Evidence of meeting #144 for Agriculture and Agri-Food in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was disease.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Jean-Claude Poissant Liberal La Prairie, QC
We have a lot of discussions with our neighbours to the south about the animals. Could you tell us about the transportation rules that apply to these animals?
Director, Équipe québécoise de santé porcine, Les Éleveurs de porcs du Québec
I am not involved in transportation matters. Are you referring specifically to the shipment of hogs from Canada to the United States?
Liberal
Jean-Claude Poissant Liberal La Prairie, QC
Yes, and vice versa. I am particularly interested in the safety of animal transportation.
Director, Équipe québécoise de santé porcine, Les Éleveurs de porcs du Québec
As far as I know, no U.S. hogs are coming to Canada for slaughter or fattening. Any U.S. hogs entering Canada must be quarantined and comply with CFIA health regulations.
On our end, we certainly ship a lot of hogs to the United States, but I am not familiar with the details of the paperwork that needs to be done. You could ask Mr. Dickson or Mr. de Bruyn.
General Manager, Manitoba Pork Council
There is a difference between pork and live pigs. The pork products are governed by CFIA and all the regulations. We import a significant amount of pork from the United States as well, and there are long-standing trade agreements on that.
All our live animals in Canada have to have certificates of health when they go down there. Very few live animals come back from the United States. The only ones I know of are breeding stock through genetic companies, and they have to go into a quarantine period before they are released to farms.
At this time Canada doesn't import live animals from the United States for processing, that I know of. It makes no sense anyway to ship them here. They make more money processing them in the United States.
In terms of our transportation regulations, CFIA is in the process of changing the regulations, and one of the issues we have to deal with is the washing of trailers that come back from the United States. In Manitoba we've instituted a hog transportation program using our marketing regulation, whereby all trailers coming back from the United States have to be properly washed and disinfected at certified wash stations. Our problem is that we don't trust the wash stations in the United States to do that at this time. There is no certification program down there.
Currently trailers going to slaughter plants can come back into Canada as long as they've been scraped down. Our regulations will preclude that. All trailers coming back will have to be cleaned and disinfected at proper wash stations in Manitoba. It only applies to Manitoba. The regulations for other provinces have not been changed.
Liberal
Liberal
Jean-Claude Poissant Liberal La Prairie, QC
As we know, the pork industry is a major one. However, when there is a disease, grain consumption decreases; there is a surplus of grain, and packing plants close.
Has the potential domino effect ever been assessed?
Director, Équipe québécoise de santé porcine, Les Éleveurs de porcs du Québec
No, not in detail, because each scenario is different. We would have to start with specific scenarios and try to quantify them. In any case, there is no detailed study showing all the potential and secondary impacts.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Pat Finnigan
Thank you, Mr. Pelletier.
I would like to acknowledge the presence of Nick Whalen.
I just noticed that you're here, so you're very quiet. That's good, but not always.
Mr. Longfield, it's your turn for six minutes.
Liberal
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to all the presenters.
I want to start with Mr. de Bruyn and say thank you, first of all, for coming to my constituency office last week so we could talk about this in more detail. In our conversation, we talked a bit about PigTrace and going to PigTrace 2.0. Mr. Pelletier just said that the data is hard to get and that sharing of data is one of the difficulties. We talked about zoning and traceability.
Could you talk a bit more about PigTrace 2.0 and how it might be developed through the barn that's just north of Guelph, if we put some investment into the technology in the pig barn north of Guelph, the research station?
Board Vice-Chair, Ontario Pork
PigTrace is a stand-alone product that represents traceability for livestock. The swine version is called PigTrace.
It's very important for us to get back into the market. I think, first of all, the best thing for North America is not to have ASF land in North America, and not to land in Canada is probably the number two best scenario. If it lands in this country, PigTrace will be vital to convincing our trading partners that we know where the disease is, that we've isolated it to a certain area, and that we can then assure our trading partners that other areas of the country will not receive pigs or products from that area.
I think I'm convinced that, if ASF landed on our shores, eradicating it in this country would not be difficult with the value that PigTrace adds to our knowledge of where pigs are and where they're moving.
From a producer's perspective, I guess there is still a learning curve, so there are some producers who maybe don't yet see the importance of submitting their data. There are some big government issues, I guess. Then I think the program has been funded reasonably so far to collect the data, but to my knowledge, nobody has indulged in searching how we would use it now in the case of a disease outbreak or whether we should maybe put a few more resources towards some analysis of the data and its effectiveness in the zoning process.
Does that answer your question, Mr. Longfield?
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
Yes, it does. Thank you.
There is another piece of not going into data. You talked about the AgManifest software and getting electronic.... When you were in Guelph, we talked about electronic signatures versus having to get paper with penned signatures and how that delays the process of shipping and processing.
It seems to me that, if we went towards the digital version, it would be good for the industry anyway, and it's something we should be looking towards. Is that a fair statement?
Board Vice-Chair, Ontario Pork
That's a very fair statement. I think most producers are at least at the cellphone stage, not all. I think the capabilities of technologies now would be that, when a producer markets his hogs, whether they're from one barn to another, or straight to a processor, or even to another province, that the technology is there.
Ontario Pork has built a platform above PigTrace, we'll call it, an interface that allows our producers to submit their information through the AgManifest platform, which then provides it to PigTrace. That allows for a couple of things. It also allows for producers to use that data in their own management of their farms.
The part that we're trying to add right now is what we call an annex 4, and that's a requirement. The CFIA has done a great job on protecting our international markets. Some of our customers demand that we don't use a certain product called ractopamine and, in order to assure our customers of that, we need to fill out this paper, annex 4. We're in discussions with CFIA right now to make that an electronic signature to facilitate better movement of information.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
In fact, the ractopamine issue is the one that hit us with China and also with Russia.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
We could have had access to those markets if we had installed some different technology to help us with traceability.
Board Vice-Chair, Ontario Pork
Those issues certainly exacerbated the challenge of knowing everything we can about where our product moves.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
Great. Thank you.
To Mr. Dickson and Mr. Pelletier, from Quebec and Manitoba, if we look at how we could have a national umbrella so that data could be shared across the country.... The University of Guelph is looking at a food nexus idea of having data for all agriculture products available across the country in a food nexus federal development proposal they have put together.
Is that something that would benefit or is that something that...? We've talked about provincial relationships here, but there is also the national umbrella to make sure we have national security for our food.
General Manager, Manitoba Pork Council
For your information, the PigTrace program is actually in our office in Winnipeg. There are two staff members associated with the program. One of them is seconded from our staff to manage this. It's a national program. The data is housed nationally through the ATQ system out of Quebec, so CFIA has full access to all that information at any time. We and other provinces are in the process of looking at how we release that information in an emergency situation to the decision-makers who are going to be sitting in these emergency operations centres, both in the provinces and at the national level as well. We're working closely with CFIA, and the CVO office will actually have some jurisdiction on this thing as well, to try to make sure all that information flows in.
