Better Pork - April 2006

BEHIND   THE   LINES

by ROBERT IRWIN

Did you get a flu shot this year?

For years, pigs have been blamed for the 1918 “Spanish Flu” pandemic. American pigs to be precise. The theory, supported by scientists until recently, was that the pigs contaminated American troops, who spread the disease as they travelled during the First World War. 

The Spanish Flu killed between 20 and 40 million people. That’s more lives than were lost in any event in history, including the 1914-18 war or the “Black Death” bubonic plague that raged between 1347 and 1351.

As Ernest Sanford reports on page 41, scientists now believe humans caught Spanish Flu from birds and that pigs actually caught the virus from people. That doesn’t rule out the possibility of pigs harbouring the next serious flu virus and hence the need for swine workers to get themselves vaccinated so that they won’t be contributing to the problem.   
The subject of vaccines brings us to our cover story on page 6 about Post-weaning Multi-systemic Wasting Syndrome (PMWS) and the fact that, last month, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency approved a vaccine for diseases like PMWS, believed to be caused by porcine circovirus type II (PCV-2).

PMWS has hit producers in many countries hard and it’s left some Ontario producers, who are no strangers to financial challenges, wondering whether this disease will be the hurdle that finally puts them out of business.

Few pork producers have faced tougher economic and disease hardships than those in some parts of Europe, but their resilience in the face of adversity continues to drive innovation. This month, beginning on page 55 , our European correspondent, Norman Dunn, presents us with the latest developments in European technology, which seem to particularly hit the mark when it comes to saving labour and frustration.

Think about this -- an automatic sow stimulator to take the grunt work out of that all-important job of preparing the sow for artificial insemination. Then follow up with a  one-handed sow pregnancy tester and, after birth, automatic sensors to keep the temperatures exactly right for the nurslings. When the pigs are off on their own, there are innovative feeds that aim to take the bite out of tail biting.

Finally there's a Web site to visit to see what a  typical Danish sow or feeding barn looks like on the inside. It's almost like being thereBP

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Better Pork - April 2006

PMWS: ‘our most significant and costly health challenge at this time’ 

So says Dr. Nancy Robinson, a Woodham veterinarian who oversees 15,000 sows. But controversy remains about what cause it, how it spreads and how to treat it

by KATE PROCTER

With no prevention nor cure available, and up to 30 to 40 per cent mortality rates, Post-weaning Multi-systemic Wasting Syndrome (PMWS) has hit producers in Ontario hard. While researchers and veterinarians debate its cause, long-time producers wonder if the outcome might be their exit from the industry all together.

“It is certainly causing some of us to wonder if we should stay in pig production. It’s extremely serious,” says Clare Schlegel, a Perth-county pork producer and president of the Canadian Pork Council, who has been battling PMWS on his own farm since September 2004.

It is endemic in the pig, says Schlegel. It walks in with the animal from the nursery and if the proper trigger is there, it explodes. “No amount of animal care will help them,” he adds. The syndrome has to run its course, he believes but will eventually settle down.
Schlegel, who recently returned from the World Trade Organization (WTO) talks in Hong Kong, wonders if Ontario can remain competitive internationally if the PMWS puzzle is not solved. In the summer of 2005 Australia tried to invoke trade action against Canada by preventing Canadian pork from entering the country. The Canadian pork industry spent $75,000 defending itself and worked with other major pork-exporting countries, including the United States and the European Union (EU), primarily Denmark and the Netherlands.

In the end, the Australian government realized the chance of importing PMWS in pork was “infinitesimal” and stood up to its own pork producers. But, though Canada won this dispute, Schlegel says it “highlights the importance of the science” and illustrates that the international community is paying attention to Canada’s health status.  

The high health status of Canadian pigs “gives us a big leg up,” says Schlegel. It allows Canada to export into more countries that exclude pork from competitive regions such as Brazil. This provides added incentive for the industry to pull together and find a solution to the PMWS problem.

