The Rural Voice, 2019-08, Page 39Program, beef farmers the The
Verified Beef Production Plus
(VBP+) program, veal farmers the
Veal Quality Assurance (VQA) and
hog farmers follow the Canadian
Quality Assurance (CQA) program.
It’s just a lot of paperwork. Daily
paperwork ... something Jason and
Ryan would not rank high on their
“favourite chores” list. They became
dairy farmers to work with cows, not
forms and programs.
“It’s very time-consuming but it
does protect us,” says Jason. “Where
it is really beneficial is in biosecurity
and traceability. If something were to
happen, I have proof that I followed
protocols and took good care of my
animals.”
Through proAction, all animal
movements (sales and deaths) are
tracked. Milk is traceable from farm
to processing plant. This protects
both the farmer and the consumer.
Now, with the biosecurity
module, the intent is to
benefit both the farmer and
consumers. Jason and Ryan will
write an SOP to prevent disease from
arriving on the farm. This includes
No Trespassing signs on barn doors,
and offering plastic boots to visitors
allowed into the barn.
“I have a farmer who put a
mailbox up outside the barn door and
keeps plastic boots in it for people to
put on,” says Sarah, who visits a lot
of dairy farmers in Perth County,
helping them with ideas on how to
best implement the proAction
guidelines. She is loaded with
checklists and forms and knows the
Wizard program that dairy farmers
are required to learn to digitally file
their paperwork.
Her first rule? Don’t get behind.
It’s a line echoed by both Jason
and Ryan.
“Stay on top of things!” Jason
says when asked what advice he
would give dairy farmers still
working through other modules.
Ryan agrees. “If you can make
time to input little bits at a time, then
you won’t be stuck behind a
computer for hours.”
For data that can’t be immediately
entered, they keep a calender in the
milkhouse to record Time
August 2019 35
Developing Standard Operating
Procedures for four proAction
modules (milk quality, food safety,
animal care and traceability) has
been a lot of work. Now almost
done the Biosecurity module, dairy
farming brothers Jason and Ryan
Wesselson (top) rely on help from
Clark Sinclair (left) and Sarah
Smith (bottom) to review their work
to ensure they have met all the
program requirements.