It will be almost impossible to eradicate bovine tuberculosis from Manitoba’s Riding Mountain National Park elk herd, an expert on the disease told a parliamentary committee last week.
But Gary Wobeser, a professor of veterinary pathology at the University of Saskatchewan, said the disease can be controlled and its threat to local cattle herds minimized, although it will take time.
He praised a new Parks Canada plan to deal with TB as a move in the right direction. He rejected proposals by some in the cattle industry that an aggressive cull of the elk population is the best way to deal with it.
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“Reducing populations to block transmission is not an immediate process and I would not recommend a general cull,” Wobeser told MPs on the commons agriculture committee Feb. 27. “It’s going to be extremely difficult to monitor, to tell if the program has been successful, to find that last diseased animal.”
Earlier, MPs heard that Parks Canada has launched a new aggressive campaign against the disease after years of complaints from Manitoba cattle producers that the federal agency is a large part of the problem because it gives the park wilderness and its wildlife more priority than the economic health of the cattle herds around the park.
A number of herds have been quarantined over the years and some destroyed because of the spread of TB from elk to cattle. Canadian Alliance MP Howard Hilstrom, a Manitoba cattle producer, has warned that billions of dollars of cattle exports are at risk if foreign customers believe the Canadian herd is not TB free.
Alain Latourelle, chief executive officer of Parks Canada, told MPs that the agency has a plan.
It is spending $470,000 annually and employing five people full time in labs to study elk carcasses and samples from the herd.
Every year, 150 elk are being monitored in the “hot spot” areas of highest TB concentration to try to figure out the level of infection and how easily it is transmitted.
Infected animals will be destroyed and each year, through hunter cull and testing, close to 500 animals will be checked or destroyed.
Parks Canada is spending $40,000 each year to put fences around cattle feed in the area.
Wobeser said scientists believe just one percent of elk have TB and there is no solid evidence of how much a herd would have to be reduced to eradicate it or to stop the disease’s spread.
Several MPs praised Parks Canada for finally taking the issue seriously and developing a plan.
Hilstrom was less enthused, insisting that it should have been done sooner and should be done faster because of the threat to cattle.
“We in the cattle industry don’t have time to let you fellows dilly-dally around.”
