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Scenes of foot and mouth disease outbreaks in England, where piles of dead animals eerily burned, and more recently, South Korea, resemble a terrible plot in a science fiction movie or an unusually imaginative rancher’s worst nightmare.
Unfortunately, the events — and the consequences — are all too real. Since November, more than 3.4 million South Korean livestock — including a third of the country’s pigs — were culled at an estimated cost of $2.6 billion dollars. All 13 million cloven-hoofed animals left in the country are being vaccinated for the disease.
The situation is particularly alarming as rising food prices increase food insecurity worldwide. South Korean prices for beef and pork surged 10 to 20 percent in February. The disease has also reportedly spread into North Korea, China and now Vietnam, where hundreds of livestock have been infected and officials are worried about a shortage of vaccine.
For a farmer in any country, destroying his entire herd — his life’s work — is often the most devastating thing he ever does in his life, points out Nick Striegel, Colorado’s assistant state veterinarian. In England, meat supplies are tight and farmers are still traumatized 10 years after FMD struck. Officials there are now discussing contingency plans that would involve vaccination and allowing animals to enter the food chain instead of mass culling.
While the more recent catastrophe in Asia is ramping up opportunities for the U.S. to export meat to the region, it is also making livestock producers more aware of a threat that looms just beyond their borders.
The U.S. has been FMD-free since 1929. But the disease is present across two-thirds of the world, including Europe, Asia, Africa and South America. The fact that domestic animals have never been exposed means they would be extremely susceptible if the pathogen ever arrives.
“It’s not that far from us,” Striegel said recently during a breakout session at the Governor’s Forum on Colorado Agriculture. “I don’t want to scare people, but it’s a concern for us.”
According to a report distributed to regulatory veterinarians last year by the Government Accountability Office, introduction of a foreign animal disease like FMD is certainly possible as globalization increases the exchange of people, animals and food products around the world and reduced government budgets leave gaps in importation safety procedures. Lack of collaboration between various federal agencies, incompatible data systems and unclear roles or priorities were all implicated in the enhanced risk.
On the national level, the Homeland Security department, created in response to the terrorist attacks of 9-11, is leading emergency preparedness efforts. “FMD is one of the top five bio-security issues on their entire list,” says Gregg Doud, former chief economist for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association who is now on staff at the Senate Ag Committee.
Veterinary officials in Colorado also want to do what they can to be prepared, just in case. The Colorado Department of Agriculture is in the process of building a “CORRAL,” which stands for Colorado Rapid Response for Ag & Livestock.
State officials have started educating producers about the concept at meetings around the state, including the recent Governor’s Forum on Colorado Agriculture, the annual Marshall Frasier beef symposium in Limon and last fall’s Colorado Cattlemen’s Association convention. Their goal is to create awareness, education and support for a statewide emergency response plan.
“We’ll need producers to help us out. We’ll need industry partners,” Striegel says.
“Colorado is using the ‘corral’ concept to get out in front,” says Jimmy Tickel, who trains student vets at North Carolina State University and speaks around the country on disaster response. “This is a way to be involved in order to have a voice.”
Informational meetings will continue across Colorado. The state will host a training workshop in August for Dairy Management Inc., which administers the national dairy check-off. In September, Colorado will also participate in a national veterinary “stockpile exercise” to determine just how long it would take to get vaccination supplies from secret warehouses to anywhere they might be needed around the country.
The implications of an outbreak are clearly overwhelming.
Transport of milk, meat and livestock, disposal of animals and the environmental impact, coordinating the response between agencies, industry, neighboring countries and overseas trading partners and how to handle indemnity, all would be huge challenges.
“FMD is the most viral disease you’ll ever deal with,” Tickel says. “Pigs are an amplifier. What really scares me is if it gets into the feral hog population. And it can blow in the wind for 40 miles. States would become their own little nations. If Mexico gets it, we’re all affected.”
Scenes of foot and mouth disease outbreaks in England, where piles of dead animals eerily burned, and more recently, South Korea, resemble a terrible plot in a science fiction movie or an unusually imaginative rancher’s worst nightmare.
Unfortunately, the events — and the consequences — are all too real. Since November, more than 3.4 million South Korean livestock — including a third of the country’s pigs — were culled at an estimated cost of $2.6 billion dollars. All 13 million cloven-hoofed animals left in the country are being vaccinated for the disease.
The situation is particularly alarming as rising food prices increase food insecurity worldwide. South Korean prices for beef and pork surged 10 to 20 percent in February. The disease has also reportedly spread into North Korea, China and now Vietnam, where hundreds of livestock have been infected and officials are worried about a shortage of vaccine.
For a farmer in any country, destroying his entire herd — his life’s work — is often the most devastating thing he ever does in his life, points out Nick Striegel, Colorado’s assistant state veterinarian. In England, meat supplies are tight and farmers are still traumatized 10 years after FMD struck. Officials there are now discussing contingency plans that would involve vaccination and allowing animals to enter the food chain instead of mass culling.
