Agriculture Committee on June 15th, 2017

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Welcome, everyone, to this special meeting today. Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), this is a briefing on the porcine epidemic diarrhea, commonly known as PED, situation in Canada.

I want to thank our guests for being with us on short notice today. Also, I'd like to welcome a few new members to the committee. We have Mr. Larry Maguire replacing Mr. Shipley, and also Mr. Ted Falk replacing—

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

I'm just here.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Okay, that's fine. It's good that you're here.

With us here this morning we have, from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, Mr. Harpreet Kochhar, chief veterinary officer for Canada and acting vice-president of operations; and Ms. Barbara Jordan, acting vice-president, policy and programs branch. Welcome to both of you.

We will add to this first panel, the Manitoba Pork Council, with Mr. Andrew Dickson, general manager. Welcome, Mr. Dickson, to our committee meeting.

We will start. I will ask if you could keep it to five minutes, because I've had a lot of requests for questions. If you can keep it to five minutes with opening statements, I'll be lenient. I don't know who wants to start.

Mr. Kochhar, thank you.

[Dr. Harpreet Kochhar, Chief Veterinary Officer for Canada and Acting Vice-President, Operations, Canadian Food Inspection Agency]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good morning, everyone.

My name is Dr. Harpreet Kochhar. I am the acting vice-president of operations at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and chief veterinary officer for Canada, as well as the delegate for Canada to the World Organisation for Animal Health.

I am happy to have the opportunity to participate in this study, and I would like to explain the CFIA's role with respect to porcine epidemic diarrhea.

The CFIA is a science-based regulatory agency dedicated to safeguarding plants, animals and food. Our work promotes the health and well-being of Canada's people, environment and economy. Its main priority is the health and safety of Canadians.

First of all, let me assure you that Canada's animal health and food safety system remains among the best in the world. Porcine epidemic diarrhea is not a food safety risk. It does not pose a threat to human health. However, it is a disease that can limit pork production. This is because PED, as it is commonly called, can cause a significant number of deaths in very young piglets.

PED is not a federally reportable disease or federally regulated disease in Canada. However, this disease is regulated in some provinces such as Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Quebec, and Ontario, and suspected cases of PED are reported to provincial authorities.

PED is typically transmitted from one infected pig to another. In addition to direct contact with sick animals, the PED virus can be spread through people's clothing, boots, equipment, and other items contaminated with feces of infected animals. That is why any item that comes into contact with a sick animal should be thoroughly cleaned and disinfected.

The first case of PED in Canada on a swine farm was confirmed by the CFIA on January 24, 2014, in Ontario. Since then, PED has also been reported in Manitoba, Quebec and Prince Edward Island. Following that initial detection of PED in Canada, the CFIA has engaged and worked collaboratively with provincial and industry stakeholders to provide technical, diagnostic, and scientific support when needed or requested.

Mr. Chairman, there's a vaccine for the PED virus. To help industry respond to the threat posed by PED, the CFIA began issuing permits to allow veterinarians to import this vaccine for use in Canadian herds in 2014. Swine producers who are interested in vaccinating their herds should contact their veterinarians, because this vaccine is available. Under the leadership of the chief veterinary officer of Canada—my office—the CFIA regularly engages and works collaboratively with our provincial counterparts and industry stakeholders to facilitate a coordinated approach to this disease.

Mr. Chairman, four new cases of PED have been reported in Ontario in 2017. This brings the total to 103 cases in Ontario since the initial PED outbreak in 2014. In Manitoba there have been a total of 27 PED cases—the count is still out—since the initial outbreak in 2014, with 18 of them being reported this year.

As in the past, Manitoba's Department of Agriculture is the lead organization for the response to the most recent cases of PED in that province and is being supported by the pork industry. To address the current cases, Manitoba Agriculture and the Manitoba Pork Council are following the normal PED response protocol. The CFIA does play an active supporting role. The agency is monitoring the situation closely and communicating with Manitoba's chief veterinary officer.

The CFIA, Mr. Chairman, is also responsible for technical negotiations and for answering queries from any international trade partners with respect to PED so that we can maintain our market access. The CFIA currently requires pig transport trucks returning from a specific type of location in the United States to be cleaned and disinfected before entering Canada. This requirement reduces the risk of pig diseases being brought into Canada, including PED, which is widespread in the U.S.

It is important to note that, at this time, there is no confirmed link between the current PED cases in Manitoba and trucks coming back from the U.S. We understand that Manitoba continues its investigation into potential sources of infection.

Adequate biosecurity measures remain the first and best line of defence for pork producers to prevent introduction and spread of the PED virus. The CFIA will continue to assist with any monitoring, diagnostic and technical support, as needed.