While there is still controversy about the relationship between PMWS and porcine circovirus type II (PCV-2), most swine veterinarians believe there is a connection. 
Most people point the finger at PCV-2, but its involvement is not beyond debate. Research conducted in the United Kingdom at the University of Warwick and published in the Pig Journal (2005) studied pigs on 116 British farms. Farms that had tested positive and negative, and recovered farms, all had similar PCV-2 serological profiles. However, while levels of PCV-2 were higher in sick pigs on all farms, not all farms with high levels of PCV-2 reported sick pigs. There were also some farms that were positive for PMWS where no antigen was detected.

On February 9, 2006, the Veterinary Biologics Section of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) issued a permit authorizing Merial Canada Inc. to import and distribute a sow vaccine, Circovac, for emergency use as an aid in the prevention and control of diseases caused by porcine circovirus type II (PCV-2). This permit allows the vaccine to be imported and sold under veterinary supervision, explains Dr. Glen Gifford, National Manager of Veterinary Biologics with the CFIA.

The CFIA recognized the seriousness of PMWS and has acknowledged that it is an animal welfare issue, says Schlegel, resulting in approval being granted much faster than it would normally take. “We have basically decided to review licensing applications on a priority basis to make a vaccine available as soon as possible,” says Gifford. Various pork industry associations and veterinarians advised CFIA staff of the urgent need for a vaccine, which has resulted in a change of strategy at the CFIA.
 
Normally, new submissions can take up to 18 months before an initial review is completed. With PCV-2 vaccine applications, this step has been skipped altogether, explains Gifford. “We are giving it the highest priority and when we receive information, it is dealt with as quickly as possible,” he says. The CFIA has currently received submissions from several companies, he says.

Vaccine takes time

Because PMWS is such a complex disease, Gifford explains, an “Emergency Permit” was issued first. “This one is more challenging than most because not much is known about its spread and different manifestations,” says Gifford. A regular license would require more in-depth testing, but vaccines against PMWS are difficult to evaluate because the disease affects the animals in so many different ways. It is also hard to reproduce in the lab, which means it is even more challenging to replicate and prove results.
 
In such circumstances, producing the vaccine under an Emergency Permit is one option.  The vaccine must be proven to be safe and have some beneficial effect, but not everything may be known about it. For example, it may be proven to have a beneficial effect, but the length of the effect may not be known. There may also be other unknowns, such as how the vaccine interacts with other viruses -- for example, Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome (PRRS). In order to be proven safe, the vaccine must not cause allergic reactions or injection site lesions.

Sows are vaccinated twice before breeding, then once more during gestation, which improves passive immunity and provides the piglets with added protection during the vital first few days of life, explains Dr. Normand Plourde, manager of regulatory affairs and technical services with Merial Canada Inc. The sows must receive one booster shot for each subsequent pregnancy. The big advantage of this vaccine, says Plourde, is that once the sows have gone through the initial round of vaccinations, they only need to be boostered given a booster shot once per litter, reducing the work load.
 
Because the vaccine works for the piglets through consumption of sows’ milk and because the vaccination process must begin before breeding, the results will not be evident for four to six months, explains Plourde. In Europe, where the vaccine has been used on more than 500,000 sows, it resulted in significant reductions in mortality. While the rate was low to begin with, it was cut in half after a regular vaccination program was implemented.

“This vaccine has been tested upside down,” says Jean Claude Noel, swine product manager and sales manager for Merial Canada, noting that it will take some time to obtain an adequate supply of the vaccine in Canada. “People will have to be patient,” he says. While it is difficult to say for sure how much the vaccine will cost, Noel says it should not be more than $1 per piglet per year.

While some believe that PMWS makes more sense if PCV-2 is removed entirely from the equation, several Ontario veterinarians disagree.

“In my practice, PMWS is our most significant and costly health challenge at this time,” says Dr. Nancy Robinson, who runs a private practice in Woodham, near Mitchell in Perth county. “I am convinced that PCV-2 causes PMWS on its own or possibly with some other factors.”

