Evidence of meeting #64 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
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Pat Finnigan
We shall break for a couple of minutes just to change the panel, and then come back for our second hour.
Thank you.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Pat Finnigan
Welcome again.
We're going to get into our second hour of witnesses on the PED epidemic diarrhea situation in Canada. Today, with us, by video conference, Mr. Greg Douglas, vice-president, animal care, of Maple Leaf Foods Inc. Welcome, Mr. Douglas.
We also have Mr. Quintin Pearce, general manager, from P. Quintaine & Son. Welcome, Mr. Quintin.
We have Mr. Claude Vielfaure, president of HyLife Limited. Welcome, Mr. Vielfaure.
And we have Mr. Bill Rempel, chief operating officer with Steve's Livestock Transport.
Welcome to all of you. We will allow about five minutes for opening statements, if you wish, and then we'll have questions.
We can start with the video, Mr. Douglas, if you want to give your opening statement.
Greg Douglas Vice-President, Animal Care, Maple Leaf Foods Inc.
Sure, I can start.
Again, my name is Greg Douglas. I'm the vice-president of animal care with Maple Leaf Foods. I was also the chief veterinarian for Ontario during the 2014 PED situation, when we were the first province in Canada to have PED. I was also the chief veterinarian of Saskatchewan during the H1N1 crisis in 2009.
Maple Leaf is the largest animal protein company in Canada, and we have a significant pork presence in western Canada. In Manitoba, we have over 200 barns. Annually, we own 1.5 million pigs, and we process close to 4 million pigs in Canada. Biosecurity, animal health, food security, our economic health, and our trade status are very important to Maple Leaf.
What I have seen in this situation, as a former chief veterinary officer who worked closely with the CFIA and the office of the chief veterinary officer for Canada is a lack of collaboration, communication, and transparency in dealing with this outbreak. We've seen that information isn't being transmitted quickly. The federal government isn't as engaged as they should be. It was encouraging to hear Dr. Harpreet talk about providing epidemiological support, some testing support, and some biosecurity resources, but more is required.
This disease, PED, is eligible to be a regulated disease in Canada by most measures. The OIE has suggested that both Canada and the U.S. must report PED to the world authorities, and other countries that we deal with ask about our PED status. So, in fact, the notion that it's merely a provincially regulated disease isn't necessarily a very good argument.
I was encouraged to hear Andrew Dickson's comments. I think what we're seeing in Manitoba is a situation where producers aren't being attentive to biosecurity, to cleaning and disinfection, and to being proactive before they're spreading the disease and moving animals. The only way we can get ahead of this is the same way we did in Ontario. We often had town halls, communications between producers, and provided them all kinds of support with biosecurity, information, and technical support at the farms. We worked closely with our processors to stream healthy animals through to the processing system. It will be critical that we work together.
Vaccines have not been shown to be efficacious quite yet. There are some that might be in the pipeline shortly, and I'm glad to hear Dr. Kochhar talk about their availability. It will be critical in the coming months that we work together, that more resources be available both at the human level and maybe the monetary level, and that people be more engaged than they have been if we're going to get ahead of this disease. As Mr. Dickson suggested, a lot is at stake going into fall and winter of 2017 with our partners in Saskatchewan and Alberta, and also across the country.
We were successful in Ontario because we worked together. We didn't understand the complete situation coming from the U.S., but we worked with our producers. Our producers were engaged, they made good decisions, and they were responsible. Until that happens in Manitoba, we'll continue to be frustrated.
I think that's all I have to say for now.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Pat Finnigan
Thank you, Mr. Douglas.
Now we'll go to Mr. Pearce, for five minutes.
Quintin Pearce General Manager, P. Quintaine & Son Ltd.
Good afternoon. My name is Quintin Pearce. I am the general manager of P. Quintaine & Son Ltd. We are livestock order buyers that procure sows and boars from western Canada.
We are a Canadian family-owned business that has been operating since 1968. We have a buying station in Red Deer, Alberta, and two buying stations in Manitoba. We have grown our business from a small, single-person operation to the largest Canadian buyer of cull sows and boars in Canada.
From our assembly yards to truck fleet, safe, humane handling and transportation is at the highest level of importance. Biosecurity and biocontainment have become a very important part of our business. Gone are the days when sows and boars were raised in outdoor pens. The swine industry has consolidated and become a concentrated and efficient industry. As with any living thing, large concentrations of animals will result in easier transmission of disease. This is managed by good veterinary staff, and engaged and educated barn staff, with proven processes. This results in a production system that provides high-quality pork to Canada and the world at a reasonable cost.
