Canada’s livestock industry is an important producer of high quality meat.
According to the Canadian Meat Council, we export $3.19 billion worth of pork to 99 countries and $1.3 billion worth of beef to 71 countries. Factor in the potential to become a meaningful net exporter of chicken and it becomes clear that meat production and export is a strong contributor to Canada’s prosperity.
As Canadians, we need to support our livestock industry and its ongoing international competitiveness. However, to stay competitive, our regulations must keep pace with the sector’s need for timely access to innovations while safeguarding our nation’s export and domestic markets.
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A key issue facing Canadian producers is the accelerating global movement away from routine use of antibiotics for disease prevention and growth promotion.
Large meat buyers such as Costco, McDonald’s and Walmart have announced plans to require their meat suppliers to minimize use of antibiotics and provide reports on their progress, which will be made available to consumers. With such mainstream companies making the change, antibiotic-free production will soon become the new minimum export standard.
These moves to antibiotic-free production may seem sudden, but the United States and Canada are actually laggards on this issue. Other jurisdictions have already adopted laws to eradicate the routine use of medically important antibiotics in livestock. For example, the European Union has banned antibiotics for growth promotion for nearly 10 years, while South Korea has had a similar ban for almost five.
In fact, most nations now expect these bans, with even the United States and Canada committed to phasing them out by 2017.
So how will you keep your animals healthy and your customers happy two years from now?
Canadian producers are left with this serious question, but no clear answers.
For a time, it might be possible to stockpile antibiotics or get a veterinarian to “predictively” prescribe otherwise proscribed products. Perhaps lobbying could succeed in pulling the teeth from domestic prohibition regulations.
But what happens when it’s the customers saying “no more” even if the regulator turns a blind eye? Canada cannot hide from these changes if we hope to maintain and build our export markets.
This is why producers need access to new non-antibiotic disease prevention and growth promotion products that are safe, effective, economical and acceptable to customers. Such products do exist; it’s just that they may not be available in Canada.
Producers around the world are now using or exploring alternatives to antibiotics, including organic acidifiers, botanical extracts, direct fed microbials, immune activators, natural immune primers, non-animal immunoglobulins, prebiotics, toxin binders and vaccines. Some of these products were even invented in Canada, but most still aren’t available here and may never be.
Canadian producers’ lack of access to these new tools is largely because of the penchant for our regulations to view any bio-active feed ingredient as a drug.
Being branded as such brings crushing development and production costs and the risk that other national regulators might follow suit. As a result, innovators simply won’t launch their products here.
This will put our meat producers at a growing disadvantage to every competing jurisdiction, including the U.S. and must be changed to prevent our producers from becoming globally uncompetitive anachronisms in a rapidly evolving world.
It is essential that we enable our food producers to not only survive but to thrive through this period of evolution. Our laws must enable and encourage the adoption of the new technologies that allow our producers to meet the global demand of antibiotic-free meat rather than stifle their progress.
This is no easy feat, but producers must embrace the present changes and advocate for regulatory updates to allow access to the technologies required for them to be leaders on the global stage.