Robinson oversees 15,000 sows, farrow-to-finish, in her practice. She is also chair of the PMWS subcommittee of the Ontario Association of Swine Veterinarians. This group is working with practitioners from Quebec, western Canada, the United States and Europe to share information and ideas about controlling PMWS. They have been meeting monthly since September 2005.

She believes that PCV-2 does not need another disease to develop, but can cause illness all on its own. Robinson defines PMWS as a disease having specific lesions that, under microscopic observation, reveal PCV-2 within the lesions. The most common clinical signs she sees are coughing, scours and wasting. “Skin lesions are uncommon in my experience,” she adds.

Stress plays a part

“PCV-2 is necessary for clinical disease but is not sufficient by itself,” notes Dr. Catherine Templeton, a private practitioner with Maitland Swine Services in Listowel.  She is seeing problems in about 80 per cent of the barns she is in. While not all of these cases are disasters, she recalls that it was rare to see PMWS as little as 18 months ago.   
In Templeton’s experience, outbreaks seem to be more severe where something has happened to stress the pigs, such as a truck tipping over while transporting pigs between barns. Other possible stresses include mixing pigs from two different sources, pig density, concurrent disease, temperature, humidity and contact rate -- for example, where pigs have been in a sorter barn where they could be in contact with 499 other pigs compared to 29 in a single pen. Vaccines can also provide a stress, but Templeton says that timing is as important as the specific product used.

PMWS seems to take close to a year to move through a herd, says Templeton. She is noticing that herds that had problems last year are better now. “Is this because we did something or just a natural evolution of the disease?” she asks.

Moreover, PMWS is affecting markets in Ontario. As producers struggle to deliver on their contracts while facing unexpectedly high rates of mortality, processors are not getting the number of pigs they were expecting. However, Templeton speculates that Canada’s export markets may not be affected as much as was thought because PMWS is such a problem all around the world.

Dr. John Harding is an associate professor in the department of large animal clinical sciences at the Western College of Veterinary Medicine in Saskatchewan. He and Dr. Ted Clark discovered PMWS in 1996. He acknowledges that, while not everyone is in agreement, he believes that “circovirus is the necessary agent to cause PMWS, but it is not enough by itself.” Harding considers that a co-factor, such as another disease or poor management, is required in order for the disease to cause problems in a herd.

In the view of Dr. Robert Friendship of the University of Guelph’s department of population medicine, there is no question that PCV-2 is responsible for causing PMWS, but there are definitely questions. Every pig in the world has PCV-2 present in its system, but not all pigs get sick. Prior to the fall of 2004, the virus did not cause much of a problem in Ontario herds. Up until about six months ago, the international community thought that there was only one strain of circovirus, but they have since discovered more than one. However, the virus is so tiny it is difficult to know what strain is doing the damage, explains Friendship.

Friendship bases his belief that PCV-2 is responsible for causing PMWS on several facts.  The virus itself is present in all different body tissues and is found in especially large numbers in lesions. That it shows up microscopically leads people to believe there is a link. Researchers have successfully infected pigs with PCV-2 and created disease-like symptoms in laboratory animals. The organism seems to be everywhere, but people are slow to accept that this is the cause, he says.

Stimulating the immune system

While researchers have been able to reproduce the disease in the lab, many believe that in the field PCV-2 does not act alone, but needs some other factor or factors to cause sickness. Friendship explains that the virus needs the immune system of the host to be stimulated by some other disease. When the immune system is stimulated, white blood cells, which are used to fight infection, multiply and allow PCV-2 to gain a foothold.
 
“It doesn’t seem to care what it uses to cause the simulation,” says Friendship. Perhaps even vaccines for other diseases can trigger a problem if administered at the wrong time.
If a herd has an outbreak of a disease such as PRRS or Swine Influenza Virus (SIV), the immune system is stimulated. A few weeks later, it is not uncommon to see wasting pigs, a sign that PCV-2 has taken over. While it is not unusual for diseases to act together, what is unusual about PCV-2 is that it seems to use any disease present to help it cause illness.

