Canada will have to renegotiate its export terms following confirmation that three Ontario cattle contracted the virus in August and September.
The discovery eliminated Canada’s claim to be bluetongue free, which appears on export certificates for live ruminants, embryos and semen.
Bluetongue is an immediately notifiable disease in terms of World Organization for Animal Health rules, and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency provided the necessary information once the virus was confirmed in Ontario.
“Canada suspended the issuing of our certificates because the wording was no longer accurate,” said Canadian Cattlemen’s Association general manager Rob McNabb.
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“No country that I’m aware of reactively stated that they were ceasing to take product. It was all our problem in our certificates not being accurate any more.”
Exports of live ruminants, embryos and semen to the United States and Mexico will not be affected because bluetongue is endemic in both countries.
It has also been considered endemic in British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley, which has been compartmentalized to allow Canada’s bluetongue-free claim on ruminants from the rest of the country.
Five of the six known cases of bluetongue virus in Canada in the past 30 years have been in the Okanagan, said the CCA.
The CFIA has ceased issuing export certificates until terms can be renegotiated with trading partners.
Bluetongue is a greater threat to sheep than to cattle, and Ontario sheep producers have been warned to guard against the illness as much as possible.
However, the virus is spread by a biting midge of the culicoides species and is thus hard to prevent. Bluetongue can only be spread directly by the midge and cannot be transmitted from animal to animal.
It is not a threat to humans or to food quality.
The Ontario cases are the first cases in which a specific serotype, bluetongue 13, has been found in Canada, other than in an imported animal.Ontario’s ministry of agriculture said Sept. 3 that two cattle were confirmed positive on Sept. 2 on the same farm as another animal had tested positive Aug. 7.
Bluetongue can affect sheep, goats, cattle, bison, deer and elk.
Previous cases in B.C. are considered to have come from insects that blew in from the United States, where several serotypes of the virus, including serotype 13, are considered endemic.
Cattle and goats can carry the bluetongue virus without showing outward signs, but it is a serious for sheep. That has the Canadian Sheep Federation and Ontario Sheep Marketing Agency on alert.
