The Alberta cattle industry has received a $40 million boost to eliminate BSE from the provincial herd.
The federal and provincial government money will be used to help abattoirs, renderers, packing plants and companies that destroy or contain SRMs to deal with the cost of complying with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s tougher feed ban.
All specified risk material must be removed from all animal feed, pet food and fertilizers by July 12.
The $19.8 million federal contribution is part of an $80 million commitment to SRM removal programs across the country. The province contributed $20 million.
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Gerald Hauer, assistant chief provincial veterinarian, said the Alberta programs are designed to ensure that the proper infrastructure is in place to remove or destroy SRMs, which are tissues that can harbour BSE.
“It’s heavily based on infrastructure development for the industry,” Hauer said.
“We want to ensure the proper infrastructure is in place to handle SRMs and reduce cost back to the industry as a whole.”
SRMs are animal byproducts thought to be the most likely vectors for BSE spread, such as spinal cord and brain tissue.
Alberta’s SRM removal programs were designed for different streams of the livestock business. The provincial abattoir funding program gives abattoirs two options:
- Receive money for infrastructure such as building an incinerator to eliminate SRMs and send the rest of the offal to a rendering facility.
- Choose a per head payout for a specific period of time to help offset the cost of cattle waste disposal.
Hauer said the program’s 18 month length is designed to help the cattle industry until other options of dealing with SRMs become available.
“It gives them an adaptation period. It’s cushioning the blow, softening the economic cost to figure out other solutions.”
The program is also designed to develop new technologies to better deal with SRMs.
“Those new technologies will be available about the time the cushion is taken away. By the time you take the cushion away you have some options,” Hauer said.
A rendering facility may use the money to offset the cost of building a dedicated line for dealing with SRM material and still have value in the rest of the offal material.
“That’s one of our main objectives out of this whole program is to stimulate or support techniques, technologies, processes that extract the value out of SRMs,” he said.
Rob Meijer of Cargill Meats said the company is working with CFIA to develop ways to deal with SRMs in cattle older than 30 months at the company’s federally inspected facility in High River, Alta.
He said the plant will be ready by the July 12 deadline, but believes a backup system needs to be in place in case of unforeseen troubles or issues.
“We’re dealing with a policy, and travelling down a road, we’ve never been down before,” Meijer said.
However, he also said programs shouldn’t overly burden producers or the industry but be paid for by everyone, including consumers.