“I believe that PCV-2 is the cause of circovirus disease,” which includes PMWS, Porcine Dermatitis and Nephropathy Syndrome (PDNS), abortions and pneumonia, says Dr. Gaylan Josephson. Ontario Pork Industry Council Swine Advisory Board Chair. Intensive analysis of the virus in labs in Guelph and in Quebec has shown a different virus from the one that has circulated in swine herds for years without problem. “I think it is a new virus, not a mutation,” says Josephson.

However, on this Harding disagrees, arguing that there is not enough evidence to prove that one strain causes more serious illness than the other. He believes that one strain is a mutation of the other.

The virus identified in both Ontario and Quebec labs is very similar to the strain identified in the EU, which was always more clinically severe, explains Josephson. The virus can cause high rates of mortality -- up to ten per cent in the late nursery, early grower stage. If the disease is present with an existing disease, for example PRRS, mortality rates can reach 30 to 40 per cent. 

While a vaccine may provide a new tool in the fight against PMWS, Friendship cautions producers that it may not be the solution everyone is hoping for. In the late 1990s, PMWS had become a serious problem in the EU. Researchers there rushed to find a vaccine that would help solve the problem and Merial’s Circovac has been used there on an emergency basis, says Friendship. This vaccine is administered to the sow and gives passive immunity to pass to the piglets. The piglets grow through the nursery stage before PMWS begins to affect them in the grow/finish stage, when passive immunity is long gone.

This vaccine needs to be evaluated by independent research, says Friendship and no vaccine works 100 per cent of the time. Since the sows have already seen PCV-2, Friendship wonders if boosting them with a vaccine will make much difference. Several other companies now have vaccines almost ready for use, some of which would be used for piglets. Even if licenses were granted quickly, it will take time to determine if the vaccines are effective in commercial operations.

For his part, Harding believes that vaccines against PCV-2 will be effective tools for fighting PMWS. Early infection of PCV-2 is one of the risk factors in developing the disease later, he explains. If the piglets consume milk with a higher level of maternal antibodies, they receive better protection through this vital time in their lives. Harding does not agree that the circulating levels of PCV-2 are high enough in swine herds to offer protection without having a boost to colostral antibodies from a vaccine. Field and lab trial results provided by Merial from Europe have shown that administering the vaccine reduces clinical signs, virus shedding and lesions.

“I think that vaccines are going to be essential,” agrees Robinson. Anecdotal evidence from the European veterinary community says that the vaccine has worked very well, even if there have been no third-party independent studies concluded yet, she adds. Gifford explains that it takes time for independent research trials to be conducted on new vaccines because the products are simply not available prior to being licensed. Most of the testing is either conducted by the pharmaceutical companies themselves or by a lab they contract to run the trials.

“I don’t know if every pig has PCV-2. Every herd may be positive, but not necessarily all pigs in the herd,” says Templeton. A vaccine may provide producers with one tool to give their herds a more uniform disease status. “The more alike we can make those pigs, the less chance there is of circulation,” she adds. For example, gilts with immunity in a herd that is not immune may result in an outbreak at the nursery stage.

Modern methods the culprit?

One of the remaining mysteries about PMWS is why it suddenly became such a serious problem when the virus has been present in most herds for years. One theory is that modern methods of raising pigs have resulted in disease outbreaks. But Robinson does not accept this theory. PCV-2 and PMWS affect all types of herds, she says. New farrow-to-finish operations, three-site systems and labour-intensive older-style methods of production have all been hit with the disease.

Harding says that if modern methods go against the principals of good husbandry, they could result in a PMWS outbreak. For example, mixing piglets from several different nurseries or vaccinating piglets at the wrong time could cause a problem.

