The Canadian Cattlemen Association (CCA) has recently launched a new program called the Beef InfoXchange System or BIXS. This program is part of the Canadian Beef Advantage (CBA) program, the branding of Canadian beef for domestic and international markets, which is operated by CCA. The program has been developed because of requests from beef producers across Canada to use the unique individual animal electronic ID tags (RFID), required by all beef cattle leaving the herd of origin, to track specific individual animal data such as carcass information and pass this information up and down the chain as desired. The reports generated by the BIXS program will have the ability to highlight obvious problems or advantages. This will include analyses of the top 10 and the bottom 10 percent of your herd against the average of the general BIXS population for such variables as average daily gain in the feedlot, weaning weights, quality and yield grades.
BIXS is a national voluntary no-charge web-based database designed to capture and exchange data linked to an animals RFID tag. As BIXS develops it will turn into a valuable tool for cow-calf, feedlot and processor participants to track animal production, performance, health, genetic, economic and carcass data across the chain on an individual animal basis. The program will make it possible to communicate and build business relationships based upon accurate reliable individual animal data. Down the road the long term goal is to improve efficiencies at the ranch and feedlot level which in turn will lead to economic and overall quality benefits. Over time this will become an integral part of marketing cattle from calves to back-grounding, finishing, purebreds and on up the chain to retail, restaurants and the export market.
The BIXS program is being tested out by a group of about 100 supportive cow-calf producers and other partners across Canada. These producers are helping to test out the registration and animal data upload and transfer process to see if there are any glitches that need to be worked out before it goes to full launch to cow-calf producers and feedlots this fall. Although there is no fee for the program there is important data that needs to be entered especially at the feedlot level; information such as premise ID, date the cattle arrived, the weight of the cattle and of course the individual RFID tag number.
Read the full article here. Source: Omineca Express
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