ANIMALNET MARCH 11, 2001 Containing a scourge Chief vet's shock over scale of disease outbreak It is now time to consider the true cost of the food in our shopping baskets And you thought germs in the subway were bad AnimalNet is produced by the Centre for Safe Food at the University of Guelph, and is supported by the Ontario Cattlemen's Association, the Canadian Food Information Council, the U.S. National Pork Producers, U.S. National Food Processors Association, Pfizer Animal Health Group, Pioneer Hi-Bred Limited (Canada), Canadian Animal Health Institute, Meat & Livestock Australia, Canadian Pork Council, Ontario Pork, Tyson Foods, Ontario Egg Producers, Ontario Farm Animal Council, U.S. National Cattlemens Beef Association, the Rutgers Food Risk Analysis Initiative, Ag-West Biotech, Land O' Lakes Feed, Capital Health, Animal Industry Foundation, American Feed Industry Assn., the Ontario Soybean Growers Marketing Board, Food Industry Environmental Network, Canadian Poultry and Egg Processors, Chicken Farmers of Canada, MDS Nordion, American Meat Institute, AdCulture, USDA Veterinary Services (Fort Collins) Alberta Farm Animal Council, and the Agricultural Adaptation Council (CanAdapt Program). archived at: http://www.plant.uoguelph.ca/safefood/archives/animalnet-archives.htm CONTAINING A SCOURGE: CATTLEMEN'S NIGHTMARE: IN 1952, WHEN FOOT-AND-MOUTH DISEASE LAST SURFACED IN CANADA, SHOTS RANG OUT ON A SASKATCHEWAN FARM -- AND PARANOIA REIGNED March 11, 2001 The Edmonton Journal News Nicolas Van Praet The day 55 beef cattle at the Beingessner farm were shot by RCMP officers was, according to this story, the day the family farm shed its shame. Officers burned a pile of straw 30 metres across. It was a bitter winter in Saskatchewan and the earth below the straw pile was the only dirt that wasn't frozen. Machines scooped a dugout three metres deep. The family loaded feed on to a wagon. A tractor made a trail leading to the pit, pushing aside the snow. The Hereford shorthorn cows followed, a slow procession of death packed closely together, sniffing the food as farmers and officers stared from above. Then the officers fired on the cows. The story says that the animals, diagnosed with the highly contagious foot-and-mouth disease, the same disease that now ravages livestock in Britain, dropped to the ground. That was February 1952, the last time foot-and-mouth disease was seen in Canada. The federal government paid the family $1,030 in compensation for the lost cattle, more than they were worth. Beingessner's father put the money toward his $13,000 mortgage, which he had been struggling to pay off. Foot-and-mouth disease, or aphthous fever, is the disease most feared by livestock farmers around the world because it spreads as easily as the flu does in humans. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency says there are only 47 countries in the world that do not have the disease. Canada is one of them. The cost in lost sales when other countries refuse to import your meat is millions and even billions of dollars. Foot-and-mouth is not a killer disease. It is an economic disease. Transmitted by a tissue-destroying virus, foot-and-mouth hits hard and fast wherever it goes. The only real way to stop it is by slaughtering infected animals and burying the carcasses. Vikram Misra, professor of virology at Western College of Veterinary Medicine in Saskatoon, was quoted as saying, "Foot-and-mouth is very hard to destroy.'' There are several known types of the foot-and-mouth virus, making fighting it with vaccine even more difficult. Rob McNabb, assistant manager at the Canadian Cattlemen's Association, was quoted as saying, "It can literally devastate a country's livestock industry.'' Canadian farmers are thinking only one thing as they watch the disease tear up the British countryside, McNabb says: "Thank God it's not us.'' So how is it that such a contagious disease, which can be carried by people, animals and containers like trucks, has not made it to Canada for decades? Good screening of people at ports of entry, for one. Canada has also banned meat products from any country where the disease is active, including Britain. "And maybe luck,'' says Dr. Veronique Moulin of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. "For sure there is a risk, and we are prepared for that.'' CHIEF VET'S SHOCK OVER SCALE OF DISEASE OUTBREAK March 11, 2001 PA News/ANANOVA UK Chief Veterinary Officer Jim Scudamore was cited as admitting that the scale of the foot-and-mouthoutbreak had come as a shock and that the "very rapid spread" of the disease throughout the country had taken experts by surprise, as the number of cases in the UK reached 139. New cases were confirmed yesterday at four farms in Cumbria, three in Scotland, two in Devon, two in County Durham and one in Anglesey. The Scottish Executive said a 140th outbreak had been confirmed near Gretna in Dumfries and Galloway, but