President, BC Turkey Producers Association
Abbotsford, B.C.
U.S.A.
Introduction
On March 8, 2004 we were having our BC Turkey Association Annual meeting. In my address as president I made mention that I felt that 2003 was the lull before the storm. We had just had experience the prior month with a farm that had broken with low path Avian Influenza. It appeared that it had been dealt with and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) had started to dismantle their Emergency Operation Centre. There were a number of issues coming up for the next year - environmental, rural/urban interface conflict, animal welfare, infrastructure changes and of course animal health - hence my thoughts that 2004 would be a full agenda. Was that ever an understatement!
On March 9, 2004 the CFIA announced that they had isolated high path AI in a second flock on the index farm. What had been set in motion was the worst case of infectious disease in Canada since the Foot and Mouth crisis in the 1950's. It truly tested our emergency responsiveness, and ability to coordinate multi-stakeholders effectively and efficiently. The months of March, April, May and June were all consumed by Avian Influenza and getting the industry back into operation as quickly as possible. Subsequent months have also had a large AI component as we prepare biosecurity protocols, emergency response plans, carcass disposal protocols, event postmortems and analysis. It will not be until December 2005 that our layer and broiler breeder industries are fully operating.
Admittedly, as industry we were complacent. Why spend time on such things as becoming familiar with Foreign Animal Disease Eradication Agreements (FADEs), or emergency response plans, outbreaks were not going to happen to us - were they? The time commitment was huge and the likelihood of using them (from past experience) was small. I am here today telling you that the cost of not understanding or having these plans in place, and practiced will be equally, if not more expensive. The direct cost to our industry will be excess of $127,000,000. If you consider the economic impact to the communities as the result of those farm dollars not flowing into the local economy that impact balloons to $280,000,000.
The BC Experience
The CFIA is tasked in much the same way as the USDA is in being the lead agency for handling a foreign animal disease outbreak. Most of their activity is spent in the regulatory realm, which they excel at. However, when they become tasked with an operational exercise such as handling an animal disease outbreak the bureaucratic, regulatory model is inefficient and cumbersome. In our case it was only when the situation got out of hand that industry and our Provincial Emergency Program people were invited to the table. With this involvement there came some semblance of order and practicality applied to such things as carcass and manure disposal, cleaning and disinfection, and product movement controls. This invitation did not happen until we had almost been in crisis mode for two months - why?
In Canada we have agreements between the Federal and Provincial governments called FADE Agreements (Foreign Animal Disease Eradication) which are very high level agreements between governments as to how outbreaks are to be handled and who is responsible for what. The difficulty is that the party involved at the ground floor - industry- was not a party to the agreement, and the plan has never had to be practiced or implemented. As mentioned above industry was in denial that it would ever need to implement a plan - so why spend the money and effort on developing or understanding one? Besides if there ever was a crisis we could take the plan developed by our friends south of us and quickly adapt it to our situation - how wrong we were.
The result of industry not having a concise, practiced plan was that we didn't have much other than random suggestions and criticisms to present to the authorities who were floundering in their own attempts to implement their bureaucratic top down model. If we had had a plan it would have had a reasonable chance of being accepted (though not without some pushing and amendment). We also had not spent time developing a working relationship with many of the agency personnel prior to the crisis.
Also industry was fragmented into commodity groups (layer, broiler hatching egg, broiler, and turkey sectors). Each group was well organized within its own sector but cross sector communication was something we had just begun to develop. Also we discovered that there was a fifth sector almost as large as the turkey industry which was totally unorganized - we have identified this as the specialty sector and includes pigeon, duck, geese, pheasant, emu and quail producers. The commercial industry also had little communication with backyard, or small lot agriculture, which caused much unnecessary conflict during the crisis.
The Fraser Valley is a 100 mile long and 20 mile wide valley running east and west. The southern boundary is the Canada/USA border, western edge is the mouth of the Fraser River, the northern boundary is lined by mountains as is the eastern boundary. Within this valley we have 80% of the province's poultry production and roughly 10% of Canada's production. The bird population is approximately 19,000,0000, and at the wholesale level the industry generates $1 billion per annum.
At the end of the crisis the following statistical figures summarize what happened:
Where does industry fit into the pecking order?
Industry has to realize that we are only one of many stakeholders in the pecking order:
With foreign animal disease management, industry welfare is often the last consideration on anybody's mind. It is international protocol, trade implications, and public perception that take precedence. So if industry is not at the table prior to the crisis it will have difficulty getting to the table during the crisis.
Lesson learned
The overriding lesson to be learned is that the heat of a crisis is a poor time to develop policy, protocols, and relationships. It is certainly the wrong time to try to get a seat at the table. If relationships have not been developed beforehand there will be distrust, and poor lines of communication. If protocols have not been developed there will likely be lost time, with costly choices being made while protocols are being developed, tested and revised. If policy regarding AI outbreaks is poorly developed, the decision making framework will be weak. A crisis occurring with some or all of these legs not fully in place will result in a circling of the wagons with everybody trying to protect their own turf.
Complacency due to nonoccurrence is no longer a problem in British Columbia. With our world shrinking due to increased populations, and ever increasing world travel and trade, complacency is no longer a luxury we can afford. The ostrich approach of hiding and denial will no longer work. We will do so at the risk of being left out of the process, and ultimately paying the price.
How can industry be involved?
- Industry needs to be the driving force in developing public policy on animal health issues, and management protocols. After all it is our livelihoods that are at stake.
- Industry needs to develop detailed emergency response plans which will facilitate the rapid containment of an outbreak. These plans need to dovetail with those of the regulatory agencies who are tasked with the management of the crisis. These plans are "living documents" which need to be regularly reviewed and updated. These plans cannot be cookie cutter versions - they must be regionally specific to take into account unique climatic, geographic, topographic, and infrastructure considerations.
- Industry needs to develop or ensure that there is some kind of economic risk management plan in place so that compliance, and reporting will occur early so that the disease can be contained.
- Industry needs to work with government and regulatory agencies during periods of non-crisis so that relationships can be developed. This will happen if we include them in the development of our plans. Just as we find their planning without us distasteful, so they feel when we don't involve them!
- Industry needs to practice, practice, practice the plans developed. Practice is cheap compared to real life trial and error.
- Industry needs to educate its members on the plan(s) so that everybody knows their role.
- Industry needs to take biosecurity far more seriously than it has. It is not just the breeder and large commercial operation that need to practice good biosecurity.
Conclusion
In his book, The Way of the Leader, Donald Krause describes three principles regarding the best way to get things done.
1. Be proactive. (Do through action)
2. Reduce complexity. (Concentrate effort on basic, critical tasks, the essential things)
3. Seek improvement. (Get the essential things done better)
We need to become better prepared and involved if we expect to influence how foreign animal disease outbreaks are managed. This involvement is an ongoing process as we practice and refine our plans. May we as industry do a better job of getting things done!
From Proceedings of the "Midwest Poultry Federation Convention", St. Paul, Minnesota, U.S.A.
