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Cattle Disease Poses Threat to Run Wild, U.S. Finds
By ELIZABETH BECKER
ASHINGTON, April 16 — The first comprehensive exercise about how
the nation would contain foot- and-mouth disease showed that an
outbreak could be stopped only with the combined strength of all
federal disaster agencies, including the military, Agriculture
Department officials have said.
After decades of relying largely on state and local governments to
help contain animal diseases, the Department of Agriculture asked
the Federal Emergency Management Agency to develop a plan to combat
this one as forcefully as if it threatened human lives, said
Clifford Oliver, director of the Agriculture Department's office of
crisis planning.
"We were coming to the realization that state and local government
would be overwhelmed and the U.S.D.A. would be overwhelmed if
foot-and-mouth broke out," Mr. Oliver said.
With Britain, one of the most advanced agricultural nations,
enduring an epidemic of foot-and-mouth disease and British troops
belatedly called in for mass burials of hundreds of thousands of
slaughtered animals, American farmers and ranchers began lobbying
their state agriculture chiefs for better planning. Those officials
recently urged Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman to find out
what the rest of the government could do to contain an outbreak.
The federal Catastrophic Disaster Response Group, which normally
worries about bioterrorism or industrial disasters, organized the
tabletop exercise for the Agriculture Department on Wednesday,
bringing together representatives of 26 agencies, including the
Departments of Defense, Commerce, Interior, Energy and Health and
Human Services, Mr. Oliver said.
The exercise confirmed fears that without the entire government
working to contain it, the disease would spread like wildfire if it
ever reached this country.
"They made it very very clear in the first 15 minutes of the
exercise that the possibility of the spread of foot-and-mouth
disease is very real and we need to be better prepared," said a
participant who would not allow his name to be used.
Mr. Oliver said, "For the first time we asked this group to look
at a biological event that doesn't affect humans, only animals."
The situation was played out like a military war game, with agency
representatives acting out how they would react if foot-and-mouth
broke out in Iowa. Participants said that the computer-generated
model could not be controlled and that the disease spread to three
states within 60 days, requiring 50,000 people to contain it.
The virus that causes the disease could pass through the
intestines of birds feeding on the carcasses of dead animals. When
those birds fly to adjoining farms, they could spread the disease
through their feces, far ahead of containment efforts, the exercise
showed.
With the explosion of world trade making the spread of the disease
to this country more likely and with the routine movement of
animals around the nation making the containment more difficult,
several participants said the exercise showed how an outbreak here
could quickly become a national emergency.
"You would see the National Guard called out to kill thousands of
animals in the first days and deployed to control traffic and keep
thousands of people out of the area," another participant said.
A representative from the United States Geological Survey was
especially troubled by questions about how wildlife like deer,
bison and wild pigs would be treated if they roamed near the
infected areas.
"If the disease infected a herd of white tail deer in the state of
Virginia, would they be slaughtered, too?" the representative
asked.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/17/national/17FOOT.html?ex=989610994&ei=1&en=91e1adf7dd1af850
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