The federal government's come up with more red tape that could have a drastic impact on 4H clubs and agriculture societies.
Conservative ag critic and Foothills MP John Barlow says in the past it was up to an animal's owner to deal with tagging and traceability logging when taking the animal to shows or exhibitions.
Now the Liberals want those receiving the animals to do it as well.
"Now they're putting an additional level of red tape on the operators of those organizations, so the High River Ag society would now have to be doing tagging and some logging of the information in terms of traceability so this is adding a lot of additional volunteer time and responsibilities on these organizations that just don't have the resources to take that on and there doesn't seem to be a lot of benefit because there hasn't been an incident that highlights the need for this," Barlow explained.
He's spoken with the Canadian Cattle Association and other groups who also fail to see the need for the extra work.
"A lot of the fairs and exhibitions across the country are raising the alarm bells that we could lose a lot of these groups that just can't afford to take this on."
He says there are three things that could be done:
Ag groups could go out and get more volunteers, but volunteers are already at a premium and if they could do that, they would be doing it already.
Secondly, he says they could hire someone to do it but few, if any fairs, especially smaller ones, can afford to do that.
Or these events could just go away.
"These agriculture societies and events are huge for our rural communities and their economic development and bringing tourists and business to these communities, but they're also a key education tool where we're seeing so many urban Canadians and even rural Canadians that don't have a real clear understanding of where their food comes from or how we grow it, don't have a clear understanding about the livestock industry of animal husbandry so this is one of the opportunities they have to come and learn about this stuff so we don't want to lose that aspect of it either," Barlow says.
He adds many of these groups are operating on a shoestring budget now and they don't need additional red tape to bring them down.