By Elizabeth Wasserman

Jan. 25, 2010—For decades, the Dubé family owned Colbex, a slaughterhouse based in Saint-Cyrille-de-Wendover, in Québec, Canada. In 1988, the Colas family, owner of Levinoff Meat Product Ltée, headquartered in Montreal, joined with the Dubés, forming the largest meat processor in the eastern part of the country. In 2003, the discovery in faraway Alberta of a sick cow diagnosed with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease, changed the course of history for both firms—and for the Canadian cattle industry.

That initial BSE discovery—there have since been 11 cases found in Canada—led to the slaughter of thousands of head of cattle, a ban on imports of Canadian cattle and beef by the United States, Japan and other nations, and a government requirement, starting in 2006, that cattle ranchers identify each cow with RFID ear tags. In Québec, the government adopted even more stringent livestock traceability requirements. It set up a not-for-profit agency, Agri-Tracabilité Québec (ATQ), which requires calves born on farms in that province to be RFID-tagged within the first week of birth, or before leaving the farm—whichever comes first. The tags can only be removed at the slaughterhouse, thus ensuring traceability from birth to death.

As the carcass is moved along a motorized rail, RFID tags are read to meet a Canadian government mandate.

Québec's ranchers, devastated in the aftermath of the BSE scare—because the price of a cow that could have fetched $1,300 had plummeted at one point to less than $100—sought greater control over the slaughter and processing of cattle. In 2004, the Fédération des Producteurs de Bovins du Québec (FPBQ), which represents cattle producers in that province, convinced the Québec government to purchase Levinoff's meat products business and Colbex's slaughterhouse. The company now operates under the Levinoff-Colbex S.E.C. brand, and the 375-employee firm is the largest meat-processing facility in eastern Canada.