SWIFT CURRENT, Sask. – It’s not a human health issue, nor is it particularly production limiting, but foot-and-mouth disease has the potential to grind Canadian beef trade to a halt.
Dr. Greg Douglas, Saskatchewan’s chief veterinary officer, said that possibility always exists and would be catastrophic for the industry.
He and other provincial and state officials will meet in July at the Cross Border Livestock Health Conference in Portland, Oregon, to discuss how they would deal with an outbreak of foot and mouth.
Read Also
Land crash warning rejected
A technical analyst believes that Saskatchewan land values could be due for a correction, but land owners and FCC say supply/demand fundamentals drive land prices – not mathematical models
“I think the threat is real,” he said in an interview after a presentation at the Saskatchewan Stock Growers Association conference.
“We have to make sure we have rational policy at the international level as it relates to this disease.”
He said meat is illegally exported every day, and it is likely that uncooked pork sausage is sitting on a dock in Canada right now.
“It’s highly contagious and it exists around the world,” Douglas said.
Foot and mouth causes a short-term fever and blister-like sores around the mouths and teats and between the hoofs. It also can come and go within a couple of days, leaving cattle that appear fine.
Douglas said he believes the disease is not as production limiting as bovine viral diarrhea.
However, it is a trade limiting disease.
“The politics of FMD have a long history,” he said. “Every effort would be made by a trading country, a country that is dependent on export trade, to manage it, control it and ultimately eradicate it.”
Canada, the United States, New Zealand, Australia and Chile are all considered free of foot and mouth.
Japan has implemented an eradication plan, and South Korea began an unprecedented vaccination program earlier this year after an outbreak that saw 3.3 million head of pigs and cattle worth $2.6 billion killed in an attempt to prevent the disease from spreading.
The U.S. has legislation preventing trade with countries that have foot and mouth.
Douglas said it would be a national disaster if the disease were discovered in Canada, which is why the preparatory exercise in Portland is important. The last outbreak was in what is now north Regina in 1952.
“Decisions that get made when we have a detection aren’t always the best,” he said.
Douglas believes progress will come at the international level because the world needs food.
North American decision makers shouldn’t overreact in the event of an outbreak or in their planning for the possibility of one.
“We just need to communicate with our American partners as to what the systems are in place and how we can make them better without creating a bureaucracy that isn’t helpful now,” he said.
“That’s always the danger.”
