ANIMALNET MARCH 31, 2001 Prime Minister Blair and top advisers in crisis talks Americans `believe hands and feet will fall off' Dutch start vaccinating for foot-and-mouth Ottawa uses ads to warn travellers of disease risk Fish die-off ­ Bangladesh First hantavirus case confirmed this year Calves with scours a danger to humans Australia-kangaroo meat MP pushes to ban trade in dolphins Florida legislature weighs boating rights with manatee protection Viagra has sealers feeling blue and seals keeping their private parts Are wolves a pack of trouble or an Algonquin Park jewel? 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 PRIME MINISTER BLAIR AND TOP ADVISERS IN CRISIS TALKS March 31, 2001 Agence France Presse English/PA News/AP/Reuters/N.Y. Times LONDON - Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair was, according to these stories, facing one of the hardest decisions of his political career on Saturday, forced to put off local elections or risk accusations of not taking the country's foot-and-mouth crisis seriously enough. The prime minister met top advisers on Saturday for crisis talks on whether to postpone planned the May 3 local elections due to the foot-and-mouth outbreak. The meeting was also scheduled to debate the pros and cons of a limited vaccination campaign for some livestock. According to the British press, Blair is expected to announce early next week that the May municipal poll will be put off until the worst of the foot-and-mouth crisis is over. Such an announcement would effectively thwart any plans to hold a general election on the same day -- the date that Blair was widely said to prefer that polls be held. Downing Street has denied the reports, saying that Blair's only concern at the moment is taking control of the foot-and-mouth epidemic. Protesters opposing plans to bury thousands of carcasses in a foot-and-mouth free area of Mid-Wales met experts last night in an urgent bid to overturn the scheme, it emerged today. More than 100 protesters demonstrated outside the MoD firing range, on Epynt Mountain, Sennybridge, Powys, earmarked to take slaughtered sheep and cattle, until midnight last night. Police in Brecon said a group of up to 20 protesters held vigil throughout the night after the break-up of the mass demonstration. Earlier community leaders met with Welsh Assembly Rural Affairs Minister Carwyn Jones and a number of experts and appealed for the plan to be dropped. They warned that the potential risk of spreading foot and mouth into infection free areas of Wales should rule out the plan entirely. Glyn Powell, deputy president of the Farmers Union of Wales, who also farms in the Brecon area, later dismissed the meeting as a "waste of time." In the Forest of Dean, sheep roam freely through oak and pine groves, sun themselves on residents' front lawns and nibble grass around old-fashioned red phone booths. When the 6,000 or so animals go to slaughter starting Sunday, foot-and-mouth disease will have stolen a central element of this western English preserve's quirky spirit. Few of the forest's residents depend on the sheep for their livelihood, so the cull will not bring the economic devastation the epidemic has caused for farming communities elsewhere. But the animals, allowed to graze freely here under a centuries-old right granted by kings, have pride of place in the hearts of some residents and on others' lists of pet peeves. For good and bad, their absence will change the community. "The day I was born my father gave me a lamb," said Don With British officials mulling a shift to vaccinations to combat the foot- and-mouth disease crisis, think for a moment of the Herdwicks. The Herdwicks, 75,000 of a national flock of 44 million, are a breed of particularly hardy sheep. For generations untold they have roamed the common grazing lands high above the valleys of the Lake District, one of the prime draws for England's tourism industry, which reckons it is losing $100 million a week as a result of the disease. With characteristic insouciance in recent weeks, the Herdwicks, known for coarse wool and tasty meat, nibbled and munched their way across the high ground, far from the culling fields in which even healthy animals were being slain as the government sought to build a "firewall" around the worst hit areas. But last weekend, at a farm on the other side of the Lake District from here, in the Duddon Valley, a farmer discovered that foot-and-mouth disease had spread from cattle to his Herdwicks, suddenly raising the same prospect of destruction as has now claimed the lives of more than 450,000 animals from at least 700 farms stricken by the epidemic. The name of this white-faced breed has been traced back to the 13th century. Monks of Furness Abbey, southwest of here, owned sheep in an area known as a herdwick in a Lake District valley at a time when wool was as big in the local economy as tourism is today. One story has it that the first sheep swam ashore from wrecked galleons, but this is dismissed by more modern experts as a myth. Yet, 