We are also looking towards the future. We want to ensure we have very effective and efficient transportation protocols in place to protect livestock.

We have initiated discussions around transportation protocols to protect Canadian animals with a particular focus on truck washing.

Officials of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency will be sitting down with their provincial counterparts over the coming months to explore potential solutions related to washing trucks that cross the border.

Thank you again for this opportunity to provide insight into the CFIA's role regarding porcine epidemic diarrhea.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you very much, Dr. Kochhar.

That is the statement from the CFIA.

Mr. Dickson, perhaps you could give us an opening statement.

[Andrew Dickson, General Manager, Manitoba Pork Council]

I shared a copy of my presentation with the clerk earlier and I welcome this opportunity to address the committee. We appreciate the time and effort you're taking to meet with us and talk about this very serious disease.

I'm not going to go through all the details in my paper, but I'll try to highlight some things.

I want to emphasize what the CFIA just said here and to the media, and so on. PEDv is a disease of animals. It does not spread to human beings. It's not a food issue. We don't want people thinking they shouldn't be eating their pork chops, and so on. This is basically a disease, in the worst case, of baby pigs. Unfortunately, the mortality rate is between 80% and 100%. Essentially, the animals die of dehydration after very bad diarrhea.

The herd in Canada is essentially naive. That means there's no natural immunity to this. We don't have any antibiotics or treatment systems. The animals essentially die, and we have to deal with sick animals. Most of the older animals will recover. We're able to bring animals to the point of non-shedding, and so on, so they can be marketed.

Manitoba is the gateway to the west. We have about 340,000 sows in the province. We produce about 8 million pigs. We ship about 3 million or so to the United States and send the finished pigs—these are the big pigs—to processing plants in Manitoba. They're a big employer in the province, accounting for about 13,000 jobs, and so on. It's a critical industry.

The other thing is that we're connected directly, because of integration—it's a modern industry—with Saskatchewan and Alberta. When you think about it as a western Canada issue, we now have half the Canadian herd potentially affected by this disease. Because we ship so many weanlings to the United States, we're highly integrated into the U.S. pig production system. This disease has now become endemic in the United States.

We also differ from other parts of the country in that our barns are much larger than what you'll find in Ontario and Quebec, especially Ontario. We have 80 barns that house 80% of our sows. These are big operations. That has all kinds of implications for how we manage this disease, because it means there are large numbers of animals moving at any one moment in time between large operations.

We have a three-site system. We essentially have sow barns, nursery barns, and finisher barns. The three-site system was designed to try to minimize the amount of disease.

In 2013 this disease became endemic in the United States, or spread very rapidly. They had 300 cases a week, that sort of thing. They lost about 10 million pigs. No one really knows the real number. It had a major impact on their production and changed the market price. There was a shortage of pigs.

In Manitoba, prior to that we had engaged in a very in-depth upgrading of the biosecurity on our farms. We did extensive training with all producers and upgraded all our facilities on farms. There was special assistance from the federal government and the province through support programs to make this happen. Our industry, in turn, also upgraded things, like our wash stations, and so on. We have commercial-size livestock trailer washing operations, which are way ahead of any standard in North America.

Our board, when it saw this disease arrive, decided that we would aggressively prevent and eradicate any disease of this type entering into Manitoba. We've been very aggressive. We had 10 cases from 2014 to 2016 and were able to contain them. Nine of those cases have now been cleaned up, and one is almost at the point of being cleaned up.

Unfortunately, in 2017, since the beginning of May.... As of this morning we have two more cases, and we're up to about 22 cases now. These are all large operations. We're talking about 5,000 sows, large-scale nurseries with a capacity of 20,000, and so on.

In the paper I've described the measures we have taken. They're not pleasant; they're very hard on staff. We are running into problems in being able to contain this disease, to eradicate it, and to prevent it. There are specialized crews doing the washing. There are specialized crews doing the manure application because of the disease. In terms of the cases we now have, these 22, we're talking about 60 million gallons of liquid manure that is going to be diseased and that we have to dispose of and put on our farmland as fertilizer. We have to make sure that doesn't spread to other barns.

When you think about it, a thimble full of this disease could infect all the herd in western Canada. So we have some issues here that we have to deal with. Fortunately, in nature, the disease will degrade. If we can just get some breaks, some time here to let the barns settle down, the pigs will become non-shedding and we can get on top of this.

Regarding this trailer thing with the U.S., we have about 100 trailers a week go through the Emerson port of entry hauling pigs to the United States.

In 2014, we had a special pilot project to try to have those trailers that were going into the United States tagged at the border on their return and to go to these new, modern wash stations where we could probably clean and disinfect these things and prevent any contamination from the U.S. getting into the trailers.

