Canada’s pork industry hit with trade bans

CALGARY — New trade bans are rattling the $2.7-billion-a-year Canadian pork export business after an H1N1 influenza outbreak on a central Alberta pig farm, but none of the countries closing their borders so far are major customers.

Industry officials confirmed that China has banned imports only from Alberta. Philippines, Singapore, Honduras and at least seven other countries have bans that include all of Canada, many beginning even before this weekend’s discovery.

Authorities revealed Saturday that a central Alberta pig farm is quarantined under suspicion that a farm worker returning from Mexico spread the “swine flu” to hogs.

Alberta and Canadian government and pork-industry officials have warned other countries there is no need to ban pork products, since cooked meat doesn’t transmit the virus.

“A lot of these bans are knee-jerk reactions,” said Jurgen Preugschas, a northern Alberta farmer and chairman of the Canadian Pork Council. “The impact, though, is severe. It’s especially difficult since the reasons are all perception and there are no health risks whatsoever.”

Peter Ben Embarek of the World Health Organization urged veterinarians and farm staff to take precautions to avoid infecting pigs with the flu strain. But the food-safety scientist said there’s no recommendation to cull pigs anywhere in the world.

“Trading meat, whether processed or raw or frozen meat, should not be restricted because there is virtually no risk of transmission that way,” Ben Embarek said.

Even before one Alberta farm’s swine became sick, the worldwide flu panic had hurt already-sagging hog prices and pushed the pork industry to name the disease something other than “swine flu.”

Preugschas said he’s relieved that so far, the biggest importers of Canadian pork haven’t banned it — Japan and the United States. The fourth-largest market, South Korea, has banned live hogs from Canada, although virtually no live swine is traded overseas.

Of the countries which have banned Canada’s pork, Philippines is the most lucrative. Canada shipped $40 million in pork and offal to that southeast Asian country last year according to Canadian Pork International.

Chinese importers purchased more than $45 million in Canadian product, but Alberta only produces 15 per cent of the country’s pork. Other provinces’ meat packing plants will ramp up their shipments to China to offset the ban, said Paul Hodgman, executive director of Alberta Pork Producers.

Preugschas said he hopes the trade restrictions will be short-lived, as awareness of health risks improves. Some countries have prohibited Canadian beef for nearly six years because of this country’s handful of cases of mad cow disease.

Calgary Herald with files from Reuters

jmarkusoff@theherald.canwest.com