In the world of international travel and commerce, disease can move almost as fast as money. That applies to people and to animals.
It appears Canada’s problems with Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, better known as SARS, are finally under control, more or less. This “imported” disease has led to 245 probable cases and 34 deaths. Success has come because of hard work by highly devoted medical people in Toronto and elsewhere.
Unfortunately, we haven’t controlled bovine spongiform encephalopathy. There is no question in this scribe’s mind that BSE poses a serious threat. Its economic impact on livestock producers has been devastating.
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But current practice for dealing with this disease – kill and compensate – is problematic. Workers with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency have organized the destruction of whole herds, and found no trace of BSE in them. That’s a questionable use of time and Canadian taxpayers’ money. Nobody benefits when we ruin a producer’s businesses because we suspect animals in a herd may have been near another animal with BSE.
Frankly, this approach is overkill, figuratively and literally.
Are we doing this with people who get SARS and those around them? No.
Further, wholesale slaughter of healthy animals raises public concern. Even though no infected animal reached the food chain, some stores stopped selling Alberta beef after a single Alberta animal was identified as having BSE. And countries closed their borders to Canadian beef exports. Lost sales could cost producers as much as $1.13 billion. In response, governments have created a $460 million aid package. That’s in addition to compensation for destroyed animals, which may or may not cover the real value of those animals.
The aid program is too little, too late. There are other options.
1. Make sure only infected animals are slaughtered. SARS has been a problem for a few months, yet researchers have developed tests for diagnosing if people have the disease.
BSE has been around for decades. Where are the readily available tests that will tell people whether animals are infected? Lack of such tests suggests that some people are not taking BSE seriously enough. Testing for BSE could be much less expensive than paying compensation for the slaughter of animals, and support for lost producer income.
2. Work internationally. A disease that breaks out in Britain or China can have a huge impact in Canada – and quickly. Our neighbours’ problems are our problems. How much financial assistance and clinical expertise did Canada offer to Britain when BSE was first discovered there? What could we have offered to other countries that had to deal with SARS before it hit us? International efforts could limit the spread of disease to the country of origin, and perhaps the site of origin.
These changes would require a new and higher commitment to, and acceptance of, giving and receiving help from others. But these would signal a step forward in creating a moral economy, which treats animals and people carefully and fairly.
Rob Brown is a United Church minister now engaged in graduate studies on ethics. The opinions expressed in this column are not necessarily those of The Western Producer.
