitization and traceability solutions.

On May 1, 2000 Selective Availability was permanently disabled for the GPS satellite constellation. The result was innovators applying geolocation to deliver precision planting, spraying, and harvesting to Canadian farmers.

Had GPS been available a few months before launch of the Canadian Livestock Tracking System (CLTS) in January 2000, Canadian livestock animal traceability would have taken a very different approach.

That the CCIA continues to deny to Canadian ranchers the cost and convenience advantages of GPS a quarter century later is damning indictment of CCIA complacency.

With GPS unavailable during design of the CLTS, the CCIA created the “Premises Identity” (PID), a unique identification number for a specific location. However PID’s are no longer required to track animal movement; latitude, longitude, and time can be accurately and affordably acquired via GPS without administrative overhead or need to disclose personally identifying information.

PID’s are associated with CCIA RFID tag numbers at time of purchase. However this practice is no longer required; associating CCIA tag numbers with the customer record of a tag retailer or a traceability solution provider would suffice, is achievable at little if any cost, and minimizes disclosure of personally identifying information. Animal ownership is asserted for livestock sale and transport manifests; this should be sufficient for traceability purposes.

Rancher identification may not even be necessary. With accurate and immutable location of the source or destination an animal movement available from GPS, should the need arise to support an investigation land title polygons could be used to identify owner of the animals involved in a movement source and/or destination. If the property owner is not the animal owner, the property owner would identify the rancher.

The necessity for the CCIA to manage issuance of CCIA RFID tag numbers could be eliminated by migrating to Universally Unique IDentifiers.

I have personally observed undocumented and unsolvable errors during demonstration of the CLTS by a CCIA staff member.

If after a quarter century CCIA staff cannot reliably get the CLTS to work, how can the CFIA and CCIA justify mandating Canada’s ranchers use the CLTS?

AI enabled reviews of the integrity of an animals movement history, mandatory at slaughter, optional under other circumstances, would assure food safety far more effectively that current manual practice.

Canada’s AgTech innovators are ready to build and offer solutions that:

• realize far more current, complete and accurate animal location tracking,
• provide far greater assurance of food safety,
• at far less cost,
• requiring little if any administrative overhead,
• while assuring rancher privacy

than the CLTS does. But these outcomes cannot be realized while the CFIA and CLTS sustain single outcome processes and technologies solely serving entrenched institutions and personnel.

Action item 3: Mobilize Canadian AgTech innovators to collaborate with a single entity holding accountability for reporting practices required of Canadian ranchers to deliver innovative solutions providing significant and sustained competitive advantage for the Canadian beef industry.

Rural Canada is, once again, neglected.

Evan Solomon, Canada’s Minister of AI and Digital Innovation, is directing expenditure of more than half a billion dollars on a Pan-Canadian Artificial Intelligence Strategy that “bridges Canada’s world-class talent and research capacity with programs to enable commercialization and adoption to help ensure that Canadian ideas and knowledge are mobilized and commercialized here at home.”

Canada’s ranchers are being mandated, under threat of financial penalty, to use a CLTS already obsolete when commissioned a quarter century ago. Rural Canadian founders seeking to provide effective and affordable solutions to Canada’s ranchers are denied any resources.

Ms. Fairbrother’s petition did not become necessary because of complacency and unresponsiveness on the part of the CFIA and CCIA. The current situation is the inevitable outcome of rural Canadian issues and residents being neglected and denied resources.

An innovative, and ambitious, response is required.