This week The Western Producer takes a look at the scary prospect of African swine fever being found in Canada.
“I go to these meetings all the time and we only talk about the bad stuff, how bad things could be. It tends to be a very negative discussion,” Ross said in late March, after a day of meetings in the United States with American pork producers.
Canada may have an excellent system but it’s difficult for pork producers to relax right now. There are no vaccines or treatments for ASF, a viral disease that causes fever, internal bleeding and high death rates in swine.
It has been spreading in China and Eastern Europe and is now in Vietnam. Jack Shere, chief veterinary officer for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, believes it will soon be present in all of Southeast Asia. Other experts are convinced it will eventually move into Germany and most of Western Europe.
The priority for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and the pork council is keeping it out of Canada. But pork industry representatives and veterinarians are also discussing what would happen if ASF arrived, how to respond and how it would affect pork exports.
“It’s a far more of a serious issue for us than the rest of the world,” said Ted Bilyea, who worked for Maple Leaf Foods for 34 years.
Estimating the impact of something before it happens is nearly impossible. However, there’s a fear that a positive case of ASF could prompt foreign buyers to stop importing pork from Canada.
Canada has an agreement with the U.S., and is working on a similar deal with Japan, where it would be possible to have ASF and export pork to those countries.
In January 2013 the federal government announced that Canada and the U.S. had signed a deal on animal disease zoning.
The agreement recognizes that both countries are capable of dealing with a foreign animal disease outbreak and are able to contain it within a certain region.
If an ASF outbreak happened, say in Quebec, the U.S. chief veterinary officer would have the authority to recognize Canada’s disease control measures and zoning and then approve pork imports from parts of Canada that were free from the virus.
The agreement has already been used. When avian influenza was detected on North American poultry farms a few years ago, Canada accepted U.S. zoning for the disease and vice-versa.
The Canadian government has a similar agreement with the European Union. That’s why Canada continues to import pork from Poland, which has dozens of farms with ASF.
If Canada lost faith in Poland’s ability to control the disease, the government could reject imports of Polish pork. For now, Canada continues to recognize zones that are free from ASF in Poland.
The U.S. deal is critical because Canada sold $1.25 billion in pork to the U.S. last year.
The other big pork market for Canada is Japan, worth $1.27 billion in 2018.
An industry source said the federal government is pushing hard for a bilateral zoning deal with Japan, so pork exports could continue if ASF arrived.
Even with such agreements in place there’s a chance of political interference, in which a U.S. senator from a pork-producing state or President Donald Trump refused to honour the zoning deal.
But science, evidence and strong relationships between the decision makers on both sides of the border should make a difference, Ross said.
A USDA official said in an email that the chief veterinarians would likely be the decision makers.
If ASF is found in Canada in an area with a high concentration of hog barns, managing an outbreak would be trickier.
“Do I have it in a hog-dense area or an area that’s very isolated? Did I find it in the first week or had it for a month?” Ross said.