700 years later, it is the Herdwicks' own particular characeristics that make them so difficult to replace, according to Jeff Brown, secretary of the Herdwick Sheep Breeders Association. The Herdwicks, Mr. Brown said, are a special breed uniquely able to forage on the steep mountainsides. They are resistant to cold and wet and are trained by a practice called "heafing" to regard a particular stretch of hillside as, literally, their home turf. Ewes take their lambs with them to the mountains each spring and pass on these skills, and if the cycle is broken, the herd cannot simply be replaced with less hardy lowland breeds, according to Martin Lewes, a farming expert at the local Radio Cumbria. Indeed, Mr. Brown said, in response to the outbreak, local officials are trying to assemble a Herdwick gene bank, either by collecting ova and semen, or placing a breeding stock of healthy Herdwick rams and ewes in quarantine. Some 10,000 Herdwicks have already been lost because some younger animals winter on Cumbria's lowland sheep pastures, which have become the epicenter of the disease. In the meantime, government veterinarians are testing Herdwicks near those in the Duddon Valley that have already been infected for signs that the disease has spread. "We are waiting with incredibly bated breath to hear the outcome," Mr. Brown said. AMERICANS `BELIEVE HANDS AND FEET WILL FALL OFF' March 31, 2001 PA News Ian Graham Stormont Enterprise and Irish Tourism minister Sir Reg Empey was cited as saying that Americans are so ill-informed about foot-and-mouth that they believe they will catch the disease if they visit and in extreme cases that "their hands and feet will fall off", and that the disease would have a "devastating" effect on tourism in the province unless such perceptions were countered. The minister said he had just received a report from the US on the beliefs of prospective tourists and it made "grim reading". It showed people thought if they visited the province they would find the whole place closed. They did not differentiate between Ireland -- where there has been one case of foot-and-mouth on each side of the border -- and the rest of Britain or even Europe as a whole. DUTCH START VACCINATING FOR FOOT-AND-MOUTH March 31, 2001 The Globe and Mail http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/RTGAMArticleHTMLTemplate/D/20010331/wbri ef?tf=RT/fullstory.html&cf=RT/config-neutral&slug=wbrief&date=20010331&archi ve=RTGAM&site=Front#dutch Amsterdam - Dutch officials, according to this story, started vaccinating 50,000 animals on Saturday at farms in the central village Kootwijkerbroek where angry farmers had earlier sealed off a farm infected with foot-and-mouth disease. The Meat and Animal Inspection service experts will take two to three days to finish the work on about 200 farms, a spokesman for the Agriculture Minister said, adding the situation was calm. The animals, which will be culled within two months, are located within a two-kilometre radius of the farm where the highly infectious disease was discovered on Thursday. The area is one of the country's biggest livestock centres. The total cull of animals in the Netherlands is expected to reach nearly 100,000. So far there are 11 confirmed cases of foot-and-mouth. OTTAWA USES ADS TO WARN TRAVELLERS OF DISEASE RISK March 31, 2001 National Post/Calgary Herald/Globe and Mail/CP Wire Kelly Cryderman OTTAWA - The federal government is, according to these stories, running television commercials and advertisements in the travel sections of newspapers as part of its campaign to keep foot-and-mouth disease out of Canada. Ads warning travellers "it's up to all of us" to keep the highly contagious livestock infection out of the country will also run on inflight airline videos and in agricultural trade publications. Jim Hunter, a spokesman for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, was quoted as saying, "It's a natural consequence as we move to fight the threat." The campaign was released yesterday after a briefing with Lyle Vanclief, the Minister of Agriculture. "For the last 50 years, we've kept the disease out of Canada and I'm confident that the increased surveillance now is the highest step that we can possibly take. We will continue to educate the public and travellers," Mr. Vanclief said. Though the agency was unsure of the costs for the public information campaign, Vern Greenshields, the minister's spokesman, said ``if they need more money, we'll find a way to get them more money.'' Passengers suspected of being infected with airborne contagious diseases may find themselves in a new portable isolation booth if they land at Toronto's Pearson International airport. The airport will begin testing a battery-operated, portable isolation booth Monday. The booths act as portable negative-pressure rooms, which can be wheeled directly to an airplane so a passenger can be quarantined and moved through the airport to a waiting ambulance without exposing others. Several Ontario hospitals currently use larger versions