Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I know what you're all thinking. Who is this Ken Metzger, and what is he doing in this meeting?
I'm not a national organization and I don't represent thousands of people. I'm just one little vet from Linwood, Ontario, but I am hands-on and my clinic provides the veterinary service for about 10% of Ontario's hog production and about 75% of Ontario's beef production.
When I read the Canada Gazette, I became worried that the government may just be naive enough to believe these fantasies and actually implement the changes, so I wrote to my MP, my MPP, and Dr. Kiley, expressing my concerns, and I guess that's how I ended up here today. Thank you for inviting me.
One of the main proposed changes in the Gazette would reduce the maximum transport time from 52 hours to 36 hours for cattle, and from 36 hours to 28 hours for pigs. This should not be done because it would seriously disrupt our industry in Ontario. Remember that pigs cannot be unloaded and reloaded for biosecurity reasons.
Every week in Ontario, we bring about 8,000 early weans from Nova Scotia and Manitoba. These trucks can't make that journey in 28 hours, so that entire flow would have to be discontinued. In the case of the Nova Scotia producers, many of them would go out of business. Many of the Manitoba farms are owned by Ontario producers to supply their Ontario pig flow, and many of those farms would have to be sold.
In addition, Ontario has a shortage of hook space, and we need the ability to market pigs to Manitoba for slaughter. There are also over 100,000 cattle per year from Manitoba that would have to be unloaded unnecessarily. Currently, they come straight through.
There is no scientific evidence that shorter transport times would enhance animal welfare. In fact, the research shows that loading and unloading is the most stressful part of the journey and where most of the injuries occur.
Another argument you'll hear is that calves become dehydrated during the journey. That's simply not true, because they have a five- to 10-gallon rumen capacity. Just think about it. The driver might consume three litres of water, but the calf already has 30 litres of water in its rumen. Calves don't become hungry, either, again because of the large rumen capacity and because they eat straw while they're on the truck.
It's already been mentioned that the unnecessary unloading of Manitoba cattle at Thunder Bay is a biosecurity risk. In our own vet clinic every year, we do a survey of our producers on cattle health. We consistently find that long-distance western calves have half of the sickness rate that our Ontario and Quebec calves have. The current transport times are working just fine. Western calves arrive in Ontario in excellent health.
If the committee feels the need for reassurance on that, I'd encourage you to simply open your laptop, go on Twitter, type in “Ken Schaus”, and take a minute to watch some of those videos of unloading western calves in Ontario. Those calves tell the real story.
The second main part of the Gazette deals with a series of definition changes. Now let me be clear. The only group I can see that would benefit and cares about these exact definitions is the CFIA, because they use these definitions to assign AMPs. In four and a half years, the CFIA has issued over 1,000 AMPs that have generated $8.5 million in fines. In my opinion, many of the AMPs that my customers have received are unjustified.
Kathy Zurbrigg, who is a Ph.D. student at the University of Guelph and now works at Ontario Pork, has presented her research to the CFIA. I have it here. It is about in-transit losses in hogs, meaning pigs that die on the truck on their way to slaughter. Her findings were that many of these pigs had heart lesions that caused their death, and that there was no way that producers or transporters could know ahead of time which pigs were affected or if or when they would die.
These pigs simply died, and it's no one's fault. The CFIA assumes, however, that it's from overcrowding, even though the scientific research says otherwise. The CFIA does not seem to be influenced by scientific research, and they continue to issue AMPs for this.
I'd like to give you one more example of how disastrous these definition changes would be. In paragraph 136(1)(f), any animal with “slightly imperfect locomotion” would be deemed compromised and could only be transported if it's segregated, loaded last, and unloaded first, etc. There are tens of thousands of animals with slightly imperfect locomotion every year in Ontario. It would be simply impossible for the industry to comply with that regulation.
In summary, I implore this committee to do the right thing. Don't give in to the irrational objectives of the animal activists. Don't make it even easier for the CFIA to issue AMPs when there are already too many unjustified AMPs. We all want improved animal welfare, both the activists and the livestock industries, but what the activists don't understand is that these changes would actually backfire and reduce animal welfare.
We have a world-class livestock industry in Canada, some of the best farmers, the best transporters, and the best processors producing the best beef and pork in the world. Let's all work together to achieve our common goal of enhanced animal welfare within a successful and thriving livestock industry.
Thank you.