this was not yet confirmed by MAFF. Mr Scudamore was quoted as saying, "I have to say that we have been taken by surprise by the extent of an outbreak, it is a very rapid spread throughout the country. All the cases we are looking at appear to be linked to movements of sheep and then spread to cattle on the same farms or cattle in the area. At the moment we are identifying outbreaks probably caused by the movement of sheep before the 23rd (of February), and then we are containing those outbreaks. What we have got at the moment are outbreaks appearing where sheep have been moved which we haven't been able to trace or we haven't been able to identify. Anyone in a situation like this would be worried but as far as we can see at the moment, all the outbreaks do have a linkage. What we have got is widespread dissemination of virus. We have contained it to a large extent by stopping the movement of animals, and we are getting local appearance of that virus, which is what we have to stamp out in the localities it occurs in. One of the difficulties we are having in this outbreak is finding sheep that may have come into contact with the disease. It's got into sheep and it's been transmitted in one week, two weeks, around the whole country." Mr Scudamore said the total number of animals facing slaughter was now 114,000, of which 82,000 had already been killed. Since the start of the outbreak, 755 farms had been placed under restrictions for animal movement. Carcases were tonight being placed on a huge pyre at the Dartmoor farm owned by the Prince of Wales, where foot-and-mouth has been confirmed. Last Sunday, the Ministry of Agriculture said the disease had been detected on the Duchy of Cornwall-owned Dunna Bridge farm, near Princetown. All 300 sheep and 170 beef cattle on the farm, run by Roger and Marion Winsor, were slaughtered, along with 127 sheep from a 500-acre area of unenclosed moorland nearby. On the farm, work began to construct a giant pyre to burn the slaughtered animals and tonight, as dusk fell, carcases were lifted on to it one by one. Animals are being slaughtered at what is believed to be Britain's first organic farm with foot-and-mouth disease. The Ministry of Agriculture yesterday revealed two new confirmed cases near Crediton in east Devon. One at Venny Tedburn is at an organic farm run by Trevor Cligg, who is now helping with the slaughter of his 300 cattle and 100 sheep. MAFF officials say a new outbreak of the disease has been confirmed in Okehampton, bringing to 22 the total number of confirmed cases in Devon. The new case will mean the slaughter of 450 sheep and 90 cattle. A total of 16 other premises in Devon are also under restrictions as suspected cases. Farmers yesterday accused the horse racing authorities of "breathtaking arrogance" in going ahead with race meetings while the foot and mouth crisis deepens. The farmers directed their anger at Peter Savill, the chairman of the British Horseracing Board, after he backed a decision by Plumpton officials to stage a meeting tomorrow. They accused Mr Savill, the chairman and principal shareholder at the East Sussex course, of putting livelihoods at risk. One said it was "deeply ironic" that Mr Savill should support the meeting while he lives in Ireland where the authorities have taken a firm line on foot and mouth, banning horses coming over to England for the Cheltenham Festival long before it was postponed. IT IS NOW TIME TO CONSIDER THE TRUE COST OF THE FOOD IN OUR SHOPPING BASKETS March 10, 2001 Irish Examiner Denise Hall In 1967, the UK foot and mouth outbreak was, according to this story, contained relatively quickly, as it had only spread to a few counties in Britain. In those dim and distant times, there was little hope of collating information on livestock movement with the help of computers, which were as rare as hens teeth then and the size of an average barn if you could find one. And keeping up to date on the latest developments via the small screen on an object called a mobile phone was something that was only likely to happen on Thunderbirds. But the more we learn, it seems, the less we know. Today, we are coming close or so we believe to understanding the basic structure of human existence, can obtain information on just about anything from just about anywhere in seconds and enjoy a level of prosperity unimaginable only a generation ago. Yet for all this progress, we seem to be congenitally unable to grasp a few basic, yet vital, facts. Namely, as a Hollywood film producer once pointed out, no free lunches. The story says that cheap food, the kind that some supermarkets and certain politicians insist that the public must have, is a myth. It is not cheap and, in certain cases, is so full of additives that it can hardly be described as food anyway. And its true cost, as evidenced by this latest food scare, is proving to be incredibly and unacceptably high. Last year, an article in New