Feds zoned out on West Hawk Lake livestock monitoring station

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

AgMedia Inc.

by BETTER FARMING STAFF

A program that would enable Canada to apply border-like controls over east-west domestic livestock shipments remains stalled because funding ran out.

The program involves introducing a livestock monitoring point at West Hawk Lake, on the border of Manitoba and Ontario. The location is a “choke point” of rail and highway corridors between Eastern and Western Canada, and a monitor station there can track, trace or even limit shipments between the two parts of the country, allowing producers in one section to continue their business if a disease outbreak affects the other.

Financed with $3.5 million from the federal government and the country’s livestock industry, the program operated as a pilot for two years until money ran out in February. “Unfortunately, government has chosen . . . not to fund the full activation” of the program, says Curtiss Littlejohn, former chair of Ontario Pork and a member of the committee that developed the program.

Because the flu outbreak was an isolated instance in Alberta he doubts the program would have played a role in protecting animal health — this time around. “There are no market hogs that move east-west (to Ontario from Alberta); the cost is prohibitive,” he explains.

But the current situation shows the advantages of maintaining zones, he says. BF