Farm Disease Prompts National Security Concern

[Purveyor]

Source: Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — When there were fears of a foot-and-mouth outbreak in the Midwest this summer, the White House received secret briefings that highlighted the potential for old farm diseases to be new national security threats.
The suspected outbreak in Minnesota of the disease, which does not affect humans, never materialized. Yet federal officials said their concerns showed how the government probably would respond to a foot-and-mouth epidemic. The disease strikes cloven-hoofed animals including cows, sheep, pigs and goats and can have a major economic impact.

"We wanted to keep it quiet to the extent we could so it wouldn't cause any panic or economic impact but make sure the people who would be most concerned like the president or the secretary knew what we were doing," said Roger Rufe, director of operations coordination at the Homeland Security Department.

The incident began June 26 in Austin, Minn., known as "Spamtown, USA" because it is home to Hormel Foods, which makes the canned meat product.

A shipment of about 200 pigs had come into a slaughterhouse, and an inspector noticed suspicious lesions on some.



Read more: http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-10-15-foot-mouth_N.htm

[Eurobabe]

1. lemme guess, already in the food chain

:eyes:

[yellowcanine]

2. Foot and mouth disease does not effect humans. So the issue is not

that it might be in the food chain. The issue is to keep it out of the country because an outbreak would destroy the beef and pork export market.

[Eurobabe]

3. I know that, but if the pigs were sick who knows what ELSE

they might have had before slaughter?

[Nihil]

6. The issue is to *cover up* that is has been in the country ...

... "because an outbreak would destroy the beef and pork export market."

That's why this outbreak was covered up.

That's why BSE outbreaks have been covered up.

Be a good citizen: Put your trust in the government.

[yellowcanine]

7. "The suspected outbreak in Minnesota of the disease.... never materialized"

There cannot be a coverup if there was never an outbreak. Or are you seriously maintaining that every suspected outbreak of a serious disease should immediately be made public? There are too many false positives for that. The broad testing procedures necessarily have to be very conservative so as not to miss something - but then more precise testing must be done to determinied whether or not there indeed has been an outbreak. Keeping a suspected outbreak under wraps until positive confirmation of the result is not a coverup - it is how things have to be done to avoid unnecessary panic.

[Nihil]

10. Nice strawman.

> Or are you seriously maintaining that every suspected outbreak of
> a serious disease should immediately be made public?

Yeah, sounds just like what I wrote. Oh, my mistake, you made it up.

> The broad testing procedures necessarily have to be very conservative
> so as not to miss something

The only thing "very conservative" around this issue is the political
party who prevent some of the few *responsible* farmers from proving
that they are clean in order to protect the majority of *irresponsible*
businesses.

"Broad testing procedures"? Sure ... :eyes:

[yellowcanine]

11. Not a strawman as you called not making public a suspected outbreak a coverup.

The clear implication of that is that you think suspected outbreaks should be made public. If that is not it why don't you explain why you called it a coverup instead of invoking the strawman accusation, which neatly excuses you from having to defend your coverup characterization.

By conservative I mean doing quick and dirty tests which may have a lot of false positives to avoid false negatives - which are much more serious. Denigrate all you want but that is standard methodology for animal disease testing. It really has nada to do with political parties and responsible versus irresponsible farmers. These are career animal health workers doing the testing to protect all farmers and their animals and the public. But the flipside is that any positive results need to be verified by more precise testing and it would do everyone a disservice to make public an "outbreak" that was in fact based on a false positive.

[hedgehog]

4. There is a proposed regulation that would require registration

of every farm animal in the country: cattle, horses, sheep, pigs, chickens. People with backyard flocks and small farmers are very leery of this due to the costs involved. The goal is to identify and trace back outbreaks of any disease. Somehow no one asks the question whether keeping incredible numbers of animals in close quarters and feeding them human antibiotics isn't the main threat.

[yellowcanine]

9. Actually it is the backyard flocks that will be the most in danger if there is an oubreak of Avian

influenza. It is carried by migrating birds so backyard flocks, as well as "free range" flocks, will be most exposed and at highest risk, not poultry in houses. Even free range poultry bunch up to avoid predators on the range and at night and are exposed to each other's droppings, so it is not as simple as one might think. Also a lot of small (free range or housed) flocks scattered over the landscape presents more problems for prevention and management of epidemic outbreaks than a few larger "factory farm" facilities.

[candice]

5. Factory farming destroys the animals and is bad for us...

...when we eat the meat we are getting the antibiotics and hormones that are necessary to farm animals in such close quarters without access to sunlight, fresh air, land to graze upon. I'm eating mostly vegetarian for my health and the health of the planet. If I eat any meat, I want it to be certified organic.

[yellowcanine]

8. You better buy it directly from the producer on the farm then because that is the

only way you can be reasonably sure how the animals have been raised. "Certified organic" is not much of a guarentee if you don't actually know the producer and can visit the farm and processing facility to see how things are being done.