As I was watching part of last weeks, “The Cattle Show” on RFD TV I came to some interesting conclusions and observations.
Cargill was the sponsor of the show as they are most every week. I guess that is putting it mildly. I looked more as if Cargill also filmed and produced the show. Sort of like an infomercial by Cargill.
Anyway, the speaker or expert last week was a professor from a university in Colorado. He was talking about animal ID and what we needed to be doing as producers as far as animal ID goes. As I understood his position on M ID and the level of traceability that needs to be in place, that each calf needed to be tagged at birth and the record needed to show the Dam of the calf the birth date in order for traceability to work. Now this is just his opinion and just will not work in Alabama. It is going to be hard enough just to get the calves tagged when sold with a trace back to the producer.
He was also asked how the producer would be able to afford maintaining a tagging and recording effort that would trace back a calf not only back to the farm but also back to the calf’s dam. His response was like we hear from all the others, that the premium received from the source verified calf would cover the cost. Well this got me thinking.
Consider this. If the level of traceability advocated by this one professor is made mandatory then all cattle will have it and thus no premium need be paid. No wonder Cargill is promoting it. When it is mandatory it wont cost Cargill one dime and the producer will foot the bill.
Did any of y’all see the show and what were your thoughts?