Four Saskatchewan farms that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency has declared highly contaminated with chronic wasting disease have been reassessed to allow producers to grow grain and hay on the land as long as it’s not fed to deer and elk.
“While that land is under quarantine, we are concerned about feeding it to the most susceptible species,” said George Luterbach, the CFIA’s chief veterinarian.
“They can harvest feed grain or hay on those farms as long as they do not feed it to cervids.”
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When designing its CWD policy in 2000, the CFIA talked to world experts about how to best clean up infected areas. The agency was told that deer reintroduced to some American research stations where CWD had been present continued to contract the disease, despite researchers’ best efforts to clean up the area.
“Under certain circumstances the environment may become so contaminated that it could also independently be a source of the disease,” Luterbach said.
Based on that information, the CFIA divided farms where CWD had been found into “minimally contaminated” and “highly contaminated.”
Farm that were designated minimally contaminated, where the disease was caught early, could be cleaned up and released from quarantine to raise any livestock, including deer and elk, without restrictions.
Because the prion that causes the disease is virtually indestructible, and scientists still don’t know how the disease is spread, CFIA would not allow the four farms deemed highly contaminated to be released from quarantine.
“We do have a duty of care that in the lack of science to err on the side of being cautious,” Luterbach said.
“The other industries, the bison and cattle industries, asked us to be careful.”
Because of the severe restrictions placed on the farms, federal officials paid them another visit to determine if some of the land wasn’t “highly contaminated.”
“When we went back in on two of farms, we found that indeed there was a difference,” he said.
“We were able to release the quarantine on half their land. The size of the quarantine was substantially reduced.”
Two of the producers resumed farming with bison, and another with cattle. One of them did not want to resume farming.
Last week, a decision was made to allow the farmers to grow grain on the land, as long as it’s not fed to cervids.
“We went back and worked with plant health and our seed specialist and indeed we found there would be no restriction in marketing grain from a farm under quarantine for an animal disease.”
Now only a part of each of farm remains under quarantine to allow them to be a little more self-sufficient.