What I want to portray here is that these trailers are like a little piece of Canada that goes across the border onto a U.S. farm. The pigs are chased out through a ramp into the feeder operation, and the doors are closed. We deliberately make sure there's no contamination of diseases from the United States getting into the trailer. We want to preserve that trailer—still a little piece of Canada—bring it across the border and clean it up in Canada, where we're able to contain the disease.

The disease is endemic in the United States. It's in all these wash stations. There is no certification process in the United States. We've met with their state veterinarians, and there is no regulation of their wash stations, and so on.

We, in Manitoba, can do that. We have the regulatory authority to enter into a trusted trucker program. We can certify these stations.

We're hoping that we can work something out with CFIA, as announced here. I want to emphasize that we're the gateway to western Canada. The other provinces, Saskatchewan and Alberta, are incredibly nervous about what's happening here. I was in Edmonton on Monday meeting with their councils, giving them an update of what's happening, and they're looking to us to try to get this thing contained and eradicated.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Mr. Dickson, if you could conclude, there will be lots of questions, and you can probably....

[Andrew Dickson]

In the end, we need some assistance from the CFIA to beef up our CVO's office, in terms of staff and technical help.

We need some financial help with producers for the cleanup. We're looking at $200,000 per operation to try to clean these things up. We would appreciate some help from some level of government on this thing, especially for the crews that we need for the washing and the manure application.

Then there's some long-term stuff about how we get assembly yards out of these areas, how we provide some financial assistance to producers in the long term to recover financially from their operations, and whether there could be some flexibility in the regulations.

The key one I want to go back to is this. Can we do something about the trucker program, just to try to prevent the disease from coming into Canada? We're offering it as a model for the rest of the country.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you so much for your opening remarks.

We'll start a round of questions with Mr. Anderson for six minutes.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Mr. Chair, I'm going to share my time with Mr. Maguire.

I first want to acknowledge that the committee has worked well together. There have been a couple of issues that have arisen, and we brought them forward. I just want to recognize that we've gotten a great response from the committee members and a willingness to be able to hear about these on TV.

We got a response from the government because of our hearings. With this hearing, we got a response from the minister even before we had the hearing. We hope there will be some more content once we move forward here.

I'd like to welcome Mr. Maguire and Mr. Falk to our side of the committee today. Both of them have a very personal interest in this, so I'll give my time to Mr. Maguire.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Anderson, and thank you, Mr. Chairman, for allowing this emergency meeting to be held. I appreciate the members' indulgence on this. This is a very important issue, not just in Manitoba specifically, as it's in southeast Manitoba right now, but for Canada.

Fortunately, we've been able to contain it in the other areas of Canada where it has come up before, and we need to be able to move quickly, if we can, to do whatever we can on this. I appreciate the CFIA and Manitoba Pork Council's being here this morning to make presentations.

Thank you very much.

There was one area, Mr. Kochhar, that I was wondering about. You mentioned that there was no tie to the American situation with the trucks coming back into Canada, that there was no science, no proof of that causing the present disease. What then do you think has caused this present situation that we're in?

[Dr. Harpreet Kochhar]

Mr. Chairman, in response to that, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, there are multiple factors that can cause the disease to happen. One of them would be the transport trucks. Others are animal movement, breach in biosecurity, human movement, and equipment movement, so there are multiple ways to transmit this.

There has not been any specific line of inquiry that points to any a specific aspect or line for how the disease got in or how it has been prevailing in Manitoba. What we are trying to do, as I mentioned, is to help the Manitoba government through the CVO's office.

My office is working very much in connection with them, and we've offered technical support. We are actually testing the feed samples and the other samples. We are also providing them with experts in epidemiology who are assisting them to find out. This is one of those situations where you will have to look at all the different pieces and try to piece them together to see what exactly it could have been. Was it a breach in biosecurity or, as mentioned, could it have been from a trailer program?

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Thank you very much.

You mentioned a number of things that it could be. Eliminating one of them would be very helpful. To my understanding, we should reinstate the Manitoba protocol with regard to truck washing—sealed in Manitoba, and washed at the earliest convenience in Manitoba.

I like the analogy used by Mr. Dickson with regard to the little chunk of Canada that goes down to the States, unloads the pigs, and comes back. It's very clear that we can control this. From my understanding, there are no regulations on American truck washing on that side, and we're washing in a contaminated country.

Why don't we bring those trucks back into Canada sealed and wash them locally at the nearest area? I wonder if you could both reply to that. Continue the protocol until we at least.... Maybe it's one thing we could eliminate. I ask for your indulgence on that.

[Dr. Harpreet Kochhar]

Mr. Chairman, if I may.