of the booths for portable isolation. The move to include portable isolation chambers comes after growing fears of passenger safety and the movement of contagious diseases, including tuberculosis. The Alberta Cattle Commission wants Ottawa to make foot-and-mouth sanitizing a permanent process for international travelers, says the commission's general manager, Gary Sargent, who was further quoted as saying, "That would be our recommendation - that it just becomes the routine biological security that we have." The story says that the commission has heard that some travelers haven't gone through the sanitizing process to kill the virus that attacks cloven-hoofed animals like cattle, sheep and pigs. Alberta's chief veterinarian, Dr. Gerald Ollis, was cited as saying he has taken similar calls, adding, "We're getting these complaints in from producers who are saying: `we came into the airports and nothing happened.''' Jim Hunter, a spokesman for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, was cited as saying it appears some travelers don't realize they've gone through the sanitation process, and that some sanitation mats look the same as carpeting, adding, "They may not even have been aware that they were walking on the disinfectant.'' Hunter was further cited as saying the agency is tightening its security measures, and may heed the Commission's call for a permanent sanitizing process, adding, "I don't think that decision has been made yet, but certainly for the foreseeable future everything is going to remain as it is.'' FISH DIE-OFF ­ BANGLADESH March 31, 2001 ProMED-mail http://www.promedmail.org Date 30 Mar 2001 From: M. Cosgriff Source: The Independent, 30 Mar 2001 [edited] Fish disease breaks out in Moulvibazar Fish disease has broken out in 6 upazilas [blocks or neighborhoods] of the Moulvibazar district in an epidemic form killing a large number of fish. Fish with the disease develop ulcers on their bodies and die within a week after being attacked. The species of fish being attacked with the disease include Koi, Taki, Shoal, Puti, and Tengra. A source in the district Fisheries Department said the fish disease has been caused by a kind of virus which is found in water bodies such as ponds, canals, and ditches. Fishermen and the fish cultivators are incurring heavy loss due to the outbreak of the disease because people have stopped [buying] these fish. Some fish cultivators said that the Fisheries Department has not yet instituted any preventive measure to check the disease. -- ProMED-mail [Although the clinical signs given here are not entirely consistent with Pfisteria and Pfisteria is not a virus, at this point, I wonder if the authorities have considered it or ruled it out. ­ Mod.TG] .....................tg/pg/sh FIRST HANTAVIRUS CASE CONFIRMED THIS YEAR March 31, 2001 Los Angeles Times http://www.latimes.com/news/asection/20010331/t000027658.html A northeast Arizona teenager died of hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, the first confirmed case of the disease in the state this year, health officials in Phoenix said. The Arizona State Health Laboratory earlier in the week confirmed the illness. Officials are still trying to determine where the Navajo County youth contracted the disease. Hantavirus is spread by deer mice and other closely related species. People can become infected by inhaling the virus, which can become airborne when rodent droppings or nests are disturbed. CALVES WITH SCOURS A DANGER TO HUMANS March 31, 2001 The Regina Leader-Post B8 CARNDUFF -- Dr. Clarke Hill, a veterinarian at Redvers, was cited as saying that cattle producers and their families should take extra precautions when dealing with sick calves, because of salmonella, a bacterial disease that causes severe stomach pains and diarrhea and is very similar to food poisoning, adding that, "If farmers get this, they should see a doctor right away. The biggest concern that we tell the farmers is to make sure that you are disinfecting yourself. If you have an area where you have a problem calf, make sure that you are cleaning your boots off and washing your hands thoroughly. Really, really stress that people are not going in and out of this area. Make sure that children are not going near the sick calf.'' Hill was further quoted as saying, "There is another form of major (calf) scours that we see in this area, that we worry about concerning humans, and that is cryptosporidium. It can get in water supplies and we have had the odd person who has picked it up from a scouring calf.'' AUSTRALIA-KANGAROO MEAT March 31, 2001 The Associated Press SYDNEY, Australia -- Animal welfare campaigners were cited as condemning efforts by the Australian government to promote kangaroo meat in Europe as an alternative to beef and lamb. The story says that the federal government gave the kangaroo processing industry $29,000 so that it could promote the meat amid fears of foot-and-mouth and mad cow diseases sweeping Europe. World League for the Protection of Animals spokeswoman Halina