Harding has watched the disease from its discovery in western Canada to the devastating effect it has had in Europe and now its ravages in Ontario and Quebec. “It comes, it does its thing over a couple of years and then it disappears,” he says. It disappears mostly because producers and veterinarians get smarter about dealing with it. Management is improved and other diseases that may be co-factors come and go as well, he says.

Josephson believes there are four co-factors that work with PCV-2 to make a disease outbreak. One is co-infection with another virus, such as PRRS; another is co-infection with bacteria, such as mycoplasma hyopnuemonia or haemophilus parasuis. Stress and suppression or stimulation of the immune system also appear to be associated with disease outbreaks, he says. 

A lot of research has been conducted with mycoplasma vaccines. If the vaccine is administered within two weeks of exposure to PCV-2, the outbreak of PMWS becomes much worse. Vaccines against other diseases, such as mycoplasma, seem to be one of the stressors that help PCV-2 gain a foothold.You have to do a bit of detective work to determine when the pigs became infected with circovirus,” says Josephson. Producers may need to think about the first clinical signs of the disease, when pigs are off-feed and pale, and then backtrack 10 days to two weeks.

How can producers who have not experienced PMWS keep it from damaging their herds? Robinson says most herds probably already have PCV-2. Producers can use one of a variety of tests to be sure. The most effective test is a post-mortem conducted on sick pigs, she says. Manure tests are another option. This tests for a genetic footprint of the disease in the manure.

If a producer truly believes it is not in the herd, good biosecurity might keep it out, Robinson says. Other than that, both she and Harding recommend following the Madec Rules. Madec was a veterinarian from France who generated a list of good husbandry rules designed to try and help control the disease and the spread of the virus. “They help, but do not completely control it,” says Robinson.
 
Templeton says it is important to tune up biosecurity in order to combat PMWS, but the big challenge is identifying the real as opposed to perceived risks. Some things are low risk but high impact, such as boar studs, she explains. While a boar stud may have a low risk of getting PMWS, if it does occur, it can be passed to thousands of animals through semen. Trucking is an example of a high-risk activity that has low impact. While it can be high risk, it usually only effects one farm at a time.

The industry needs studies that rank risks so that people can focus on actions that provide the most benefit. Perhaps not as much emphasis should be placed on people movement, says Templeton. And maybe down time for barns between batches of pigs is not as important as having a clean truck pick them up. Ranking risks would provide one more tool in the fight against this mysterious and damaging disease. BP

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Better Pork - April 2006

The Madec Rules for battling PMWS

In 2001, French veterinarian Dr. Francois Madec developed a list of 20 technical recommendations for battling PMWS. Large-scale field trials have proven his recommendations to be effective. However, producers have found it difficult to carry them out for extended periods of time. The researchers (ED: who conducted the trials?) showed that at least 16 of the 20 recommendations must be followed in order to have success against PMWS. Ontario producers are just starting to adopt the Madec Rules in combating PMWS.
Here are the practices that the Madec Rules lay down.

Farrowing

1. Strictly adhere to all in/all out  in farrowing rooms.
2. Wash sows and treat for parasites prior to farrowing.
3. Limit cross-fostering and complete any necessary cross-fostering within the first 24 hours.

Post-Weaning

4. Keep pens small and with solid partitions.
5. Strictly adhere to all in /all out. Empty pit, clean and disinfect between batches.
6. Keep stocking density low (no more than three pigs per square metre).
7. Ensure adequate space at the feeder (seven centimetres per piglet).
8. Watch air quality and keep ammonia levels at less than 10 parts per million and carbon dioxide at less than 0.15 per cent.
9. Minimise fluctuations in temperature
10. Do not mix batches of piglets.

Grower/Finisher

11. Keep pens small and with solid partitions.
12. Strictly adhere to all in/all out. Empty pit, clean and disinfect between batches
13. Do not mix pigs from post-weaning pens.
14. Do not mix pigs between finishing pens.
15. Keep a low stocking density (at least 0.75 square metres per pig).
16. Keep a close eye on air temperature and quality.