First and foremost, one of the things we were given was an exemption from the health of animals regulations for an interim period so that we could evaluate the washing of the trucks in the U.S. Is it ineffective or perpetuating the disease? The science tells us this virus is very fragile. If exposed to 60°C, it will lose its ability to be infectious.

Washing the truck with warm or hot water and using a disinfectant would absolutely make sure there is very little if any virus. There is never going to be zero risk, Mr. Chair, but we would substantially reduce the amount of any contamination there.

That protocol was instituted as an exemption. We re-evaluated it, shared the science, and in October 2015 we said that we would slowly be taking it to the point where we could enforce it in six months' time. In May 2016, we completely eliminated it.

If you look at the current enrolment, I don't think anything stood out. We're still doing some EPI or epidemiological analysis on whether there is any connection between the transport truck wash and the disease appearing in Manitoba.

Until now, that has been the case.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

How quickly could we implement that again if we needed to put it back in place?

[Barbara Jordan, Acting Vice-President, Policy and Programs Branch, Canadian Food Inspection Agency]

We could do it very quickly. The regulations for cleaning and disinfection at the border are there so that we can reduce risk as much as possible at the first available opportunity. That's the purpose of the regulation that requires transporters to present clean trucks at the border.

We can move quickly to change that, but we would want to make sure that such a change wouldn't be reducing our risk management.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Do you need the minister's signature to do that?

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you, Ms. Jordan.

Thank you, Mr. Maguire. Unfortunately, you are out of time.

Mr. Longfield, you have six minutes.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thanks to Mr. Maguire for bringing this to our attention and for coming here to represent his constituents in Manitoba. I'm a former Manitoban myself; I moved to Ontario about 25 years ago, so I have a bit of a Manitoba and an Ontario focus.

Is OMAFRA dealing with the outbreak in Ontario, where the numbers have been higher? Is there some learning from Ontario being applied to Manitoba? What's CFIA's role in trying to look at the different provincial approaches being taken to this disease?

[Dr. Harpreet Kochhar]

Mr. Chairman, Ontario has a total of around 103 cases, but only four cases in 2017. They very much have been managing this disease through OMAFRA and the Ontario pork industry. They have been utilizing very strict biosecurity protocols, which are industry-led. National biosecurity standards and guidelines have been developed, and they have been effectively using them to control and eradicate the disease. I would say that around 80% to 90% of the farms that were initially impacted by this are now free of the PED virus. There is learning.

The Council of Chief Veterinary Officers, which I am a member of as chief veterinary officer for Canada, shares this learning in making sure that it is appropriately extrapolated in another provincial context.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Thank you.

If there is learning, the CFIA doesn't have jurisdiction over the provincial implementation. You can just provide the information, and then it's a provincial matter after that. Am I understanding that right?

[Dr. Harpreet Kochhar]

Mr. Chairman, this is a perfectly good example where we continue to mention that it is not a federally reportable and notifiable disease. Provinces are at the forefront, along with the pork industry. To manage that, we will always stay very closely connected and provide our support in whatever shape and form is required from us.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Thanks.

Mr. Dickson, in terms of Maple Leaf in Brandon—and Maple Leaf has operations in Ontario—what role has that company played in the consultations that are going on?

[Andrew Dickson]

Maple Leaf also runs farms in Manitoba, so it is a major player in the industry. They sit on our board of directors, and we consult all the time. It's an integrated industry. We meet as an industry. You'll hear from HyLife today about how they are trying to get on top of this disease. Maple Leaf is the same way. It's one of these “But for the grace of God, they don't have a whole pile of barns infected yet.” They are very worried about the impact. This loss of baby pigs at some point is going to affect the processing capacity of the plant in Brandon, and the same applies to the plants in.... OlyWest has plants in Alberta. They are worried about where this will show up at some point, if we start losing baby pigs.

My understanding is that in Ontario—and I may be unclear on this—when they report a case, it tends to be a number of barns. One case can be two or three barns, or a single barn, depending on the type of system. In Manitoba, we report every barn as a separate case on its own, because essentially they're very large.

The other thing I should point out is the structure of the industry in Ontario. They've gone to this three-site system, but a lot of barns are still farrow-to-nursery, farrow-to-finish, and so on, so the number of movements within their system is actually reduced. They don't have the same infrastructure in place for truck washing and so on that we've built in western Canada. They have a different approach to these things.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Two things come to my mind. We had a situation with cows with bovine tuberculosis in Alberta last year, and our committee reacted to that quickly, so we are taking the same approach to this. The second thing in my mind is that this could be a trade issue; we think about cows and hoof-and-mouth disease.

Would this become a trade barrier, where we'd stop shipping pigs to the States, and therefore affect the Canadian pork producers?