By Bruce Cochrane.
The General Manager of Manitoba Pork says members of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food appear supportive of industry efforts to contain the spread of Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea.
Manitoba pork industry stakeholders appeared before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food earlier this month to seek support for a program which would allow swine transport vehicles returning from the U.S. to be washed in Canada and funding to deal with a surge in PED cases in Manitoba.
Manitoba Pork General Manager Andrew Dickson says the key focus is to contain the disease and then begin the clean-up.
Andrew Dickson-Manitoba Pork:
There were some very pointed questions made to the government representatives about what role CFIA is playing in this.
Hopefully we will have discussions with CFIA on this Trusted Trucker Program in the next couple of weeks and I remain ever hopeful that we'll be able to get something in place by the fall.
I think we provided a lot of good information back to the individual MPs that were on the committee from both the government side and the opposition.
I think the whole committee was very concerned about what's happening and expressed their support to encourage the government to move forward with some support mechanisms to help the industry deal with this terrible disease.
I want to emphasize that, while it's a terrible disease for producers and their animals, there's absolutely no issues in terms of public health.
It doesn't affect the quality of the product.
All the animals that are going to processing plants are healthy and we have a very safe product.
We will get on top of it but I just want to emphasize, from a consumer point of view, there's absolutely nothing to worry about in terms of eating pork products.
Dickson remains confident the situation will be brought under control.
Source: Farmscape