Manitoba Pork is extremely disappointed and concerned that on May 2, 2016 the Government of Canada will force livestock transporters to once again comply with a decades-old border regulation which threatens the health of Canada’s swine herd.
Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea (PED) is a swine disease that is almost 100% fatal to piglets, and to date has killed roughly 8 million newborn pigs in the U.S. since the first cases appeared there in 2013. When the PED virus first began circulating in the U.S., in the interest of preventing the disease from entering Canada, Manitoba Pork and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) agreed to suspend Section 106(5) of the Health of Animals Regulation and launch a trailer wash pilot project. Under an emergency protocol, the pilot project allowed swine transporters returning to Canada from deliveries to U.S. farms to have their trailers washed and disinfected in disease-free, certified Canadian facilities, rather than be washed in U.S. facilities in regions where PED had become rampant. To date, the project has been extremely successful in keeping Western Canada free of PED, with only five on-farm cases of the virus found in Manitoba since the launch, all of which have been contained. Along with other strict biosecurity measures, this washing protocol has kept the PED virus at bay even though Manitoba continues to ship almost three million weanlings to U.S. finishing farms each year.
Now the federal government is determined to end the emergency protocol, removing a critical biosecurity measure from the Canadian hog industry. As of May 2, 2016, the government will demand that livestock trailers be washed at U.S. facilities before crossing the border into Canada, even though there is no evidence that such facilities will not contaminate disease-free Canadian transporters. The government continues to ignore professional advice from practicing veterinarians, all the major swine producer groups, the chief veterinary officers of the three Prairie Provinces, and swine health researchers.
This is a crisis moment for the Canadian swine industry. Manitoba Pork is advising all swine producers in Western Canada to insist that any trailer returning from the U.S. be properly washed and disinfected in a certified Canadian facility. Producers should assume that trailers washed only at U.S. facilities are almost certainly contaminated with the PED virus.
On behalf of all Canadian swine producers, Manitoba Pork calls upon the federal Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food, Lawrence MacAulay, to intervene and have CFIA commit in the next four weeks to working collaboratively with industry representatives to reduce the risk of this fatal virus devastating Canada’s swine herd. Manitoba Pork is confident that working with CFIA will result in effective resolution of this issue. Let’s work together to keep Western Canada PED-free.
Source: ManitobaPork