050139 Canadian Plans for Containing Pork Disease Outbreaks

Calgary - Canada's pork producers are being urged to support a national plan that could see hog farms locked down within hours of a contagious animal disease being detected.

"Canada is the most vulnerable country in the world to an infectious foreign animal disease outbreak," Clare Schlegel, president of the Canadian Pork Council, said Friday following an industry conference. As the world's largest exporter of pork, Canada shipped more than half of the 30 million animals raised here last year.

Although the pork producers in Canada have not dealt with a contagious foreign animal disease such as foot-mouth-disease in 40 years, the industry is acutely aware of the economic devastation that avian flu wrought on the B.C. poultry industry last year.

The international bans on live cattle since the discovery of bovine spongiform encephalopathy in May 2003 has made hog producers acutely aware of how quickly their industry could collapse.

"What really changed the climate is seeing the effects of BSE," said Karl Kynoch, chair of the Manitoba Pork Council, who runs a hog operation near Baldur, Man.

"We saw it close the border and in the hog industry, we know how reliant we are on the borders," said Kynoch.

He said Manitoba consumes only 20 per cent of the hogs it raises.

The industry wants to divide Canada at the Manitoba/Ontario boundary into at least two separate trading entities. If a contagious disease were to be discovered on a Saskatchewan farm, a lockdown would immediately be imposed on the movement of all livestock west of Ontario in a bid to contain the outbreak to the smallest possible area.

"The more we can divide the country into different zones and have those zones recognized by the world, then we can lessen the impact of (any) disease," said Kynoch.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency is working on the plan with industry officials. The need for a plan is important because there would be very little reaction time if an emergency broke out.

"If that U.S. border closes, we have a lot of hog operations that within three days would have to go into a humane kill," said Kynoch. "They don't have the room . . . as more babies are born."

Sows produce two litters a year and unlike cattle, which can be kept outdoors, hogs must be housed indoors.

The turnover in hog operations is so intense that even producers who raise pigs up to 115 kilograms would only have a seven-to-10 day window to ship out the animals before a backlog would build.

The industry also wants the ability to trace a hog's history on a national scale, similar to what has been done for the cattle industry.

Canada's animal health import measures and biosecurity practices have largely allowed this country to avoid diseases such as hog cholera and foot- mouth disease.

"'We cannot simply assume that we will be so successful for the next 40 years," said Schlegel.

A 2002 study by the Canadian Animal Health Coalition estimated containing a small outbreak of foot-mouth disease that might affect 50 farms in a local area could cost $13 billion while a largescale outbreak could push the cost as high as $45 billion.

But CFIA officials have told the pork industry that the estimated losses would likely be much higher.

"In hogs, essentially the market would collapse to zero unless we have an emergency plan in place where (the industry) and the government could manage the markets in some way," Schlegel said.

"That's never been done in Canada. It's a task that may be bigger than we're able to achieve, but we're ready to give some thought and leadership to those ideas."

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