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Livestock producers need to be ready for the big one

BSE and avian flu were bad enough, but the Canadian livestock industry predicts it's just a matter of time before Canada faces an even greater disease calamity.

While the Canadian livestock industry may have beat the odds over the past 40 years and avoided an outbreak of a contagious foreign animal disease (FAD), producers in all sectors need to be behind a national plan that will help minimize the crippling economic impact of a wide-spread epidemic, says the president of the Canadian Pork Council.

Clare Schlegel, an Ontario pork producer himself, doesn‚t want to be a scaremonger, but says estimates that show even an isolated, short-lived outbreak could cost producers as much as $13 billion is no scenario to play around with. The worse-case estimates following a major outbreak pegs the hit to the Canadian economy at $45 billion.

"The time to prepare is now," says Schlegel. "As producers and as an industry we need to move on a management plan that will effectively control a disease outbreak."

BC's avian flu outbreak in 2004 and the BSE crisis, which has crippled the Canadian beef industry since early 2003, give some indication of the impact disease can have on industries. The difference between those two situations and an FAD outbreak is that avian flu was specific to poultry, and BSE is a non-contagious disease specific to ruminant livestock.

Industry nightmare

A contagious, foreign animal disease outbreak, such as foot-and-mouth disease or hog cholera for example, is one of the worst nightmares for an industry. Movement of animals is frozen, borders are closed, auction marts and slaughter plants are locked, and animal and meat trade is suspended as the government and industry scrambles to contain and eradicate the disease. The lockdown could last for weeks or months.

Not only are directly infected animals culled, but there is also the much greater impact of what's called the welfare slaughter, which casts a net over all species within a specified area. These are animals at risk of catching or carrying the disease, or simply caught in the lockdown, with no market to go to.

"Canada is the only major pork exporting country that has not experienced a disease outbreak in the past 40 years," says Schlegel. "Part of that is due to good management and biosecurity systems we have in place, but it's also due to good luck. We can't just assume we'll be as lucky for the next 40 years."

Schlegel who represents the CPC on the Canadian Animal Health Coalition (CAHC), is urging not only the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) to move forward with planning, but he's also urging provincial livestock associations and individual producers to have their emergency plans in place. The CAHC, representing all livestock sectors ñ beef, dairy, pork, poultry and other species ñ is working with CFIA to develop plans to mitigate the impact of a foreign animal disease outbreak.

In the event of an outbreak, any ground Canada has gained building a reputation as a producer of safe, healthy, disease-free food products to the world, will be lost.

Broader impact of FAD

While Canadians are familiar with how the avian flu brought the $350 million a year B.C. poultry industry to a standstill, and the still mounting economic impact of BSE on the Canadian beef industry ñ so far losses are estimated at $6 billion ñ an outbreak of highly contagious foot-and-mouth disease, for example, would have a much broader impact on the Canadian economy.

While B.C. had to eliminate its entire multi-million bird poultry flock to control the disease and about 3,000 head of cattle in Alberta and Saskatchewan were culled so the industry could restore consumer confidence and get a handle on BSE, the impact of a relatively isolated outbreak of foot-and-mouth would be much farther reaching.

The CAHC scenario describes an isolated or small outbreak, as an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease affecting 50 farms in Alberta. During the lockdown estimated to last about seven weeks as many as 4.2 million animals across all sectors within a specified area around the outbreak would be slaughtered resulting in a direct loss to producers of $9.8 billion, along with about $3.6 billion in lost trade. A total cost of $13 billion.

A mid-sized outbreak is estimated to cost about $25 billion, and a large scale outbreak, a disease outbreak that would lock down all of Eastern Canada for several weeks, for example, could cost as much as $45 billion. "These loss estimates aren't just related to a specific livestock sector or the agriculture industry, but would affect the entire Canadian economy," says Schlegel.

The scale of an outbreak isn‚t just hypothetical. It is borne out by real life experiences in other parts of the world. During an outbreak of classic swine fever in The Netherlands a total of 429 farms were affected. Disease control measures included culling 700,000 hogs on infected farms, another one million hogs on neighboring farms, and a further 10 million hogs through the welfare slaughter.

Of the multi-billion dollar cost four percent was attributed to infected animals, 36 percent to animals culled in the welfare slaughter and the balance was due to other indirect costs.

"The impact of an outbreak is far reaching, even if it is relatively small," says Schlegel. "As an industry, in the event of an outbreak, we have to move quickly and decisively to control and eradicate the disease and restore world confidence in the quality and safety of the products we produce."

View side story: Lock down and compensation key to disease control.

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