March 26, 2001
Some Say U.S. Lags in Blocking Foot-and-Mouth Disease at the Border
By ELIZABETH BECKER and CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS
WASHINGTON, March 25 — With foot-and-mouth disease spreading into a fourth European country last week, there is growing concern that the United States has not done enough to block the disease at the border and that should it invade here, America would be hard pressed to stamp it out.
If the worst should happen, independent experts and officials say, a failure to exclude the disease or to stop any invasion quickly could devastate American food production and international agricultural trade.
In the last two years, the Department of Agriculture has reported 18 emergency outbreaks of foreign plant and animal diseases in the United States, a startling increase from the previous average of one or two a year.
Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman said the government was seeking to balance its support for the forces of globalization and the need to protect its $50 billion meat industry. "You've got to be able to protect your infrastructure, your farms and ranches, without being seen as creating trade barriers," Ms. Veneman said in an interview last week. "Clearly with this strain of virulent foot-and-mouth disease we're completely justified in the measures we've taken."
Last week, as Ireland followed Britain, France and the Netherlands in confirming the blight's spread, American officials voiced confidence in a series of measures aimed at keeping it overseas. The Agriculture Department has set up an emergency hot line to give advice on foot-and-mouth disease, halted the importation of meat and meat products from the European Union and placed ports of entry on heightened alert.
The department has also added inspectors at airports and border posts and deployed teams of beagles to sniff out hidden meats being brought in by travelers. And, Ms. Veneman said, she has sent 40 scientists to assist in the Europeans' containment efforts and provide her office with daily updates.
Still, some agriculture experts and livestock industry representatives say those steps are not enough. They express fears that the Agriculture Department has nothing close to the resources it needs to protect America's 170 million cattle, sheep and pigs. The experience of northern Europe, which despite its expensive and sophisticated surveillance and tracking systems has failed to contain the disease, has worried many who had once felt safe.
"Quite frankly the department needs much more resources at all borders, and the White House needs to think about this as a threat to our national economic security," said Dan Glickman, the secretary of agriculture under President Bill Clinton.
Even ranchers and farmers who are generally supportive of the Department of Agriculture's efforts warn that American ports and borders are too porous. "The U.S.D.A. is doing a commendable job with its resources, but no, it's not what ought to be done," said Beth Lautner, vice president for science and technology at the National Pork Producers Council. "We have a good safety net around our country, but what's very disconcerting is that the U.K. has a good one, too, and is overwhelmed by the disease."
Britain, which produces vaccines for other nations fighting foot-and-mouth disease, had not had an outbreak since 1967. It has ordered the slaughter of more than 400,000 cows, sheep and pigs, and has still not been able to contain the virus. Last week British government experts predicted that the crisis would continue to grow for months.
Other critics assert that the entire American strategy is too passive, because the war is lost if the disease ever reaches American herds. As in Britain, a severe outbreak here would probably require the government to kill vast numbers of livestock and to quarantine farms, driving up food prices, disrupting transportation and upsetting consumers.
"This policy of wait and see is clearly insufficient," said Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the Democratic leader. Mr. Daschle has called for a full moratorium on the importation of all livestock and meat products from all countries.
To Ms. Veneman, that would be the first shot in a disastrous trade war that could ultimately hurt all kinds of American food and farm exports, valued at $59 billion a year, including $4.5 billion a year of meat. "With 96 percent of the world population living outside the U.S., we have to have those markets abroad," she said. "As the economy becomes more global, so too does the food system."
The livestock industry would be at immediate risk. The foot-and-mouth virus afflicts cloven-hoofed animals and generally reduces their ability to gain weight and produce milk. It is not harmful to people, even if they eat diseased meat. It is spread by direct or indirect contact with infected animals. The disease is endemic in every continent, except North America, Australia and Antarctica.
In theory the threat posed by the European outbreak is no greater than threats from infected animals in parts of Argentina, say, or Korea. But the high volume of tourism and trade between the United States and European countries makes that outbreak more serious here.
In addition, the rise of immigration to the United States from regions where foot-and-mouth is entrenched, especially South America and Asia, has increased the risk of its introduction here, as travelers return with food or other traces from diseased animals.
The General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, warned in 1997 that these pressures were forcing inspectors to take shortcuts that "raise questions about the efficiency and the overall effectiveness of these inspections."
Rather than earmark more money for agricultural protection, President Bush cut next year's budget for the Agriculture Department by 7 percent. Ms. Veneman said that she would maintain the same spending level for the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, her agency's main protection office, but that there were no plans for a substantial increase in its budget.
The United States brings considerable experience to fighting the disease. After six outbreaks in the last century, it set about eradicating the blight from North America. In 1947, Washington led a quasi-military campaign in Mexico and pushed the disease south of Panama. In 1954, the federal government established a secure research facility at Plum Island, off Long Island, to develop vaccines. The last outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in the United States was in 1929.
In recent years, the government also established the National Animal Health Emergency Management System, a network of industry, state and federal veterinary groups and the Department of Agriculture. Last year, the network held a military- style exercise based on the scenario of an outbreak in Texas that simulated the task of identifying, isolating and killing infected animals, then burning or burying their carcasses.
"We had to have pre-emptive slaughters, a scorched-earth policy taking out herds in front of the disease," said Ms. Lautner of the pork council, who took part in the exercise. "It's a containment policy, building a buffer between infected and clean herds."
But the United States Animal Health Association, an independent group led by state veterinarians, predicts trouble if there is an outbreak. In a 1998 report, the group warned that the first cases could be misdiagnosed because producers are unfamiliar with the disease; that producers and politicians might resist the slaughter of apparently healthy exposed herds; and that the high density of animals in huge dairies and feedlots might exacerbate the disease's spread.
Joe Annelli, head of emergency services for the animal and plant inspection service, counters that his agency is ready. He has stationed 450 foreign animal disease specialists around the country, who can reach any farm in the continental United States by car in four hours or less.
Mass vaccination is viewed by scientists and livestock producers as a last resort, because the vaccines are not foolproof.
Testing for the disease is limited to the remote Plum Island laboratory, the only site in the United States where live virus can be used. All suspected tissue has to be examined on Plum Island, a procedure that critics say costs precious time.
Because of limits on the use of live virus, there is a ban on the production of the vaccine in the United States, which puts the country at the mercy of foreign producers. Dennis Steadman, head of North American operations for Merial Ltd., which agriculture officials say has the contract to produce vaccine in case of a United States emergency, said he was skeptical that his company could ramp up production in time.
"I'd be surprised," Mr. Steadman said. "Just the sheer size of the livestock population in the U.S. would be a tremendous leap in volume."
Copyright 2001 The New York Times