The Rural Voice, 2003-07, Page 30Bouncing back?
Like the beef industrg with BSE, the elk industrg
had its own crisis with chromic wasting disease.
Like BSE, it now battles a perception issue.
Story and photos by Keith Roulston
Elk seemed to be an industry of the
future until chronic wasting disease
struck. Now the industry is fighting
its way back, says Dr. Lyle Renecker
(bottom).
26 THE RURAL VOICE
'
f miserylikes company, Canada's
beef farmers can expect
understanding from elk farmers
who, for several years now, have
been suffering the same kind of
market havoc beef farmers have seen
with the BSE crisis.
The elk industry has suffered a
loss of export markets since the
discovery of chronic wasting disease
CWD, a variant of the same kind of
brain -wasting disease that causes
BSE. Like BSE, says Dr. Lyle
Renecker, wildlife biologist and
owner of a Stratford -area elk
operation, the barrier to restoring
trade is perception.
While the U.S., where the disease
originated, still has not rid itself of
CWD, Canadian herds are now free
of the disease but markets haven't
totally recovered.
Korea, one of Canada's major
markets, was only too happy to close
its borders when CWD was
discovered in North America. Korea
has its own elk herd producing
almost as much antler velvet in 1998
as Canada (Korea is seventh in the
world in numbers of deer, elk and
fallow deer, Canada eighth).
With foreign markets gone, velvet
prices plummeted. The problem in
Canada was that the velvet side of the
business had been so profitable that
producers hadn't concentrated
enough on the meat part of the
market, Renecker says.
"We should have concentrated on
developing a meat market 25 years
ago," he says of the industry.
Renecker sees the long-term
answer to the health of the industry
coming from meat sales. He and his
wife Teresa market all their meat
under their Renecker Farms label,
working to build a brand.
The key to building markets is to
maintain quality and consistency. "If
you want that market and that niche
you have to have quality," he told a
meeting in Stratford recently. "You
have to get your product from farm to
plate with consistent quality."
For elk farmers, the barrier can be
quality processing. There is currently
just one federally inspected plant that
can process elk in Ontario and that
will soon concentrate on horses
instead, leaving Ontario without a
federal plant to allow export of elk
venison. Saskatchewan producers
don't even have one plant and they're
not allowed to take their elk to either
Alberta or Manitoba for processing.
That leaves the option of trucking
their elk all the way to Ontario but
then stress enters into the equation.
Renecker has spent much of the
last decade looking at meat quality
issues, particularly the results of
stress. "Stress can be a food safety
issue," he said because meat from
animals that were under stress before
they died, whether elk or cattle and
pigs, can have a short shelf life,
among many other deficiencies.
"Trying to minimize stress is very
important. What happens at the farm,
in transportation and at the plant can
affect meat quality."