Others

17. Develop an appropriate vaccination program with your veterinarian.
18. Ensure sensible flow of air and animals within the building.
19. Maintain strict hygiene at all times, especially when injecting or clipping teeth and tails.
20. Remove sick pigs early. Either move them to a sick pen or euthanize.

The Pig Site http://www.thepigsite.com , an internet site dedicated to pork production, has been reviewing and updating a summary of Madec’s original list and has reduced it to four main points -- the Four Golden Rules for controlling PMWS and PDNS.  The site also provides a detailed list of practical actions that can be taken on the farm to help producers.

Rule #1. Limit pig-to-pig contact. This includes direct and indirect contact. Indirect contact can occur when instruments, tools, people and manure are allowed to pass microbes from one pig to another.

Rule #2. Stress is a killer. Producers should always keep stress levels in mind in all procedures they do with pigs and ask themselves if there is a less stressful way of doing things.  

Rule #3:  Practice good hygiene. Make sure that all instruments, pens and buildings are thoroughly cleaned between contact with pigs.

Rule #4:  Follow good nutrition. This includes high quality diets as well as early nutrition. It is vital that piglets receive as much colostrum as possible within the first 12 hours of life. BP

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Better Pork - April 2006

Does the Canadian pork industry have clearly defined goals?

To survive in a global market place, the industry needs to choose the right model. Integration, co-operation or collaboration?

by RICHARD SMELSKI

Imagine yourself in an airplane and the pilot comes on the intercom and says: "I have some good news for you, and I have some bad news. The good news is that we are making really good time, but the bad news is we are lost."

Is this typical of many of our days, when we seem to be busy all day but wonder what we actually accomplished at the end of the day? More to the point, as an industry, what is our direction and what do we wish to accomplish? If we have clearly defined goals, each day and each activity should bring us a step closer to our goals. Otherwise, it's the same as the pilot's “good news-bad news”' story.

At the 2006 Banff Conference, Edmonton-based management consultant Jerry Bouma, with the firm of Toma & Bouma, identified three options for the pig industry:

1. Integration, as in the U.S. pork industry where 30 corporations account for 50 per cent of all production and where small-scale farmers are nearly extinct.
2. 2. A co-operative model, like the European structure exemplified by the Dutch or Danish system.
3. The emerging collaborative model, to date largely limited to small-scale niche markets.

Each system has advantages and disadvantages, but the success of all of them is determined by clearly defined goals.

Canada’s dependence on the export market is obvious and respected. The Canadian pork industry has proven to be able to compete and deliver to our export customers, even though it is often overlooked for its tremendous contribution to our local economies.

However, the export market makes the pork producer and the local economy very vulnerable. Competing in the export market should be a good reason to collaborate in an integrated model, seeking every market as a niche market. The risks are easy to identify (BSE represented a  $7 billion cost, excluding any infrastructure costs).

The definitions of size, quality, regulation, relationships and efficiencies are different in the domestic versus the global market. Even though Canada's pork exports are major (22 per cent of world exports), the participants are modest in size.

Our banks, processors, retailers and producers are relatively small in the global marketplace. None of the Canadian banks make the list of the 50 biggest banks in the world. The larger U.S. packers however slaughter four times more than Canada's largest, and none of our retailers make the global top 10. Our production efficiency is now compared to Brazil and China, where labour is readily available and production is thus very efficient.

We also become vulnerable to government regulations and support, not only in each importing country but more so locally. What regulations our governments and society burden us with are just as crucial as those of the country we are trying to export into. Thus, our Canadian model requires a collaborative approach.

It is easy to become pessimistic and view the half glass as half-empty. In the next decade,  there will be new challenges. However, there will be an industry and there will be many successes in that industry. The determining factors will not be market prices, disease or government, but the desire and passion we show in pursuing the ultimate goal.

