Announcer
Van Mar Farms, near Chatham, has been pioneering in the introduction of traceability from the barn to the dinner plate.
Announcer
Regardless of the commodity or type of operation, traceability is best defined as the ability to trace what goes into producing a food product, all through to harvest, finishing or processing, and its final delivery to a customer - essentially every INPUT, every step in PRODUCTION, and every OUTPUT.
Announcer
And so, every INPUT is recorded, right from the beginning - the calf's birthdate and weight, whether it was born on their own farm or someone else's, the herd it came from and the truck that brought it to their farm, as well as the calf's management tag number and radio frequency identification number.
Mike Buis, Van Mar Farms, Chatham
Every cow that we buy in or appears here on the farm is given an electronic ID as well as a farm ID. So they have the two methods of identification.
Announcer
By law, every cow shipped in Canada must have an RFID ear tag when it leaves the farm, but at Van Mar Farms, they use this RFID tag to manage each animal while on the farm and record day-to-day activities.
As the calf grows - throughout the PRODUCTION process - everything's recorded and linked to the animal using the RFID tag- the use of medicated feeds, the lot numbers for vaccines, calving, and any time an animal is moved or pulled from the herd.
Mike Buis, Van Mar Farms, Chatham
When the calves are weaned or if anything else is done to the calves, then they're given their electronic ID. So from that point onward, they have their unique number in each and every animal on the farm including the calves. 3:55 Then anytime that they're moved from farm to farm, or there are any medications done, vaccinations, anything is done to any of those animals, that number is scanned through and recorded into our computers. So, we know at any time what any animal has had in the way of medication.
Announcer
And finally, all of the outputs are recorded and forwarded, including the prescribed withdrawal intervals for any medications, the sales barn it goes to and the final customer.
Mike Buis, Van Mar Farms, Chatham
I also needed to track who was calving and when they were calving and try to tie those numbers back to the cows and to know exactly what was happening on all of my farms at any given time.
Announcer
It's all very accurate, and useful in making of all sorts of management decisions.
And while there are still a lot of farmers - especially those with smaller herds - who are able to keep track with pen-and-paper, larger operators like Mike Buis find they need a more sophisticated system anyway.
Mike Buis, Van Mar Farms, Chatham
We operate out of five different locations, five different farms, with a number of different pastures and about 350 cows that wander around on any one of those places at any time. And I really needed a way to be able to track which cows were where at any given time.
Announcer
And reading the electronic RFID tags using a wand reader makes handling a lot easier, and safer, too.
Mike Buis, Van Mar Farms, Chatham
The big advantage of those is you don't have to physically catch the animal to read it. So we have the wand, we can just wave it by them and it'll catch the whole number. And it's a lot more accurate.
Announcer
But by far, the biggest advantage is being able to trace an animal every step of the way, right to the customer's door.
Mike Buis, Van Mar Farms, Chatham
So if we do have a disease outbreak or, say, we have a feed recall, I can tell you which animals were at any given farm on that date.
Announcer
And while there were a few, “growing pains,” as they put it, adopting new technology has made life easier in the end.
Mike Buis, Van Mar Farms, Chatham
We use a