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.