7/4/2009

Drill shows problems with containing livestock disease

By MICHAEL STRAND

Salina Journal

"There aren't that many people" was one of the conclusions George Teagarden and others reached several years ago when he participated in a livestock disease drill in Maryland.

Under the scenario of that drill, foot and mouth disease quickly spread across swine herds in Maryland and North Carolina.

"Within 30 days, it would have taken 700,000 people to contain it," said Teagarden. And there just aren't that many people available.

As Kansas livestock commissioner, Teagarden participated this past week in Topeka in a similar drill, this one involving Kansas cattle.

The scenario was part of the four-state Vigilant Guard exercise, which included Kansas, Iowa, Missouri and Nebraska in a variety of simulated terrorist attacks. It provided an opportunity for the National Guard, law enforcement, regional emergency operations staffs, firefighters, the Red Cross and others to work together.

Having learned from exercises such as the one in Maryland that "we can't let it get that far," Teagarden said the Kansas plan has long been "built for immediate action -- hopefully, we can stop it on one or two premises."

Under the recent scenario, cattle infected with highly contagious foot and mouth disease were taken to a sale at the Farmers and Ranchers Livestock Commission sale barn in Salina, and the infection wasn't discovered until three days later.

By that time, cattle that had been at the sale barn that day -- and were potentially infected -- were scattered across 40 locations in 18 counties, prompting Teagarden to issue a stop-movement order on livestock and order the state's borders closed to livestock traffic.

This isn't the movies

But, in spite of what you see in the movies, that's easier said than done.

"What we'd looked at in the past was the need to close off all the roads, to close all the borders to prevent the movement of livestock," said Sharon Watson, director of public affairs for the Kansas Adjutant General's Department. "What we found is that that might not be realistic."

The problem, Watson said, is that Kansas has some 7,700 National Guard troops; that might sound like a lot, but roughly 1,000 roads cross the state's borders.

Figure at least a couple of people at each checkpoint -- many more on busy highways -- running two or three shifts a day, and even with help from local law enforcement, the Kansas Highway Patrol and other agencies, it's clear there aren't that many people.

And disaster planners can't always count on those 7,000 National Guard troops.

"Five years ago, during the last exercise, there were only about 300 troops available to us," Teagarden said.

Instead, Watson said, the revised plan is to set up road blocks only on major roads.

"We're thinking the industry would shut itself down pretty quickly," Teagarden said. "Our plan includes contacting the trucking industry and the news media. And we'd shut down the slaughterhouses and packing plants, so there'd be no reason to move livestock."

"We think we can stop movement pretty quickly and won't have to have (the road blocks) manned 24 hours a day for weeks and weeks," Teagarden said.

"People are moving livestock every day, 24-7," Watson said. "We would use every means to communicate to the public, but if a trucker is listening to satellite radio, he wouldn't get word."

Please adjust your plans

The exercise also showed that previous plans for dealing with mass burials of dead livestock needed to be adjusted.

"It had been assumed in the past that the Guard would prepare burial sites in case livestock needed to be put down," Watson said. "The National Guard equipment is not best-suited for this, so we'll be turning to contractors and/or KDOT."

"We found out we can't just say the National Guard is going to bury everything," Teagarden said.

But, the Guard does have the equipment to haul large amounts of fuel to remote locations to keep the large earth-moving equipment moving.

Another issue planners would have to deal with in case of a large disease outbreak is the fact that large-scale livestock operations depend on animals moving.

If cattle have grazed a pasture and need to be moved to a new one, they would either have to be inspected and cleared, or feed brought to them, Teagarden said.

Have to slaughter pigs

And, he said, swine operations are usually in buildings, and pigs are moved from one building to another regularly.

"They pretty much have to move from one building or premise to another weekly," he said. "The pigs grow, new pigs are born and pretty soon they've outgrown their facility. If we shut down for more than about seven days, we'd have to start doing humane slaughter."

There would be other pressures to contain the outbreak and get things moving again, Teagarden said.

"We can't shut down the packing plants for very long -- or the stores will run out of meat," he said. "We won't be moving infected animals, but if they're inspected, we can start moving again."

We need more exercises

The exercise also pointed out the need to have such exercises more often, Teagarden said.

"We've had turnover, people who had participated in the previous exercise were gone," he said, taking with them some of the experience gained from those drills.

Teagarden also thinks there's a need to move the command of an emergency out of the state's Emergency Operations Center, to "reduce congestion."

"We need a separate room for the actual command structure where we can say, 'We need another burial detail over there,' and send that to the EOC (Emergency Operations Center), and they can get it done."

Watson said another animal disease exercise is scheduled for October.

"As we do these scenarios, it causes us to look at the plans and make changes," she said.

n Reporter Mike Strand can be reached at 822-1418 or by e-mail at mstrand@salina.com.