WinnipegFIRST

• Posted: Oct 1st 2007, 13:51 / Written by: John Towns
• Tagged as: international trade, avian flu, chicken
• 1 Comment

The president of the Canadian Poultry and Egg Processors Council has called the Japanese reaction to the discovery of avian flu at a Saskatchewan farm “a shame,” despite the fact that exports to Japan account for less than 10 per cent of total Canadian poultry production.

Japan suspended all Canadian poultry imports on Friday, after H7N3 was discovered in a farm 40 kilometres north of Regina. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency stresses that this strain of avian flu has never been linked to severe illness in humans. The United States has also placed a regional ban on poultry coming from Saskatchewan.

According to the Chicken Farmers of Canada, Japan represents a small market for Canadian grown poultry, with only 7.5 per cent of the approximately one billion kilograms of chicken produced annually being shipped there.

The Japanese reaction is “not unexpected, but it’s a shame,” says Robin Horel, President and CEO of the council. “You would hope that once they look at the measures that the CFIA has in place that they would reconsider. The US reaction is much more sensible, but in international trade there is some science, but a whole lot of politics as well.”

Horel says that both groups have both been taking steps to make sure that the virus does not spread to other farms.

“There are a few things going for us in this situation. This was a parent farm, which deals with hatching eggs, rather than fully grown poultry, and it was fairly remote.” Horel says the Canadian Food Inspection Agency has also been doing testing on other “backyard flocks” around the farm where H7N3 was discovered, and that none of the birds tested have been found infected.

Horel says that plans to deal with the spread of the disease have been in place since “the BC incident,” when 17 million chickens infected with H7N3 had to be destroyed in 2004.

Karen Armstrong, assistant manager of Manitoba Chicken Producers, says that Manitoba farmers have also been taking steps to control the spread of “bird flu.”

“Farmers all along have been following an on farm food safety program designed to prevent the spread of disease” says Armstrong, whose organization represents farmers who raise chickens specifically for meat and the production of fertilized eggs for other farms.

Armstrong also expects that the impact of the Japanese and American bans on Manitoba farmers will be “essentially non-existent. Our farmers focus primarily on the local market, and we export less than three per cent of what we raise here.”