Lockdown and compensation key to disease control

Two important aspects in managing a foreign animal disease outbreak include a plan for immediate control and providing producers proper compensation, says the president of the Canadian Pork Council.

Within minutes or at most a couple hours of identifying a disease, such as foot-and mouth disease on a particular farm, there needs to be a total movement ban on all livestock, says Clare Schlegel, who is also a southern Ontario pork producer.

Along with dozens of other details on how to control and eradicate the disease, success of control efforts depends on producers knowing there is an adequate compensation program in place.

"We can‚t have an underground movement of livestock at night or on back roads as producers try to move animals outside the lockdown area," says Schlegel. "We must avoid the so-called 'night of lights' which occurred in The Netherlands in 1997 when panicked by rumors of the discovery of hog cholera, there was a massive truck movement of pigs from the suspected infected area to other parts of the country and, in the process it contributed massively to the spread of the disease."

The Canadian livestock industry represented by the Canadian Animal Health Coalition (CAHC) and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) are developing a foreign animal disease management strategy.

An important first step of the strategy is to divide Canada into at least two major, and perhaps smaller, lockdown zones that would be implemented in the event of an outbreak.

The Manitoba/Ontario border will provide the basic east/west split. If a disease was identified on an Alberta farm, for example, there would be an immediate ban on the movement of all livestock west of the Ontario/Manitoba border.

"At that point we would have to determine if there was any possibility infected animals may have crossed the border in the hours proceeding the lockdown," says Schlegel. "If there was a possibility we'd have to trace that truck movement east and find and remove those animals. If it is unlikely any infected animals slipped through, then the task focuses on controlling disease spread within Western Canada."

While a couple of compensation options have been discussed, CFIA and CAHC have not agreed on a final plan.

A reciprocal insurance program, that would have all players deposit money in a central fund to be used to compensate infected farms, was proposed but may not be adequate considering the potential of billions of dollars in losses, says Schlegel. "Besides those animals directly infected, is the even larger issue of a welfare slaughter of animals that can't be marketed during this lockdown period." Another is a compensation pool that would accumulate funds through a livestock industry-wide check off is also being considered.

"Along with the national program, producers also need to be pushing their provincial associations for a provincial plan, and also be planning their own on-farm emergency plans in the event of an outbreak," says Schlegel. "There needs to be preparedness right down to the farm gate in the event of an outbreak."

Schlegel says the national swine traceability system being developed through the Canadian Pork Council will be an important tool in the event of a disease outbreak. It's a system that records the GPS (global positioning system) location of every farm in the country that has one or more hogs. "Some people may consider it invasive," he says. "But if we‚re going to control and eradicate a disease as efficiently as possible we need to know where every hog is for the benefit of the industry."

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