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.
Conservative
Ted Falk Conservative Provencher, MB
Your request is actually very simple: you would like this trusted truck and trailer protocol to be reinstated.
Conservative
Ted Falk Conservative Provencher, MB
As an industry, you have other issues with slowing down the contamination in the province or the spread of a disease, but you believe that since that protocol changed....
Well, the evidence shows that there has been an increase. The scientific evidence isn't there to make a direct linkage, but the data is there.
President, HyLife Limited
That's right. I think there are two components to it. There's the trusted trucker program, keeping the disease out of the province. That's important. However, it's not always absolute. If something does come in—and I'm talking about other diseases, too—then we can control it. With this reportable PED, the chief veterinary officer has been very helpful in doing that with us.
Conservative
Ted Falk Conservative Provencher, MB
In addition to that, you're asking for assistance from the government and resources to clean up some of the contaminated sites. I think Mr. Dickson said there's 20 million gallons of manure that needs to be disposed of, and that will need to be done before October.
President, HyLife Limited
That's right. It's a strain on equipment. We have just the amount of equipment to do all the work. Once you have positive sites, you want to dedicate that equipment to those positive sites only, so they're not being used as efficiently as we could. Bringing it to negative sites would just spread the disease.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Pat Finnigan
Thank you, Mr. Vielfaure; and thank you, Mr. Falk.
Now we'll go to Mr. Longfield for six minutes.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
Thanks, Mr. Chair. I thought I was next after Mr. Peschisolido.
What I'm hearing is that the airborne disease is something new. Trailers haven't been confirmed yet as a source of disease.
President, HyLife Limited
Definitely, if they're not cleaned properly, trailers are probably the number one way to transfer disease. Live pigs are going into trailers, and if there were infected pigs in the trailer before that, the chances of them getting infected if it's not washed perfectly is very high.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
The sealing at the border is one of the things I had wondered about from the previous testimony. Let's say somebody drops off some pigs at one of the stations in the States. Maybe the trailer is used to shuttle some pigs between other operations, which we would never know about, and could be contaminated in some different ways, with different diseases. However, at some point we need to seal those trailers.
Should they be sealed at drop off, or should they be sealed at the border?
Chief Operating Officer, Steve's Livestock Transport
We, as transporters, are not allowed to carry freight in the U.S. We can't go from point of loading and unloading. That's against the regulations in the U.S. We're not allowed to do that.
That is an option, but I think there's a control point at the border. I think that's why that was so effective.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
I was trying to get to that control point and thinking that if the high contamination is with piglets in the States, then we have to somehow isolate that as well. That's done just by regulations at this point.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
Maple Leaf, thank you for joining us. In terms of management of this, with smaller operators, are there some variables there that we need to look at in terms of size of operations? Is there anything that Maple Leaf has been working on with CFIA to try to solve the problem?
Vice-President, Animal Care, Maple Leaf Foods Inc.
Not at this point. We have been concentrating on our own barns and enhancing our own biosecurity in the five buffer zones.
When I was in Ontario with OMAFRA, we did have biosecurity support from CFIA. They came to help us with the smaller producers that we had in Ontario. You raise a really good point that CFIA has biosecurity expertise that they could bring to bear in Manitoba to help smaller producers with cleaning and disinfection, with the nuances of biosecurity, such that they could help keep the larger system clean.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
Thank you. What form would that take? Would it mean some people from Ontario coming to Manitoba from CFIA, people who have had experience, or some people from Maple Leaf? Is there some type of partnership opportunity there?
Vice-President, Animal Care, Maple Leaf Foods Inc.
CFIA has the resources. When they deal with federally reportable diseases, such as avian influenza or chronic wasting disease in western Canada, they actually come into a farm and they will work with the producer on cleaning and disinfection.
CFIA has them in Ontario, but they have them throughout Canada. Certainly there are resources in British Columbia that could be brought into Manitoba to help these producers.
It's not just a matter of helping them; it's controlling and providing the right solvents for producers to use and how to use them. It's highly technical. Companies such as Maple Leaf and HyLife do it all day long in their plants and on their farms, but smaller producers just don't have that. They're getting frustrated and they need help; they need some communication.
They know who to call. The chief veterinarian in Manitoba has done a great job, and I'll be talking to her probably in the next hour. However, the federal government has to re-engage on animal health with the farming community and with processors.
I know you've heard us speak about it before, that in terms of animal health broadly, whether it's FMD or classical swine fever, all these diseases are really important and CFIA has to take a bigger and more present role.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
Very good. Thank you.
We did look at the transport of animals in a previous study, and this probably fits within that whole thing, in terms of the range of transport and some of the regulations around that, and animal care during transport.
Vice-President, Animal Care, Maple Leaf Foods Inc.
It does, yes. We have looked at that before.
In Manitoba, we have a very engaged industry. It's a larger industry. Being responsible, we have resources that are dedicated to making sure that animals are transported humanely, but part of that is also making sure that they're transported with the best biosecurity possible. Working with producers is an ongoing issue for both the industry and governments.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
Terrific.
Going back to the panel here, on the number of outbreaks, do we have a sense of the size of the operations? Does the size of operations matter? Are they being found in some particular styles of operations versus others? Are there any correlations there?
President, HyLife Limited
There's no real correlation between size and disease. It can hit any pig. It could be two pigs in a facility or 10,000 pigs in a facility. But the amount of shedding of the virus once that facility gets sick is obviously a lot more when there are a lot more animals. The virus becomes airborne and there's lots of virus to infect surrounding sites.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
Since 2014, we haven't been looking at airborne transmission and at other ways of transmitting—
President, HyLife Limited
There's been science in the U.S. showing that the virus will carry over 10 miles in perfect conditions.