04/17/2001 - Updated 12:13 AM ET Foot-and-mouth 'probable' in U.S.

By Jim Drinkard, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — Federal emergency officials are preparing for a U.S. outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, a prospect they see as highly likely. About 75 federal officials from agencies ranging from the Agriculture Department to the CIA met Wednesday to review plans for addressing an outbreak of the highly infectious animal virus. The group also included officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Army's biological warfare office, the Coast Guard, the Interior Department and the Food and Drug Administration. FEMA official Bruce Baughman said the plans call for treating an outbreak much the same as a natural disaster, in which states take primary responsibility and call on federal resources as needed. "We are certainly treating it like it's a probable likelihood," he said.

Others present at the meeting said the chances that the disease will spread to the United States were described as very high, fueling an intensive planning effort. Until now, the government has focused in its public statements on efforts to keep the disease from reaching the United States.

At last week's meeting, officials described arrangements for earth-moving equipment to bury thousands of animal carcasses, and the drafting of emergency orders that could suspend some environmental regulations to allow quick burial of afflicted livestock.

Inquiries about the government's assessment of the risk of a U.S. outbreak of the disease were referred to Cliff Oliver, who is heading emergency response plans for the Agriculture Department. Telephone calls to his home Monday night were unanswered.

Later, USDA spokesman Kevin Herglotz described the meeting as a standard planning session and said his department does not believe an outbreak is inevitable.

"I was in the military for 10 years. We did mock exercises every month. That didn't mean war was imminent," he said. Herglotz didn't attend the meeting but says he was briefed on it.

Foot-and-mouth disease affects pigs, cattle and other cloven-hoofed animals but is not generally harmful to humans.

The United States has not had a case of foot-and-mouth disease since 1929. In England, the current outbreak began in February and quickly spread.

Cases also have been confirmed in the Netherlands, France and Ireland. Recent outbreaks have occurred in Saudi Arabia, Argentina, South Korea and Taiwan.

The U.S. government has added hundreds of inspectors at airports and ports in an effort to keep the disease out, but the battle is made more difficult because of booming global travel and trade.

-- Prepare for mass slaughters (foot@mouth.com), April 17, 2001

Answers

Prepare for NWO created food shortages real soon. Got Preps?

-- Prepper (you@might.need.them.sooner.than.you.think), April 17, 2001.

April 17, 2001

Cattle Disease Poses Threat to Run Wild, U.S. Finds

By ELIZABETH BECKER

WASHINGTON, April 16 — The first comprehensive exercise about how the nation would contain foot- and-mouth disease showed that an outbreak could be stopped only with the combined strength of all federal disaster agencies, including the military, Agriculture Department officials have said.

After decades of relying largely on state and local governments to help contain animal diseases, the Department of Agriculture asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency to develop a plan to combat this one as forcefully as if it threatened human lives, said Clifford Oliver, director of the Agriculture Department's office of crisis planning.

"We were coming to the realization that state and local government would be overwhelmed and the U.S.D.A. would be overwhelmed if foot- and-mouth broke out," Mr. Oliver said.

With Britain, one of the most advanced agricultural nations, enduring an epidemic of foot-and-mouth disease and British troops belatedly called in for mass burials of hundreds of thousands of slaughtered animals, American farmers and ranchers began lobbying their state agriculture chiefs for better planning. Those officials recently urged Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman to find out what the rest of the government could do to contain an outbreak.

The federal Catastrophic Disaster Response Group, which normally worries about bioterrorism or industrial disasters, organized the tabletop exercise for the Agriculture Department on Wednesday, bringing together representatives of 26 agencies, including the Departments of Defense, Commerce, Interior, Energy and Health and Human Services, Mr. Oliver said.

The exercise confirmed fears that without the entire government working to contain it, the disease would spread like wildfire if it ever reached this country.

"They made it very very clear in the first 15 minutes of the exercise that the possibility of the spread of foot-and-mouth disease is very real and we need to be better prepared," said a participant who would not allow his name to be used.

Mr. Oliver said, "For the first time we asked this group to look at a biological event that doesn't affect humans, only animals."

The situation was played out like a military war game, with agency representatives acting out how they would react if foot-and-mouth broke out in Iowa. Participants said that the computer-generated model could not be controlled and that the disease spread to three states within 60 days, requiring 50,000 people to contain it.

The virus that causes the disease could pass through the intestines of birds feeding on the carcasses of dead animals. When those birds fly to adjoining farms, they could spread the disease through their feces, far ahead of containment efforts, the exercise showed.

With the explosion of world trade making the spread of the disease to this country more likely and with the routine movement of animals around the nation making the containment more difficult, several participants said the exercise showed how an outbreak here could quickly become a national emergency.

"You would see the National Guard called out to kill thousands of animals in the first days and deployed to control traffic and keep thousands of people out of the area," another participant said.

A representative from the United States Geological Survey was especially troubled by questions about how wildlife like deer, bison and wild pigs would be treated if they roamed near the infected areas.

"If the disease infected a herd of white tail deer in the state of Virginia, would they be slaughtered, too?" the representative asked.

-- Going to get very ugly (all@animals.com), April 17, 2001.

Animals raised for meat convert grain into protein. People could do the conversion themselves. (Americans could get over their aversion to eating pets too. Imagine a place where no animal was unwanted.)

-- helen (ummm@ummm.mmm), April 17, 2001.

Think Ham, sausage, bacon, chops, ribs.

Think hamburger, steak.

Think milk - what is cereal without it?.

Think butter.

Think candy - tallow is one of the main ingredients.

Think cheese.

Think butter.

Think sour cream.

Think about it!

-- (A mind is a terrible thing@2 waste.com), April 18, 2001.

Think about powdered milk disapearing from store shelves as soon as this concept grabs hold!

-- (tick@tock.com), April 18, 2001.