By Bruce Cochrane.
The General Manager of Manitoba Pork says forcing Canadian swine transport vehicles to be washed in the United States before retuning to Canada will dramatically increase costs while also increasing the risk of bringing disease back into Canada.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has terminated an emergency transportation protocol that allowed Canadian swine transportation vehicles to be sealed at the border and then washed and disinfected at certified Canadian truck washes and is now requiring those transports to be cleaned in the U.S.
Andrew Dickson, the general Manger of Manitoba Pork, says allowing these trailers to be washed in Canada reduced the risk of exposure to PED in the U.S. and has been key to keeping the infection out of western Canada.
Andrew Dickson-Manitoba Pork:
Apart from the logistics of trying to find wash stations in the United States that don't use recycled water and also are prepared to take trailers that have some bedding in them, it's not easy to find stations like that.
They're out of the way so it will require having to drive to these other wash stations in the United Sates at some distance and worse we have no assurance that these wash stations aren't infected anyway.
U.S. trailers, we have to assume, have the disease on board and they're being washed at these stations so the disease free status of the interior of the Canadian trailers will be compromised, at some point a trailer will become infected, it will come back into Canada, it will have met the regulation because it was washed and disinfected in the United States.
We're encouraging the industry at this time to re-wash all the trailers coming back from the United States, treat them as having been contaminated by this disease at the wash stations in the United States.
Dickson says this will dramatically increase both costs and the risk of disease entering Canada.
He is urging the federal Agriculture Minister to intervene and orchestrate a compromise that will meet the needs of pork producers and the Canadian Food inspection Agency.
Source: Farmscape