The marketplace will change and the rules will change, but the goal of delivering and growing remains the same. The family unit has the competitive advantage of appearing to be more flexible and caring. Surveys prove that Canadian society has confidence in farm-family operations.

When Harvard graduates were surveyed to determine why some were successful and some less so, the results showed that it was not IQ, inheritance or luck that created success. The single biggest common denominator was the "clearly defined goals of the graduate."

Consider the Canadian Pork Industry as a mature graduate, but does it have a clearly defined goal? The Japanese car industry, the Danish pork industry and the European Community are examples of Industries that decided decades ago to work together in their respective sectors for the common good and have succeeded with this strategic vision. They have actually repositioned themselves from near last place to becoming major global contenders.
 
If a market does not grow, it decays. The challenge is not to survive, but to define success as growth -- growth in economy, in knowledge and achievement. Which of Jerry Bouma's models will we accept or will we develop our own unique model?

To quote Albert Einstein, “The significant problems we face today cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.” BP

Richard Smelski is general manager of Ontario Swine Improvement Inc. and a former Ontario government swine specialist.

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Better Pork - April 2006

A full agenda of environmental issues looms this spring

Whether it is Canada’s Kyoto performance, concerns about avian flu or BSE, water quality or the possibility of bulk water exports, there will be plenty of environmental matters to occupy us as spring and summer come around 

by Murray Blackie

At the end of what seemed to be an environmentally dull winter, let’s speculate on what may be the hot issues this spring and summer.

Although this winter has seemed slow moving in the area of the environment and the media’s coverage of environmental issues, there have been some notable exceptions.
At the UN Conference on Climate Change, held in Montreal, we heard about Canada’s apparently disappointing record in achieving its Kyoto goals. This conference was heavily covered by major newspapers and other media.

There is an abundance of information on how livestock agriculture can contribute through  good manure management. There is likely to be continued interest in the potential for agriculture to benefit from carbon credit and trading programs. Related issues of alternative energy, in the form of wind farms and ethanol, are likely to maintain their prominence, especially after last winter’s campaign promises.

We have also been bombarded by coverage of the impending avian influenza pandemic. The media is focused on the global progress of the flu virus, the mechanism by which it mutates to a human-to-human pathogen and the epidemiological, economic and social predictions when it hits. They show less interest in the efforts being made to ensure effective bio-security, apparently assuming that, with our housing-based operations and  bio-security protocols, the problem is of a distant, probably Asian nature. When they do remember previous Canadian outbreaks of a similar kind and the destruction of flocks, will the media and the public insist on greater scrutiny of  bio-security measures on all livestock farms?
 
The confirmation in late January of a new case of BSE in a six-year-old cow revives concerns about the effectiveness of the feed ban and whether a sufficient percentage of animals is being tested.

What about other diseases such as foot-and-mouth? Are we prepared for an outbreak similar to that seen in Western Europe? Let us hope we will see more exercises or dry runs to test our capability to respond to such outbreaks.

We have also heard, to a lesser degree, about concerns over potential bulk water exports. With the election of a Conservative government, there will likely be more discussion on the idea of water being just another commodity. Water quantity management has been treated more seriously in recent years and this interest will likely to continue in the post-election period.
 
As indicated in my last column, ongoing implementation of the Nutrient Management Act regulations and the progress toward the Clean Water Act will continue to be big issues. This winter, we saw persistent water quality warnings in some rural municipalities. These will serve to remind regulatory authorities and the public of the need to control all aspects of drinking water quality, including source protection. The ability of the Nutrient Management Act to override local by-laws and planning tools in light of the Clean Water Act and pending decisions before the Ontario Municipal Board will also be of interest.

I began preparing this column with the feeling that the winter had been a dull season, environmentally, and one where environmental issues were overshadowed by the election, but I now think that I was wrong.

Just as in past springs, when the snow finally melts, we will ready for this year’s crop of environmental and hot-button issues.BP

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