Trade sword hangs over pork industry

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

AgMedia Inc.

by BETTER FARMING STAFF

It will take at least a week to grasp how severely the discovery of H1N1 type A flu in an Alberta farrow-to-finish swine operation will affect Canadian pork exports, says Wilma Jeffray, chair of Ontario Pork.

Saturday, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency announced it found the flu virus in hogs at an Alberta operation, transmitted by a worker who recently holidayed in Mexico.

Some countries have reacted with trade measures. China today confirmed it had banned pork from Alberta. Russia has banned pork from Ontario, Nova Scotia and British Columbia. Singapore has increased testing of all North American pork products. 

To date, however, Canada’s largest markets, Japan and the United States, have not imposed trade restrictions.

In a statement issued Saturday, federal Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz said that U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has assured “that Canadian hog producers will continue to have access to the American market.”

Jeffray says about 10 per cent of the Alberta farm’s 2,000-head showed symptoms of the strain. The animals have recovered. The agency has quarantined the barn and continues testing.

Jeffray calls the quarantine “precautionary.” With the strain circulating in the human population, “they just felt in the interests of transparency that they would report this finding,” she says. The flu strain has spread to 21 countries and is implicated in 26 deaths, most in Mexico where it was first identified. The World Health Organization and many other national and international health organizations have emphasized the flu can’t be transmitted through the consumption of properly prepared pork products.

How countries process information about the outbreak at the Alberta farm over the next few days will determine whether this situation follows the same path as the BSE crisis, Jeffray says. In 2003, several countries closed their borders to Canadian cattle exports after the discovery of BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) in an Albertan cow.

“It’s clearly a tremendous risk to Canada if the U.S. border does become closed,” says Ken McEwan, a University of Guelph professor specializing in agricultural economics. In 2008, Canadian producers shipped 8.9 million live animals south of the border.

He predicts the United States will hold off taking action as long as possible “to make sure that indeed there’s a substantial case to be had and risk.”

However, BSE has shown it could take a long time to reopen closed borders, he says.

He predicts the greatest impact will be at the farm level because of “less demand and lower prices.” BF