BIOTERRORISM: how to deal with animal disease outbreak

John G. White Nov 25, 2010  While she held court Thursday last week during an all day Food and Agricultural Emergency Response Planning workshop, Amber Wilson told a quick story of an area veterinarian in charge (AVIC) who responded to a suspected foreign animal disease (FAD) at a central Kansas sale barn.
“Of course, by protocol he had to pull on his white outerwear and special boots, everything including the face mask, before he entered the holding area,” she explained of the district veterinarian.
Although it was a false symptom, which he recognized almost immediately, rumors had already spread quicker than a prairie wildfire.
“That shows you how quickly things can get out of hand,” she said, which isn’t uncommon. Wilson used the Tylenol scare that involved just two tainted bottles, or salmonella-infested tomatoes that cost millions before it was found the culprit was a bad batch of peppers instead, as examples.
All of which isn’t a deterrent to the seriousness of an actual breakout. A case of foot and mouth disease completely ruined the Taiwan pork industry, which until the case broke was the principal supplier of pork to Japan.
Or in England, where the same disease totally crippled the beef industry.
Planning for the real or the hypothetical was key for this workshop held at the Montevideo American Legion and attended by about two dozen including federal, state and local agency personnel, two veterinarians (Dr. Jim Koew­ler, of Clara City, and Dr. Arnold Jostock, district veterinarian), two county commissioners, mem­bers of the Chippewa County Emergency Re­sponse team, including Marve Garbe and Clara City’s Roger Knapper, plus one livestock producer.
“They were invited,” said Garbe of the livestock producers, then added that he was surprised and disappointed that the ag community was so poorly represented.
Wilson, a consultant with the USDA, said later that the makeup of those attending the workshop was rather typical of her past experiences, which she and other staff of SES Inc. are conducting in every county of the country.
While a couple of scenarios were played out in focus groups in the afternoon sessions, the plan was not to develop an actual plan. Garbe said a structure is already in place for a county-wide disaster response, and if need be, the “players” can be inserted into the “model.”
None of which lessens the serious potential impact of such a disaster, which as Wilson pointed out numerous times, can happen anywhere at any time whether it happens by happenstance or by terroristic design.
“It doesn’t have to happen at a major turkey facility,” she cautioned at one point. “It might start with a pet parakeet.”
The results of a biotic disaster can be, as Taiwan and Great Britain learned, devastating on all levels. Using the turkey industry as an example, which she said is part of a $6.1 billion livestock industry in Minnesota alone, and involves an average of 68,000 semi loads of birds a year, a disease outbreak could affect the industry itself, a dependent feed grains industry as well as a work force that stretches from the barns themselves to a grocery store hundreds of miles distant. She reminded that at least 20 plus percent of all Minnesotans are employed in some way by the agricultural industry.
“The impact is enormous,” said Wilson.
And a disease can spread quickly before being diagnosed by wind, truck, human hair and a multitude of other carriers — depending on the pathogen.
She added that it doesn’t have to be a product of bioterrorism, noting that most of the bioterrorism in the U.S. has been the result of internal groups with no known ties to Al-Qaeda. “It might be spread by someone discarding a pop can,” said Wilson.
She used a simulated foot and mouth disease scenario that began on a farm in northeast Iowa near the South Dakota border, one that took 11 days between exposure and diagnosis.
Using her PowerPoint, she went through the pre-diagnosis steps through the post diagnosis steps, such as the disaster declaration (done by the governor and at secretarial levels of the USDA), the movement control orders, the quarantine zones that continually had to be expanded, an epidemiological investigation, the appraisal, depopulation and disposal of the infected livestock, and the sur­veliance of the entire state and states nearby.
With very little effort and in little time, there were 5,844 affected farms, plus the costs to appraise each one, the euthansizing of animals — each step along the way adding incremental costs that eventually added up to $471.32 million. This did not include export losses.
“Despite the hardship and the costs, it’s the depopulating of the animal herd that is so difficult,” she said.
Garbe agreed, noting that in Chippewa County with the high water table it would be difficult to find a place to bury large numbers of animals. “We just aren’t prepared for something like that,” he said, before adding, “plus, nobody wants that in their back yard.”
While there are rules for USDA indemnification for such disasters, it can hardly make up for the overall economic impact, said Wilson.
There is in place an overall concept of disaster plans, in which a control area surrounds the infested zone and premises. Beyond that is a surveillance zone, and beyond even that is what is hoped to be a disease-free zone.
Coordinating the logistics, though, was the essence of the afternoon workshops. Everyone, said Wilson, plays a role from the emergency management levels through the veterinarians, ag trade associations and groups, county health officials, law en­forcement, livestock producers and the media.
“County planning is critical,” she concluded. “A FAD such as foot and mouth impacts our entire economy, and it is a situation that starts with livestock producers. They must be able to recognize the symptoms and to react accordingly. Once diagnosed, stopping animal movement is critical in preventing the spread of the disease from the area. Depopulation, as difficult as it is, of affected and exposed animals is essential to stopping the disease. Biosecurity is the only weapon we have to fight a FAD.”
As if the point hadn’t been made, she added: “A FAD can happen. Any­where. At any time.”
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