Manitoba’s pork producers are welcoming Canada’s new African Swine Fever (ASF) zoning agreement with Japan.
The Government of Canada and the Government of Japan have announced an agreement on the mutual recognition of containment zones in the event of an outbreak of African Swine Fever, an internationally reportable disease that has devastated swine herds around the world.
Cam Dahl, the General Manager of Manitoba Pork, says the detection of African Swine Fever in Canada would be catastrophic.
If we get an ASF outbreak without a zoning agreement, our borders close and we can’t export any pork and we can’t export any live animals. In Manitoba’s case, that’s 90 percent of the 8.5 million animals we raise every year. So, closing the borders would be devastating to the industry and, quite frankly, would be a severe hit to the provincial economy.
What zoning agreements mean is that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency sets up a containment zone around a site, say it’s a five-or ten-kilometer circle, and proves to our trading partners that the disease and the outbreak is contained within that zone. When that happens, the rest of the country can continue to trade. So, the zoning agreement significantly reduces the risk of long-term economic impacts from an outbreak.
Right now, with Japan, we have between 65 and 70 percent of our export markets with an agreement in place. That is critically important and that includes markets like the United States, like the Philippines, Singapore, there’s eight countries now that we have agreements with.
We’re getting up to that point where, again, we can rapidly reopen the borders to some of our major markets. That’s especially important for a country like Japan, which of course is Manitoba’s largest customer for pork.
~ Cam Dahl, Manitoba Pork
Dahl says keeping the lines of trade and supply chains open in the event of an outbreak will help save farms, jobs and communities throughout the province.
