Alberta cattle producers take disease precautions
Canadian Press
Picture Butte, Alta. — Southern Alberta livestock producers are taking steps to prevent the potential transmission of foot-and-mouth disease to Canada.
Some are banning visitors from their farms, cancelling trips to Europe, and one has even quarantined himself in Vancouver.
"There are farmers considering selling because of the potential threat," says Picture Butte veterinarian Dr. Arie Koppe said after 500 farmers attended a town meeting Thursday night. "It's an enormous concern to all of us."
Picture Butte is a town of about 1,700 located in the heart of so-called Feedlot Alley — a 50-kilometre stretch of industrialized prairie in southern Alberta near Lethbridge.
Home to some of Canada's largest beef producers along with dairy farmers and other livestock operators, area residents have banded together to prevent a local outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease.
Such an outbreak could spread rapidly and cost the industry billions of dollars, says the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
The highly communicable viral disease of cattle and swine is sweeping Britain, and 60 countries around the globe have reported cases of infection.
It is not a health threat to humans.
Dr. Koppe, one of 25 livestock vets within a 20-kilometre radius of Lethbridge, said about 65 per cent of the area's farmers hail from Holland and travel frequently between Canada and the Netherlands. Dr. Koppe, who is Dutch, has cancelled a planned spring trip to Holland. Others in the community have taken similar measures.
Six Picture Butte High School students have switched their planned European field trip to Cuba.
Colleen Van Raay, of Van Raay Farms, which has thousands of cattle and employs 50 people, said visitors have been banned from the farm. A sign is posted at the gate warning unexpected visitors to stay away.
"We're trying to take a leadership role in the what farms can do," she said.
Her father, Cor Van Raay, has quarantined himself in a Vancouver hotel after cutting short a trip to Holland, where a case of the disease was confirmed this week.
"As soon as he found about it, he was on the first flight home and he will stay in Vancouver and dry clean his clothes and burn his shoes and do everything that's required," said Ms. Van Raay, adding her father stay away up to two weeks.
Alberta Agriculture Minister Shirley McClellan has backed off plans to demand the Department of National Defence stop thousands of British soldiers from training at CFB Suffield, near Medicine Hat in southern Alberta. The agency is working with airports and airlines to ensure passengers arriving from Europe walk through a disinfectant.
James Marjerrison, the food agency's Alberta regional director, said the federal agency recently banned the transport of used military vehicles from Britain.
theglobeandmail.com |