We are very concerned about the recent outbreaks of the PEDv virus. PEDv is of great concern and has the potential to affect domestic and export sales. It is a huge impact on the infected farms and businesses that we work with. We have and will continue to work with all levels of government to lessen the viral load that is currently in the infected areas, and we will do what is required to keep the virus out of western Canada.
As we export our purchased sows and boars to the United States, we have opted to continue to wash and disinfect, in approved washing facilities, at our own cost, all equipment returning to Canada. We are audited routinely by federal, provincial, and third-party U.S. packer-approved auditors. We have worked with all levels of government and have received funding from Growing Forward to enhance our biosecurity and biocontainment levels.
I am asking the audience gathered here to work together, as I am working with all levels of government, veterinarian, and regulatory bodies. We can and should learn from those who have been previously infected. Collaboration is key, and time is of the essence.
Claude Vielfaure President, HyLife Limited
Mr. Chair and committee members, thank you for giving us the time to present today.
My name is Claude Vielfaure. I am president of HyLife.
HyLife was founded in 1994 as a joint venture of two families and has quickly grown to become Canada's leading pork producer, producing 1.9 million hogs annually in Canada and the United States. We have live production facilities in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and North Dakota.
HyLife is a global exporter of pork products worldwide, with the head office in La Broquerie, Manitoba. HyLife also has international offices in Japan, China, Mexico, and the United States. We own a processing facility that processes 1.7 million hogs a year. We currently employ 1,900 people across Manitoba and Saskatchewan, and across the company.
Our operations are vertically structured to encompass all facets of hog production, including wash facilities and baking bays, which we've invested $1.5 million into in the last two years because of PED and in trying to get better biosecurity.
We have feed mill facilities. We have transportation fleets for movement of feed and livestock. We have a construction company, a manure management company that applies manure according to government regulations, and a manufacturing and distribution centre for farm supplies.
You have had some education already on PED, but certainly our production system is three-site production. We have maternities; the piglets are born there. We move them to a nursery site, which is a second site. Then we move them to a finishing site, which is where we raise them to market hogs. Certainly, PED affects all sites and creates lots of virus shedding that reinfects barns in the area, which has been a huge concern of ours. It causes mortality in piglets, as we've heard today.
One important thing to say again is that PED cannot be transmitted to humans or contaminate the human food supply. Let's be clear on that.
As of yesterday, when I had done my presentation, we had 28 outbreaks. Unfortunately, there were two more last night and probably two more were confirmed this morning, so we're at 32.
HyLife has been affected severely by PED in the last month. We have three sow sites, including 7,000 sows; nursery sites, with 25,000 spaces; and finishing sites of 40,000 spaces. So we have 72,000 spaces and 11 sites that have been affected in the last month. It's been a struggle.
Regarding biosecurity challenges, in the past we have been able to control PED outbreaks at our sites. We had one last year. We were very successful in quickly eradicating the disease. However, this year the virus is spreading faster and is more widespread, which has created a lot of virus shedding and has impacted surrounding sites at an alarming rate.
Although we are maintaining strong biosecurity protocols, in most instances, we believe the virus is being spread not by direct link to pig movements, but by air. There have been signs that show the virus does now spread by air. We've actually put some fences between some sites to see. When the wind was blowing, we swabbed the fence and saw that the fence was contaminated with PED. The only way that could have happened was by air. Unfortunately, that's hard to control.
In terms of containment strategies, extra measures are currently being taken to try to contain the spread of the disease by dedicating personnel and equipment to positive sites, for example, livestock trucks and feed trucks. This has caused a lot of challenges within the company to ensure that we have enough equipment dedicated to positive sites to prevent the spread of the disease.
We have enhanced communication strategies to all staff throughout our organization to elevate the biosecurity protocols to educate our staff and to express the associated risks with the disease.
We've had great support from the chief veterinary office in Manitoba. They are putting five-kilometre buffer zones around the sites that become positive. They do weekly testing, and we are on top of all the positive sites as soon as we can be.
In terms of future concerns and challenges, there are supply chain disruptions for us, as we're a vertically integrated company. The spread of PED has caused a significant gap in our production, which will impact hog supply to our HyLife Foods processing facility. As of yesterday, we believe that we've lost 21,000 pigs already to PED, and that will have a direct impact on marketing our pork to our customers. Gaps in production as a result of PED present competitive disadvantages and challenges to our domestic and international customers as far as being able to supply them with pork is concerned.
