Las Vegas Sun
TRAVERSE CITY,
Mich.- Mike Warner was sympathetic when federal officials seized
sheep in Vermont that were suspected of having been exposed to
a form of mad cow disease.
"It's
a heartbreaker to watch the animals being taken," says Warner,
a Michigan farmer who speaks from experience. Nearly two years
ago, his 21 beef cows were destroyed after one tested positive
for bovine tuberculosis.
While U.S.
officials tighten security in hopes of keeping mad cow and foot-and-mouth
disease out of the country, Michigan is continuing a battle begun
in the mid-1990s against bovine TB, a chronic lung disease.
Bovine TB
can kill cattle, but there is little chance of passing it to humans.
And it is much less contagious than foot-and-mouth. Bovine TB
is a bacterium spread mostly via breath or direct contact; foot-and-mouth
is a virus known to have been blown by wind up to 30 miles, says
Dr. John Clifford, a U.S. Department of Agriculture veterinarian
and tuberculosis specialist.
Still, bovine
TB is a huge problem for the Michigan cattle industry. The USDA
suspended the state's designation as free of bovine TB last year,
making it harder to sell the cattle in other states and depressing
their value.
The disease
has been confirmed in 23 cows on 13 farms since 1998, says Bob
Bender, coordinator of the state's eradication campaign. Roughly
1,500 cows have been destroyed because they were suspected of
infection or part of a tainted herd.
The state
has spent about $37 million fighting the illness, mostly for testing
cattle and reimbursing owners of condemned herds. Christopher
Wolf, agricultural economist at Michigan State University, predicts
the bill will reach $120 million over a decade. The federal government
has chipped in $13 million.
The only other
place in the United States without bovine TB-free status is a
small area around El Paso, Texas, where the disease has turned
up on dairy farms for 15 years, Clifford said. Just one is under
quarantine now.
Officials
believe the source of the Texas infections is dairies across the
border in Mexico, although they're unsure how the disease is crossing
the Rio Grande.
In Michigan,
Bender says the culprits generally are believed to be whitetail
deer - and, indirectly, people.
The illness
has been detected in more than 330 deer since 1995, nearly all
in the northeastern Lower Peninsula. It's the only sustained outbreak
of bovine TB among free-ranging deer ever documented in North
America, the USDA says.
Deer are common
in Michigan. But the bovine TB zone is home to numerous hunting
clubs that for years dumped huge piles of vegetables in the woods
to keep deer alive during winter. With so many eating nose to
nose, it was easier for the disease to spread.
Deer are believed
to have passed bovine TB to cattle by mingling with them in pastures
or nibbling at their feed, Bender says.
The state
has outlawed deer feeding in the TB zone and restricted it elsewhere
in the Lower Peninsula, while allowing hunters to kill more deer
in the zone. The rate of infection there has been cut in half
the last three years.
Meanwhile,
the state is testing all but the youngest of its 1.3 million cattle
- about 400,000 thus far. Any suspected of infection after two
levels of testing are killed, enabling a final diagnosis.
If the disease
is confirmed, the rest of the herd goes to slaughter unless the
farmer agrees to repeated, intensive testing.
"History
and experience have shown that the most effective method is to
just remove anything that's either infected or exposed,"
Bender said.
Warner, whose
Alpena County farm is back in business after being under quarantine
for more than a year, says he accepted the necessity of sacrificing
his herd. But it wasn't easy, especially when state reimbursement
fell short of what he thought the animals were worth.
"It was
very tough," he said. "I even had trouble selling feed
from here. Nobody would buy anything. We've made a good turnaround,
but I sure wouldn't wish this on anybody else."
|