Thompson was cited as accussing the kangaroo industry on Friday of seeking to cash in on the diseases' spread, and that if the kangaroo meat industry in Australia were to boom, it could eat itself out of existence, adding, "To produce the (equivalent of) 1,700,000 tons of cattle meat annually, the industry would have to kill the entire kangaroo population of Australia about 566 times a year." She also said that in 1996, veterinarians in Victoria state deemed the killing of kangaroos for human consumption unhygienic. Tony Kelly, development officer with the Australian Kangaroo Association, denied it, saying the meat was subject to the same strict checks as mutton and beef. Kangaroos are not raised commercially in Australia. Processing companies kill about 3 million of the animals each year for their meat. MP PUSHES TO BAN TRADE IN DOLPHINS March 31, 2001 Victoria Times Colonist News A4 Business Susan Korah OTTAWA -- A New Democrat MP is, according to this story, calling on the Canadian federal government to immediately ban the live capture and trade of whales and dolphins. Vancouver East MP Libby Davies was cited as saying at a press conference Friday the goal of her private member's motion, which will be debated Monday, is to draw attention to such incidents as the ``tragic capture of 12 beluga whales in Russia for Marineland in 1999.'' Sheila MacDonald of the Canadian Federation of Humane Societies was cited as saying that two of those whales have died since their capture, adding, "The seemingly smiling faces of these animals disguise the suffering and deprivation they endure on a daily basis,'' she told reporters. FLORIDA LEGISLATURE WEIGHS BOATING RIGHTS WITH MANATEE PROTECTION March 31, 2001 Knight-Ridder Tribune Environment, Recycling TALLAHASSEE, Fla.--Environmentalists hoping to settle a lawsuit with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission were cited as saying Friday that the state's commitment to manatee protection took a giant step sideways Friday, as the commission voted to move toward creating more speed zones in Brevard County, a measure that brings the state a little bit closer to settling a lawsuit filed by the Manatee Protection Coalition. The story says that the plaintiffs in the lawsuit were hoping for more and tougher restrictions, while a boating rights group opposed them. VIAGRA HAS SEALERS FEELING BLUE AND SEALS KEEPING THEIR PRIVATE PARTS March 31, 2001 The Edmonton Journal Insight H3 News Colin Nickerson The most famous blue pill from the labs of Pfizer Inc. -- viagra -- may, according to this story, do what Brigitte Bardot and a generation of animal-rights activists have failed to accomplish -- save the seals. Recent years have seen a dramatic drop in the numbers of seals taken in the world's last major commercial hunt of marine mammals. Some 91,000 seals were killed off Newfoundland and Quebec last year, sharply down from an annual harvest of 280,000 in the late 1990s, according to a new study of the beleagured sealing industry. One reason, the researchers suggest, is that when a modern Chinese male fears his sexual powers are flagging, he is increasingly likely to grab a bottle of Viagra rather than a time-honoured potion of powdered male seal genitalia. That's great news if you happen to be a harp seal, since the annual seal hunt is under way in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, north of Prince Edward Island. But it's very bad news if you happen to be a sealer stuck with a surplus of an improbable product. ARE WOLVES A PACK OF TROUBLE OR AN ALGONQUIN PARK JEWEL? March 31, 2001 The Toronto Star Kate Harries http://www.thestar.com/cgi-bin/gx.cgi/AppLogic+FTContentServer?pagename=thes tar/Layout/Article_PrintFriendly&c=Article&cid=985926800897 ALGONQUIN PARK - Mike Runtz , according to this story, breaks a trail across a frozen lake, his snowshoes skimming the surface of the deep drifts. Two days in search of wolves has turned up little sign of the denizens of the deep forest. But they may be there, silently watching from behind a nearby tree. Runtz, a freelance naturalist and author whose association with Algonquin Park's wolves goes back 25 years, was quoted as saying, "We tend to fear what we can't see.'' The story says that it's a fear that can be reinforced for those who come across the result of a wolf hunt before the pack has finished consuming its prey, with Runtz further quoted as saying, "A wolf-killed deer - it's not a pretty sight." Many people dislike wolves. Hunters and trappers consider them competition; farmers want them far from their livestock. And so Ontario treats wolves like vermin. The wolf is the only large mammal that can be killed 365 days a year, with no limits and only a generic small-game licence required. However, some scientists believe the park's wolves are unique in Canada and will die out if not protected. Soon, there may be no wolves to watch quietly as Runtz passes by. And there may be no wolves to howl at night for the tourists. 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