By Bruce Cochrane
Western Canadian pork producers are encouraged to contact their federal MPs to express concern over planned changes in washing requirements for livestock vehicles returning from the U.S.
Canadian Food Inspection Agency regulations require trucks and trailers that visit U.S. swine farms to be washed and disinfected in the U.S. before re-entering Canada, however, an exemption introduced as part of a pilot project in Manitoba in 2014, to reduce the risk of spreading PED, allows vehicles to be sealed at the border and taken to a certified truck wash in Manitoba.
As of October 1, that exemption will end.
Andrew Dickson, the general manager of Manitoba Pork, told those on hand for Alberta Pork's monthly PED telephone conference last week, we'll be sending trailers to be fire hose washed at some point in the United States where they'll probably pick up PEDv adding to the viral load in Manitoba and increasing potential exposure at the farm gate.
Andrew Dickson-Manitoba Pork:
We've proposed to CFIA detailed amended regulations, we've asked the ministers to suspend this enforcement of the old regulation until these amended regulations can be brought in.
The point here is that, at the border point, we have almost 3,000,000 animals going through Emerson every year.
A lot of these trailers go back into western Canada and they go to Saskatchewan, they go to Alberta.
The problem is we don't have a very strong control system in western Canada.
We don't wash trailers between provinces and so on so we're going to have to rely on the industry to do a lot more washing than perhaps they might have done in the past.
I realize in the other provinces this pilot project that CFIA did with us in 2014 2015 didn't apply, for example, in Alberta and Saskatchewan but the concept was, if it worked here, why don't we do it in the rest of the country.
Dickson says we need to get some political pressure to try and get this matter resolved.
Producers are encouraged to contact their provincial pork organization for information on how to contact their federal Member of Parliament to express their concerns.
Source: Farmscape