HOG FARMS ON ALERT
Farmers fear new virus will hit North America
Alberta hog farmers were warned to be doubly cautious with biosecurity procedures last week after a case of PED, a deadly virus that has killed millions of piglets in the United States, appeared in the province for the first time.
But industry experts say a far more frightening disease is looming on the horizon — one that, if it comes to Canada, could devastate the country’s pork industry and send grocery store meat prices skyrocketing.
The disease, called African swine fever, causes hemorrhagic bleeding, fever and death in wild and domestic pigs. Though it has not been found in North America yet, it began spreading through Eastern Europe in 2007 and in August 2018 made its way to China, the world’s largest producer of pork. In the last four months, African swine fever has moved rapidly across 23 Chinese provinces and more than 600,000 pigs have been culled in an effort to halt its spread.
African swine fever, or ASF, poses no risks to human health or food safety. But unlike porcine epidemic diarrhea (PED), the disease that made headlines when it turned up on a central Alberta hog farm last week, ASF is a federally reportable disease with serious market access ramifications. Whereas PED affects individual farmers but has no impact on trade, a single case of ASF in Canada would cause countries around the globe to close their borders to Canadian pork exports instantly. Infected farms would need to be placed under quarantine, all animals believed to be exposed would need to be destroyed, and a major tracing and surveillance program would have to be put in place before markets could be restored.
“African swine fever would eliminate us from market,” said Darcy Fitzgerald, executive director of Alberta Pork. “Which is a very scary thing when you’re a country like Canada and you export 70 per cent ($4 billion worth in 2017) of the pork that you produce.”
“That virus terrifies me,” said Egan Brockhoff, a veterinarian with Prairie Swine Health Services who gave a presentation on the disease to delegates at the Banff Pork Seminar this week. “If the border closed tomorrow, what would we do with all that pork? We don’t have the barns in Canada to just hold all those pigs ... The whole sector would just collapse.”
Part of what makes ASF so frightening is the way it is transmitted. While the virus spreads between animals through contact, it can also be carried in infected meat products — meaning there is a risk that a traveller could bring the disease to North America simply by carrying a pack of sausage or other delicacies in their luggage. Meat products infected with African swine fever have already been confiscated by border control agents at airports in Japan, Taiwan and Korea.
The disease could also come to Canada in contaminated feed, said Brockhoff, since many of the vitamins and minerals found in commercially sold pig feed are produced in China.
“That gives me a lot of worry,” he said. “We are trying to help farmers understand how to eliminate risk. For example, there are studies that have shown if you store your feed products at 20 degrees Celsius for 20 days, the virus will be gone.”
Both the Canadian Pork Council and the Canadian Meat Council, which represents packers and processors, have been calling on the federal government to increase the number of sniffer dogs at border security at Canadian airports in an effort to keep smuggled meat products out of the country.
“There is a huge risk at airports,” said Jorge Correa, vice-president of market access and technical affairs with the Canadian Meat Council. “We need to have more of these dogs, because they ’re very effective.”
Even if North America is successful in keeping ASF at bay, it’s possible that Canadians will experience its impact this year anyway — at the grocery store. China is home to nearly half of the world’s pigs, and if the disease’s spread through that country continues, the resulting market distortion could drive up the world price of pork and even other meats.
“It’s very possible, starting as early as this spring,” Correa said. “Chinese consumers are losing confidence in their own product ... and that means Chinese consumers are going to eat imported pork or they’re going to exchange proteins — it could be beef, it could be lamb, it could be chicken.”
ASF is similar to bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, or mad cow disease) in that it illustrates the vulnerability of the agriculture sector to factors beyond farmers’ control. One isolated case of a foreign disease, shipped to Canada in contaminated feed or smuggled in a suitcase or tracked in on someone’s boot, could have serious economic consequences for the whole industry.
“People travel more, goods and services move by truck and transportation more today than they did even five years ago,” said Brent Moen, chair of Edmonton-based Western Hog Exchange. “We live in a global marketplace, but it’s actually a small global marketplace — from the standpoint of how one action in one area can have a significant impact in another area.”
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency is closely monitoring the spread of ASF in China and parts of Europe. In an email, spokeswoman Lisa Murphy said the CFIA is working with the Canada Border Services Agency to ensure import restrictions are in place to minimize the chances of the virus’s entry into Canada and conducting ongoing risk assessments of countries from which Canada imports food or feed ingredients. The CFIA is also working with industry experts to ensure adequate supports are in place for all aspects of a disease outbreak scenario, Murphy said.
(It’s) a very scary thing when you’re a country like Canada and you export 70 per cent ($4 billion worth in 2017) of the pork that you produce.