The Canadian Pork Council is asking the federal government to invest $50 million to protect from African Swine Fever, explaining that an outbreak here could do $50 billion worth of damage and wipe out family farms.
The government’s budget for last year indicates it set aside $5.6 million for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to deal with the highly-contagious and deadly disease. There is nothing listed for the current fiscal year.
Rick Bergman, president of the Canadian Pork Council, has sent an open letter to Ottawa outlining what will happen if the disease shows up here, as it recently did in Germany.
“First, quarantines will be established, and an eradication plan will be put in place to try and stop the disease. An aggressive eradication effort is core to the plan, but it will require a significant mobilization of resources. The eradication plan alone will cost millions,” he wrote.
He said African Swine Fever would be much worse than Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE, or mad cow’s disease) when it devastated the Canadian beef industry.]
“ . . .because 70 per cent of Canadian-produced pork is exported to countries that would likely close their borders to imports if a case were to be found,” the impact would be much worse for pork than beef, he argued.
Processing would stop, prompting the closure of facilities and ensuing economically devastating job losses, and an animal welfare crisis.
“The cost of the cure will be counted in billions. Eradicating the virus, income support for tens of thousands of out-of-work Canadians, aid for the thousands of farm families who will struggle through the fallout will be significant. All of this will need to happen as billions of dollars in economic activity simply disappears,” he wrote.
He said $50 million is needed to “boost biosecurity and traceability, prepare response programming, improve communications, engage with small-scale producers, increase research, and appoint a chief ASF officer.”
Beyond working with the United States and Mexico, Canada has partnered with the provinces and industry groups to come up with an action plan for ASF, investing in the 2019 budget money for detecting illegally imported meats at Canadian airports.
