A Saskatchewan bison producer wants the federal government to crack down on him.
Terry Laturnus said one of his bulls has tested positive for Johne’s disease, a debilitating inflammation of the intestinal tract.
But try as he might, he can’t convince the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to take an interest in controlling the contagious disease on his farm.
“Why are you letting me spread this disease?” the Trapping Lake farmer said.
“I keep telling them – why don’t you stop me? Why don’t you quarantine my yard?”
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CFIA’s answer is that Johne’s was taken off their list of reportable diseases more than two decades ago.
“Efforts to control or eradicate it didn’t prove very successful,” said senior program specialist Marie Koller.
She said there are lots of diseases like Johne’s that are prevalent in livestock herds, but there is no federal government program to eradicate them.
It’s expensive to tack another disease onto the CFIA’s list of about 30 reportable diseases, she added, especially when it is common in a wide variety of species.
“We don’t have the scientific tools, the resources nor the mandate to tackle this disease at this time.”
She said chronic wasting disease was recently added to the list, but CWD isn’t the same as Johne’s. There are good tests in place for CWD, it is more manageable and there is an international mandate to do something about it.
Laturnus said it’s unfair and dangerous to make producers clean up their own herds.
“The government tells us to diversify and then when we do diversify and we run into a problem, they turn their back on us and say, ‘well, too bad, you’re on your own, we can’t help you with that.’ “
He said he will likely have to kill both his bulls.
The second one hasn’t been tested, but it is displaying the same weight loss and diarrhea symptoms as the positive bull. Laturnus estimates it will cost $8,000 to replace the two animals.
He also has 44 calves, which could get the disease through contact with the bulls’ manure. Laturnus isn’t sure what he’s going to do with those animals come marketing time in November.
“The financially right thing for me to do to keep my farm afloat and keep from going belly up is to sell off these animals, slough them off in the market and get the disease the hell out of my yard.”
The Saskatchewan Bison Association isn’t impressed by that approach. It also doesn’t support Laturnus’s plea to put Johne’s disease back on CFIA’s list.
“That’s a double-edged sword because it has a fairly heavy economic impact,” said executive director Leon Brin.
He said the cost of compensating beef, bison, sheep and other livestock producers for killed animals could be staggering.
“I can’t imagine what the ultimate bill would be.”
Brin said the association is working with Saskatchewan Agriculture to get a handle on the disease’s prevalence in the province’s bison herd and its economic impact.
A two-year project launched earlier this year will analyze blood and fecal samples from 1,000 animals that are at least two years old.
Brin said the association hopes to use the results to educate bison producers about the disease’s impact and tell them how they can best control it on their farms.
“Our aim is to get producers as knowledgeable about the disease as possible so as to see if we can’t create a Johne’s-free province as it relates to bison.”
Laturnus has already learned more about the disease than he cared to. But there are still things he doesn’t understand.
“Why are we waiting to let this disease get out of hand in a small industry? We’re going to have the same problem as CWD in elk.”