As for our asks, there is the trusted trucker program to seal the trailers at the U.S. border before the trailers come into Manitoba.
I have a clarification on washing and so on. You can wash a trailer to different levels. You can wash a trailer and it's still half-dirty. You can wash a trailer so that it's very clean.
Our company in Manitoba—but I know a lot of companies in the United States will talk about this too—does a third-party audit of the trailers. Once they are cleaned, washed, and disinfected, we do some swabbing. Then we have a third party come to look to make sure that the washing has been done properly. That's very important. I'm sure that's not being done in the U.S. at most facilities, and it's a real concern.
Washing the trailers at the border is not only for PED; it's for future diseases, for the future of the industry. There are a lot of diseases in the U.S. There are different strains of common pig diseases that we don't want to bring across the border.
President, HyLife Limited
Okay, I'll just wrap up.
The second thing is to continue to support the CVO office. They have been very helpful. They are running out of resources and testing, and we need continued support of them.
Liberal
Bill Rempel Chief Operating Officer, Steve's Livestock Transport
Mr. Chairman and committee members, thank you for the opportunity to present here the challenges we are facing with PED in Manitoba, and the fear that lies in the rest of western Canada because we're so integrated.
My name is Bill Rempel, and I'm with Steve's Livestock Transport. We are a for-hire livestock transporter. We operate 130 trucks that are on the road on any given day. We have about 400 employees. Eighty per cent of our cargo is hogs. About 70% of that originates out of the Manitoba area, a lot of it in the southeast area. We have terminals in southeastern Manitoba in Blumenort, right where the hot zone is; in western Manitoba in Brandon; and in central Alberta in Red Deer. The majority of our transport is in western Canada, but we go into the United States as well.
The current challenge we are facing as a transporter is severe, and it seems to be growing by the day. There are definitely some concerns in our organization as far as the different effects it's having. One of them that hasn't been talked about a lot is the emotional toll it takes on people. Even though we're not directly involved in hog production, we are very impacted by this challenge. With every farm that breaks, there are new zones declared, which means there are logistical challenges and changes for us and for where our trucks move. There is heightened biosecurity and scrutiny on our people who are doing the work every day.
The toll and the challenge have been particularly on our logistics staff, our drivers, and our wash employees. A lot of effort is going into route planning. We have had several cases where our trucks are literally sitting at a farm waiting for directions from the different parties, from the CVO, with regard to what route they'll take to leave from there.
There is a lot of work and there are a lot of slowdowns happening. A lot of people are working seven days a week to try to make sure we stay on top of this. People are getting tired. When there needs to be this level of heightened awareness and biosecurity that people need to stay on top of, it concerns us.
The other challenge we run into is an equipment shortage. We've made the decision to isolate where trailers go and to use specific trailers for high-risk sites. They don't go out of that area; they can only be used there. That effects our efficiencies and utilization of equipment. We can't use those trailers in other areas, so that's created an equipment shortage with regard to trailers.
Since the outbreak, cleaning, disinfecting, and mechanical drying of trailers has significantly expanded. As I referred to before, there are different levels of cleaning. It's been ramped up significantly, and the frequency has gone up to the point where, today, our wash facility in Blumenort, Manitoba, is at capacity. We're operating four shifts. We run seven days a week, 24 hours a day, and we're running at capacity.
As a reference, generally, on average, it takes about three hours for two people to go through the C and D process for a trailer. It's a lengthy timeframe. All the extra work that goes into this, along with the reduced utilization, has created some limitations, and it is having a financial impact on our organization as well.
What we have done as an organization so far is segregate the trailers from high-risk sites. We limit where our trucks go. We are in western Canada, so we have a terminal in Alberta. Trucks there would haul animals back and forth. We've limited where they're allowed to go. Obviously, we've reviewed and updated our biosecurity protocols. We continually adjust and limit routes, and we are looking at how we can expand our washing facility.
Since 2013 when the PED virus was first detected in North America, we—and the industry as a whole—have invested heavily to protect ourselves from the PED virus. We have spent millions to expand washing. We designed thermal-assisted drying, which is high heat drying. We bring the temperature of the trailers to 165°F to 170°F. Research has shown that if we keep it there for a minimum of 12 minutes, it will kill the virus.
There is a lot that has gone into that. We haven't sat idly by and hoped for the best. We've been very active, and the industry has been very active in trying to control the spread of the virus.
