The chair of Sask Pork says the devastation cause by PED has demonstrated the need for a strong national approach to guarding Canada’s boarders from the entry of new animal disease threats.
Since Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea first appeared in the U.S. in April 2013 it has spread to 30 states infecting more than 47 hundred farms.
Sask Pork chair Florian Possberg notes the Canadian Swine Health Board had been responsible for guarding our borders but, with the loss of federal funding, that ability has been lost and the industry hasn’t been able to come together to replace it with a like organization.
In the U.S. there’s still debate on how many pigs have died from PED but it’s pretty certain that it was somewhere around eight million pigs.
That’s devastation quite frankly.
We’ve had about 60 some cases here in Canada with a spattering of cases in various provinces but about 60 cases in Ontario.
So far we’ve been able to limit the spread in Canada and obviously that gives Canada a real health advantage and really it’s beneficial to the producers because obviously they don’t have to deal with the financial loss but it’s also good for our consumers in that we can be dependable suppliers of pork at times when other countries have breaks in their supply chain.
So Canada is adding to its reputation of a health advantaged region that can be a dependable supplier of high quality healthy pork.
Possberg says quite a few a provinces favor a national approach to dealing with animal disease threats and would like to get back to that.
He says the provincial organizations are doing the best they can but everyone would all benefit by having a strong national approach.
