Cattle producers from rural municipalities bordering Riding Mountain
National Park don’t want to get swept under the carpet and forgotten.
That’s why producers from the area pleaded with delegates at the
Association of Manitoba Municipalities annual meeting to support their
call for a clampdown on diseased animals in the park and to oppose
special disease-area zoning for the area bordering the park.
AMM delegates passed resolutions calling for the provincial and federal
governments to implement effective controls to stop the spread of
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tuberculosis from elk in the park to livestock on farms, to reinstate
regular tuberculosis testing in cattle, and to oppose the zoning of the
area bordering the park as a disease zone.
“People don’t mind testing,” said RM of Rosedale reeve Edward
Levandoski in an interview.
“But it’s the zone, the stigma, the title, that they’re objecting to.”
Manitoba lost its valuable tuberculosis-free designation from the
United States Department of Agriculture after two positive cases of
TB-infected cattle were attributed to herds in the Riding Mountain
National Park area.
That means all Manitoba breeding cattle sent to the U.S. must be tested
for TB.
Canadian Food Inspection Agency officials have been trying to develop a
plan to control the disease’s possible spread and to regain Manitoba’s
TB-free status. A key idea being discussed is creating a zone around
the park that would be considered a disease zone.
Some Manitoba cattle producers and provincial officials favour the idea.
But Kelvin Mazur, reeve of the RM of Silver Creek on the southwest
corner of the park, said other producers shouldn’t be able to draw a
line around land in a few RMs and forget about the problem.
“They won’t support us if they can put this problem into this
particular zone,” said Mazur. That isn’t right, he said, because some
parts of the RMs in question are a long way from the park. And federal
studies show that elk from the park wander beyond the immediately
surrounding RMs, so why should they be treated specially?
“Too much weight is going to fall on those producers in that area,”
said Mazur.
“It’s unfair and it’s unjust.”
The TB issue did not inspire a lot of debate, but the three TB-related
resolutions were passed with no opposition.
Garry Hill of the RM of Lakeview supported a resolution calling for
tougher federal and provincial action to control the spread of the
disease from the park.
“I think the municipalities have got to get on side and push both
levels of government to come up with a lot more than they have done
because we have a real problem,” he said.
