The banning of imported elk velvet antler by Korea over concerns of chronic wasting disease (CWD) in elk will force the North American industry to become more accountable, predicts a Calgary company which markets Alberta elk velvet to the southeast Asian country.
A major export market for North American elk velvet, Korea imposed the ban Dec. 29 on live animals and elk antler velvet, used in traditional Asian medicines as a nutritional supplement and aphrodisiac. It also impounded 11 tonnes of Canadian velvet.
“It’s a big concern for all of us, and without question, it’s a publicity setback,” says Robert Pek, president of Elk Equities Inc., a publicly traded company in Calgary.
Officials with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency say they’re taking the ban seriously and blame a media report for sparking concerns in Korea. CFIA spokesman Jim Hunter says the Korean government reacted to an article by the British Broadcasting Corporation on the brain-destroying mad-cow disease.
“They (the BBC) released this story linking chronic wasting disease with BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) which, of course, is a big issue in the U.K., and made it into something it shouldn’t be,” he says.
There is no proven scientific evidence that CWD affects people, but there is an established link between BSE and Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), a rare, fatal brain disorder, and associated neuromuscular disturbances. A new strain of CJD, called new variant CJD or vCJD, has been linked to eating infected beef.
The CFIA has taken steps to ensure no velvet from elk known or suspected to be infected with CWD enters the market. The agency has not recalled any velvet and velvet continues to be sold in Canada.
“All indications at this point in time (say) that this is a temporary ban, something that any responsible country would do if they were importing a product over which there was concern,” says Dr. George Luterbach, the CFIA’s chief veterinarian of animal health in Western Canada. Clarification of the issue with Korea will “hopefully be sufficient” to ease the ban, he added.
Dr. Gerald Ollis, chief provincial veterinarian in Alberta and head of the Agri-Food Surveillance Systems for the Alberta government, says there’s been a moratorium on importing elk or cervids of any kind into Alberta since 1988. A recent outbreak of CWD in Saskatchewan elk did not affect Alberta, he adds.
Local elk farmers are “are quite concerned about the ban,” he says. “It has a major economic impact on them.”
Pek says his company’s rigorous tracking system should help allay consumer and supplier concerns about any elk-related diseases.
“It will take companies like ours that have spent more money building an infrastructure that has quality control and puts us on a higher level of credibility with the customers,” he believes.
“Unfortunately, it’s going to topple some of our competition that don’t have these mechanisms in place. I don’t know how they answer the questions I do.”
Elk Equities is also busy developing a North American market for its processed elk velvet products, which include nutritional supplements and pet arthritis relief.
Canada produces 100 tons of velvet antler each year from a stock of 100,000 breeding elk on about 1,400 domestic elk farms, mostly in Alberta and Saskatchewan. More than 70 per cent of raw and frozen Alberta product is exported to Korea.
On Friday, U.S. officials announced CWD had been detected in deer and elk in several Western states, including elk farms in Colorado, Montana and South Dakota.