While the more recent catastrophe in Asia is ramping up opportunities for the U.S. to export meat to the region, it is also making livestock producers more aware of a threat that looms just beyond their borders.
The U.S. has been FMD-free since 1929. But the disease is present across two-thirds of the world, including Europe, Asia, Africa and South America. The fact that domestic animals have never been exposed means they would be extremely susceptible if the pathogen ever arrives.
“It’s not that far from us,” Striegel said recently during a breakout session at the Governor’s Forum on Colorado Agriculture. “I don’t want to scare people, but it’s a concern for us.”
According to a report distributed to regulatory veterinarians last year by the Government Accountability Office, introduction of a foreign animal disease like FMD is certainly possible as globalization increases the exchange of people, animals and food products around the world and reduced government budgets leave gaps in importation safety procedures. Lack of collaboration between various federal agencies, incompatible data systems and unclear roles or priorities were all implicated in the enhanced risk.
On the national level, the Homeland Security department, created in response to the terrorist attacks of 9-11, is leading emergency preparedness efforts. “FMD is one of the top five bio-security issues on their entire list,” says Gregg Doud, former chief economist for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association who is now on staff at the Senate Ag Committee.
Veterinary officials in Colorado also want to do what they can to be prepared, just in case. The Colorado Department of Agriculture is in the process of building a “CORRAL,” which stands for Colorado Rapid Response for Ag & Livestock.
State officials have started educating producers about the concept at meetings around the state, including the recent Governor’s Forum on Colorado Agriculture, the annual Marshall Frasier beef symposium in Limon and last fall’s Colorado Cattlemen’s Association convention. Their goal is to create awareness, education and support for a statewide emergency response plan.
“We’ll need producers to help us out. We’ll need industry partners,” Striegel says.
“Colorado is using the ‘corral’ concept to get out in front,” says Jimmy Tickel, who trains student vets at North Carolina State University and speaks around the country on disaster response. “This is a way to be involved in order to have a voice.”
Informational meetings will continue across Colorado. The state will host a training workshop in August for Dairy Management Inc., which administers the national dairy check-off. In September, Colorado will also participate in a national veterinary “stockpile exercise” to determine just how long it would take to get vaccination supplies from secret warehouses to anywhere they might be needed around the country.
The implications of an outbreak are clearly overwhelming.
Transport of milk, meat and livestock, disposal of animals and the environmental impact, coordinating the response between agencies, industry, neighboring countries and overseas trading partners and how to handle indemnity, all would be huge challenges.
“FMD is the most viral disease you’ll ever deal with,” Tickel says. “Pigs are an amplifier. What really scares me is if it gets into the feral hog population. And it can blow in the wind for 40 miles. States would become their own little nations. If Mexico gets it, we’re all affected.”
Learning from South Korea
One thing the United States can learn from South Korea is that “we need to make the decision about whether to vaccinate early,” Striegel says. “We at least have to have a plan or a way to make those decisions.”
Incubation time for the disease is about one week, he says.
While stockpiles of vaccine are likely adequate, the vets say it’s still not a simple answer. With 100 million head of beef cattle alone, the U.S. industry dwarfs the one in Korea and logistics would be a challenge. Stiegel gives the example of a feedlot in Northern Colorado that might have more than 100,000 cattle on feed. “How many can we vaccinate in a day? Maybe 4,000 head?” he wonders aloud. “And you really need two doses.”
In addition, there are seven types of FMD, and even more subtypes, so the United States would need to know exactly what it was dealing with.
There are dramatic trade implications. Once animals are vaccinated, current tests can no longer be used to determine whether they’ve been exposed to the virus, a problem researchers are working to remedy. “It’s on the fast track,” Striegel says.
Public perception would also have to be managed. While FMD has no impact on food safety, consumer fears often lead to a decrease in meat consumption after it breaks out.
Tony Flood, a director at the International Food Information Council in Washington and a member of the National Center for Food Protection and Defense, believes the beef industry did an exceptional job of responding to the first U.S. case of BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) that occurred in December 2003, providing a blueprint for handling the media during crucial moments.
“We wrote out the scenarios well in advance,” he says. “When there was a BSE crisis, there was a communication plan, and everybody had a copy of that.”
To pull that off again, the industry needs to be ready before something happens.
“If we had an FMD outbreak today, I don’t think the communication and the information is out there,” he says.
Unfortunately, it’s not the best budget climate for preparing for something as potentially catastrophic as FMD. Colorado State Veterinarian Keith Rohr says state animal health officials in the past received little or no federal funding for developing their own emergency preparedness plans. But he’s not satisfied with a strategy that involves simply waiting for “USDA to ride in on a white horse.”
Striegel says they hope to underwrite their ongoing efforts in part with support from the state’s agricultural industry and associations.
