Features Fruit Production
OnTrace launches premises registry

July 4, 2008, Guelph, Ont. –
OnTrace Agri-food Traceability Inc. is pleased to announce the launch
of the Ontario Agri-food Premises Registry (OAPR).

July 4, 2008, Guelph, Ont. – OnTrace Agri-food Traceability Inc. is pleased to announce the launch of the Ontario Agri-food Premises Registry (OAPR).

The full scale, Ontario-wide OAPR system is now live.

“The launch of the OAPR fulfills OnTrace’s first key mandate, which was to deliver a premises identification registry for agriculture and agri-food in Ontario,” said Brian Sterling, CEO of OnTrace. “This was our first order of business when OnTrace started operations in December 2006. We have delivered a comprehensive and much-needed solution for both industry and government to use. We encourage anyone interested in finding out more about participating in the OAPR to visit www.ontraceagrifood.com. The more organizations and businesses that participate with and use it, the stronger the system will become.”

Two of the first permanent Premises Identifiers in Ontario are associated with the operations of Curtiss Littlejohn (chair of Ontario Pork and of OnTrace) and Bette Jean Crews (vice president of Ontario Federation of Agriculture and vice chair of OnTrace).

“The launch of the OAPR is a significant step for agriculture in Ontario,” said Bette Jean Crews. “I am proud to be one of the first to have a permanent premise identifier. The ability to identity premises and what is grown on them provides food producers in the province with a valuable business tool that will reinforce the credibility of food safety and food quality practices. That in turn will provide economic and competitive benefits for our industry. I encourage all food producers to investigate how OAPR will benefit their business.”

The key benefits of a province-wide premises registry are:

• It delivers a “single view of reality.” OnTrace can identify and validate what agricultural activity is taking place in Ontario, and where it is located.
• It accelerates the process of finding out the source of a food product and provides an increased level of confidence in the data. The OAPR provides government and industry with “relevant, reliable and accessible” information about where food originates.
• It can help ‘tie’ the origin(s) of a product (meat or crop) to a particular premise. This is a tremendous aid in emergency management and it will also verify the source and locality of food for consumers who want to ‘eat local’ or be certain that a particular product comes from Ontario.
• Participants in the OAPR will receive the added benefit of a GS1 Global Location Number (GLN), providing access to the GS1 Canada Party & Location Registry; a move that will give them a tool to strengthen their global competitive position.

The OAPR system uses a ‘distributed architecture’ that currently layers publically available data with producer group data to identify, characterize and validate where agricultural activity is taking place in Ontario. The OAPR system is not a duplication of information that already exists. It is a window into the data owned by various sources.  Producer groups, who participate, do so voluntarily at this time and OnTrace has negotiated agreements with data sources, so that it can access data for emergency management purposes.