By Bruce Cochrane.
Canadian pork producers are being encouraged to urge their Members of Parliament to put pressure on the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to reinstate a swine transportation protocol designed to keep PED out of Canada.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has terminated an emergency transportation protocol that allowed Canadian swine transport vehicles returning from U.S. farms to be sealed at the border then washed and disinfected at certified Canadian truck washes and, as of May 2, is requiring those transports to be cleaned in the U.S. before re-entering Canada.
Harvey Wagner, the Manager of Producer Services with Sask pork, says there is a high risk those trucks will become contaminated in those U.S. truck washes.
Harvey Wagner-Saskatchewan Pork Development Board:
This particular emergency regulation, exemption was targeted at trucks returning from United States farms.
Any truck returning from a United States slaughter plant, which we know are heavily infected is exempt from this regulation.
We know, when we're hauling feeder pigs or breeding stock to those U.S. farms they're likely PED free.
If we go then to a truck wash that may be washing trucks that are returning from a packing plant in the U.S. there's a high likelihood that there is going to be PED in the water and a lot of the U.S. truck washes rely on re-circulated
water and so there's a really good possibility that that re-circulated wash water will contain the PED virus.
We have to remember that western Canada has the repository for some of the high health breeding stock in North America.
We're moving pigs regularly and it's just so important to the health of the North American swine herd to make sure that they remain safe.
Wagner is calling on affected producers to contact their Members of Parliament and ask them to encourage CFIA to have another look at this policy and make that exemption permanent.
Source: Farmscape