Scientist magazine urged us to ponder the true cost of food in our shopping baskets. The story goes on to say that whether you give a toss about animal welfare or whether you don't, whether you are a vegetarian or a rampant carnivore, what's good or bad for animals, is equally good or bad for us. For far too long supermarkets have demanded an increasingly centralised system of production and distribution, and governments have blithely signed free trade treaties that tie them to an absurd global trading system that constantly puts short term profits before human and animal welfare. And to comply with these requirements, animals are variously forced into cannibalism, injected with antibiotics and hormones and sprayed with organophosphates. Then they are forced into overcrowded lorries and shipped many miles to be slaughtered, often without the benefit of food, water or mandatory resting periods. The fact that such lorries become, not only hellholes of suffering for the animals, but mobile contaminators for the rest of us, seems to have escaped the attention of those whose only interest is short term profit. In England, MAFF (Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food) devised a system that reduced local slaughterhouses. In one decade, numbers went down from 1,400 to less than 400. Some experts predict that the numbers could drop to 75. A Ministry official observed at the time "the negotiations - which were ostensibly about hygiene standards - were driven by other, wider issues". Issues that may have proved to be convenient for the supermarkets - in the short term - have proved disastrous on many other levels. Fewer abattoirs mean more imports and a disastrous decrease in animal welfare. The longer the journey, the more animals suffer. And when they do arrive at one of these state of the art slaughter factories, the time between unloading and death is likely to be longer, more crowded and certainly more stressful. Enzyme production increases, which means the meat is less tender. And stressed animals tend to defecate more. This means more chance of e coli. The serious outbreak of that disease in Lanarkshire in 1996 originated in meat from a large Ministry approved plant of the sort now favoured by Brussels. Whether we in the Republic have managed to escape this latest plague by the skin of our teeth or not remains to be seen. But there can be little doubt that a radical reform and major re think of agri farming practises and the behaviour of those whose only concern is short term profit, are urgently called for. AND YOU THOUGHT GERMS IN THE SUBWAY WERE BAD March 11, 2001 The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/11/weekinreview/11SHAR.html?pagewanted=print Joe Sharkey As if chronic delays, rising fares and the looming threat of disruptive labor disputes this spring and summer weren't enough, put-upon airline travelers have been hearing more lately about another potential source of dismay: the spread of infectious disease. No one is saying airplanes are spreading plague and pestilence, or that the days of grim Ellis Island-style health inspections could be returning. But, the story says, with more than 1.5 billion people traveling by air each year from every corner of the earth, world health officials are increasingly concerned about the ability of contagious diseases to hitch quick rides from continent to continent. They are calling for better exchange of medical information among international health and air industry officials and more efficient ways to respond to crises, like requiring airlines to maintain better seating lists so potentially exposed passengers can be notified months later when cases arise. Last week, airports from Japan to western Europe asked travelers arriving from Britain to wipe their feet on disinfectant- doused mats. The reason was fear that the arriving passengers could literally track in the virus responsible for foot-and-mouth disease, a highly contagious ailment that is decimating sheep, cattle and pig populations on British farms. At American airports, longstanding precautions are being tightened. On Thursday, the Department of Agriculture declared a "heightened alert" over foot-and-mouth disease and said it had added 100 agents to its normal contingent of 1,800 who monitor international arrivals. Accompanied by baggage-sniffing dogs looking for prohibited foods, inspectors are asking passengers from Britain and other countries where the disease is active whether they visited a farm or rural area. Those suspected of carrying the virus can be required to have shoes, clothing and possessions disinfected. The story explains that foot-and-mouth disease is just one of a growing number of infectious illnesses, some in the form of new drug-resistant strains, that can be transported on airplanes, which in some cases resemble flying petri dishes for disease incubation. 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