Federal Minister of Agriculture statements affirms new strategy required to secure livestock traceability.

Canada urgently requires resolution of long outstanding deficiencies in our livestock animal identification and traceability system to ensure:

• rapid and complete investigation of animal health incidents like the current bovine TB outbreak in Saskatchewan
• management of the inevitable arrival in Canada of H5N1 (bird) flu transmission in Cattle
• sustainment, and expansion, of Canadian access to export markets

But we face a dilemma. The decades in duration, and repeatedly delayed, plan to resolve these deficiencies was expansion of existing federal regulation.

However:

The Liberal platform now promotes regulation reduction, not regulation expansion, as reflected in this X post from Kody Blois, federal Minister of Agriculture and Liberal candidate for Kings-Hants, NS:

At a crucial time for Canadian farmers, I’m doing everything in my power to ensure a level, competitive playing field.

With the support of the CFIA, we’re working to remove unnecessary red tape, speed up product approvals, and reduce costs for producers, all while maintaining… pic.twitter.com/XQGtdlxjJo

— Kody Blois (@KodyBloisNS) March 19, 2025

This spring, Flokk’s founding investor, retired MP and Chair of the FCC Dale Johnston, and Flokk’s founder, Mark Olson, had the privilege to meet with Conservative Agriculture critic John Barlow. John was enthusiastic about the value proposition of Flokk but John, and the Conservative party also do not look to expanded regulation as a solution to securing livestock animal traceability.

The decades in progress plan to secure universal and reliable Canadian livestock traceability through expanded regulation is no longer viable:

• Both potential governing federal parties have unequivocally rejected expansion of regulation.
• Every consideration that went into drafting the proposed regulation amendments; politics, technology, requirements, and stakeholders, are now obsolete.

In February, Flokk identified an opportunity to:

• resolve the the current traceability deficiencies
• remove regulation entirely
• reduce costs for ranchers
• improve standards for human health, animal health, and the environment

We propose Canada entirely abandon the current regulatory approach to livestock animal traceability and pursue an industry led, technology enabled, collaborative standards based strategy, similar to what the US is pursuing.

We invite you to read our discussion paper “Time to pull this calf ourselves: Canada’s livestock industry must find our own path to traceability”.