US partnership provides template for renewal of Canadian livestock traceability

From the article in the 2025-03-13 issue of Drovers “Smart Partnership Strengthens Disease Traceability”:

U.S. CattleTrace and Where Food Comes From join forces to unify and support a voluntary traceability strategy and safeguard the beef supply chain in the event of an outbreak.

This innovative US private sector partnership offers an innovative solution to securing participation in livestock animal traceability that Canada should be exploring.

U.S. CattleTrace is “a voluntary, producer-driven, private-industry, confidential traceability system designed to provide rapid contact tracing”. It is the US equivalent of Canada’s Canadian Cattle Identification Agency.

Where Food Comes From is “an independent, third-party food verification company”. It is roughly equivalent to Canada’s TheoryMesh.

Also part of this partnership is IMI Global, a division of Where Food Comes From, who provide third-party verification that ranchers, growers, feeders and finishers comply with export or private brand requirements. It is similar, though broader in scope, to programs like Canada’s Verified Beef Plus.

This US partnership will secure universal US beef industry traceability participation through the positive incentive of additional producer revenue growth from:

1. product value add from practice certification, and
2. expanded market access

rather than the proposed punitive Canadian approach to ensure participation; financial penalty for non-compliance with expanded regulation.

This US partnership mirrors the approach Flokk Systems Inc. advances in our discussion paper “Time to pull this calf ourselves: Canada’s livestock industry must find our own path to traceability”.

Specifically this US partnership, and our discussion paper, both pursue, from the ranchers perspective, transparent integration of traceability and practice certification into a single administrative and incentive process. Implemented with refreshed technology that reduces producer cost and effort to participate, the result is a compelling value proposition that ranchers will readily adopt and sustain.

In Canada independent private, federal, and provincial bodies (CRSB, VBP, CFIA, CCIA, LIS, etc.) each independently define and assign uncoordinated reporting requirements (traceability, AMR management, practice certification, proof of ownership, transport manifests, sustainability, environmental impact, GHG mitigation, etc.), many of them still paper based. Unnecessarily redundant and burdensome data collection and transcription adds cost and constrains participation in all these programs, and could be easily and affordably consolidated.

Canada has long held, and still holds, advantage over the US in livestock traceability and food safety assurance. But our Canadian system has lost effectiveness, and will soon lose its competitive advantage over US practice, unless we secure broader participation, better outcomes, and renewed technology.

Flokk looks forward to hearing from, and working with, others interested in pursuing this opportunity. Your initial inquiries may be sent to info@flokk.ca.