There’s still work to be done, but Saskatchewan elk breeders say they have turned the corner in the costly fight against chronic wasting disease.
Bob Kirkpatrick, president of the Saskatchewan Elk Breeders Association, told association members that the province has gone a year without a positive case of CWD found in farmed elk.
Since CWD was discovered in Canada in the late-1990s, more than 8,300 farmed cervids, mostly elk, have been slaughtered across the country in an attempt to eradicate the disease.
More than two years ago, Saskatchewan introduced a provincial CWD surveillance system aimed at controlling the disease and eliminating infected animals from domestic herds.
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Today, all licensed elk producers in Saskatchewan are required by law to participate in the program.
The year-long break suggests the measures are paying dividends, Kirkpatrick said.
“Our surveillance program was set up to be tough and it took a lot of courage and hard work from all the producers to make that program work the way it did.” he said. “Now we’re seeing the results and that’s the exciting part.”
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency believes CWD’s incubation period is 36 months. That means that if an animal becomes infected, it will show clinical symptoms within three years.
In Saskatchewan, the majority of producers are now entering their third year of surveillance under the mandatory provincial program, Kirkpatrick said. If producers can maintain their disease-free status for another year, the likelihood that CWD will reappear in farmed elk will diminish further.
Meanwhile, a federal certification program aimed at ensuring the disease-free status of Canadian elk and opening the U.S. border to live animal exports from Canada is receiving mixed reviews from Saskatchewan producers.
At their annual general meeting March 6-8 in Saskatoon, several SEBA members said certain requirements under Canada’s voluntary herd certification program would be costly and impossible to fulfill, especially for large elk producers whose operations cover vast areas of rangeland and forest.
Under the federal surveillance plan, producers in the first two years of the five-year program would be required to submit for testing the heads of all animals found dead on their farms.
For large producers, finding dead elk and submitting the animals’ heads before the brain tissue deteriorates is next to impossible, said Saskatchewan producer Ryan Clark.
If the brain tissue deteriorates too much, the heads are untestable and producers are no longer in compliance with the federal certification program.
Brian Peart, a CFIA veterinarian, acknowledged the plan imposes strict guidelines that some producers would have difficulty following.
But he emphasized the future of the Canadian elk industry hinges on the country’s ability to ensure that Canadian elk meet the most stringent surveillance criteria.
“Some of these producers will really have to change their management styles and that’s the biggest problem with the system,” Peart said.
“A lot of producers have very extensive operations, where they run their animals in bush or on land that’s hard to monitor. The biggest problem with the system is that they have to be able to (submit) 100 percent of the heads from animals that die and in the summer, (when brain tissue deteriorates more rapidly), they have to do it very quickly to ensure the heads can be tested.”
The federal surveillance system is a voluntary program that the CFIA is developing.
It would include many of the same requirements as the provincial plan, but would also impose stricter penalties on producers who fail to meet certain conditions, such as performing annual herd inventories or submitting all heads for testing.
Peart said the federal surveillance program is designed to meet or exceed the standards of an American herd certification program that is expected to be in place by this fall or early next year.
“At this stage in the game we can’t say that every game farm in Saskatchewan is free of CWD,” Peart said.
“We’re close, but we’re not quite there yet. By participating in the voluntary program, the producer can say to other producers who might want to buy breeding animals, ‘I’m in this program. I’ve been in it for two years and I’ve tested 100 percent of my heads.’ ”
Some producers at the SEBA meeting said the CFIA’s surveillance program is another example of federal officials placing unrealistic regulatory controls on the livestock industry. They said it is a waste of time and money to try to control a disease that is not fully understood by scientists and has not been linked to human health problems.
Control efforts are complicated by the discovery of CWD in the province’s wild deer population, they said.
Saskatchewan producers who enter the federal program must inform Saskatchewan Agriculture of their intentions by March 31.
For more details on the CFIA’s voluntary herd certification program, visit the Western Producers’ website at www.producer.com and click on Links in the News.