I appreciate your taking the time to hear us. The ask on our part, and certainly what could help us, would be to implement the trusted trucker program. That would do three things for us.
First, it would reduce the risk. Today, we are washing in the U.S., so when those trailers hit the border they're clean, but the industry is washing them again, so we are going through the complete process again on the Canadian side. That tells you that the wash in the U.S. isn't trusted. The industry doesn't trust it, so we are doing it twice. We strongly feel that it would reduce the risk.
Second, it would free up equipment—instead of going out of route, washing the trailers in the U.S., bringing them back, and washing them again.
It would certainly reduce the risk, improve our utilization of the equipment, and reduce costs.
Thank you for your time.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Pat Finnigan
Thank you.
We'll get right into our question round.
Mr. Anderson, you have six minutes.
Conservative
David Anderson Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm going to share with Mr. Falk.
I just want to touch on one question about the trucking and the cleaning. Is a compromise solution a high-tech cleaning facility at the Emerson border crossing? Do you support that? I guess this is for the three gentlemen at the table. Is that a compromise solution that would assist here and do some of these things, like reducing risk, reducing costs, and freeing up the equipment and opportunity? The truck and transportation companies—
Chief Operating Officer, Steve's Livestock Transport
It's certainly an option. We are about an hour from the border, just over an hour from where there is a facility today that is audited and inspected, and also where the clean trailers are tested.
Conservative
David Anderson Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK
HyLife, what would be your position on something like that?
President, HyLife Limited
When we sell pigs to the U.S., we use third party trucking. Internally, when we move our pigs within Manitoba and Saskatchewan, we use our own trucks, so our truck and wash base is centrally located for that transfer.
Conservative
David Anderson Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK
You have your own cleaning facility that you're happy with.
President, HyLife Limited
Yes, but that's not trucks coming back from the U.S.
Conservative
David Anderson Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK
I have one other question, and then I'll turn it over to Mr. Falk.
What is the CFIA concerned about with the trusted trucker program? What are you failing to negotiate with them on that issue? Is it an issue of trust—trucks come across the border and we have to know that this is happening? What is the issue there?
Chief Operating Officer, Steve's Livestock Transport
The requirement today is that it be clean when it arrives back at the border. That's the requirement the way it is stated today; otherwise, we wouldn't be allowed to return into Canada.
Conservative
Ted Falk Conservative Provencher, MB
Thank you, Mr. Anderson.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for allowing me to participate in the discussion here this morning, at this committee. I thank all the committee members for attending and for agreeing to an emergency meeting.
Thank you to our witnesses, as well.
I was very happy to hear Dr. Kochhar state earlier—and I think it's important that Canadians know this—that it is not a food safety or a public health issue. This is an issue for the pork industry that affects our production. That's the issue we are dealing with, and not an issue of food safety.
I want to go over the protocol a bit.
Mr. Vielfaure, Mr. Rempel, and Mr. Pearce, all three of them, have facilities in my riding, and I am familiar with them. Actually, after Mr. Vielfaure's dad was done being an MLA in the province, he helped the boys, and there was the odd time or two, when I was in the industry, when his dad delivered piglets to my facilities, so I have some experience in the industry as well, having been a producer in the past.
We have very strict biosecurity standards in our industry in Manitoba, and that's something that you guys are always working to improve. My understanding is that when you take a load of piglets to the United States, you drop them off at a facility, at a farm, that is presumably virus-free. Your preference is to do what we did in the past, under the special trusted truck protocol: come to the border, seal those trailers, and take them directly to a certified washing station, where they are hot-washed, disinfected, and high-heat dried.
The protocol was changed in December. We had that protocol implemented in 2014, when we had an outbreak. It seems to have addressed that situation, and now, after that protocol was relaxed and changed, we have a flare-up of PED again.
The problem is this. When you deliver these pigs to a site in the States, your only point of contact is the rear gate of that trailer, and that's minimal contact. Then you drive straight back to the border, you get sealed, and you come back into Canada. When you are being forced to go to a truck wash facility in the United States that is not certified or regulated, they use a firehose approach without high heat; all they do is sprinkle it and rinse it out so it looks clean and satisfies the requirements at the border. As a result, you've really exposed yourself not only to recycled water, which is a common practice down there, but also to a site where all kinds of trailers come from industry and Iowa. We heard before, from the chief veterinary officer, that there is much more of an epidemic of PED in the United States. You've been on a site where there is contamination already, so all kinds of parts of that truck now get infected.
Is that the issue that we're talking about?
