Jon Fitch says Arkansas' cattle herd went from being declared free of brucellosis in the 70's, to nearly being quarantined for the disease in 1985. And the director of the Arkansas Livestock and Poultry Commission doesn't want that to happen again.
With USDA eliminating funding for Arkansas' brucellosis program and the state's testing lab, Fitch, a cattle rancher and former state senator, has persuaded the Commission to continue the program itself. Fitch said it will cost about $900,000 for two years; the money is already available, collected from ranchers over the years under the state's own eradication program.
"The feds think that brucellosis has been eliminated," Fitch said. "I still think that there's a threat out there to our cattle industry, and I want to continue to try to protect the cattlemen in the state of Arkansas from brucellosis. If I'm wrong, we've lost a little bit of insurance and the cost of doing it, and I hope I'm the one that's wrong. Because if the USDA is wrong and we still have a brucellosis problem out there, we could be right back where we were, and I certainly don't want that."
According to USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), the first effort to eradicate brucellosis from U.S. cattle herds was launched in 1934; at that time, the reactor rate in tested cattle was 11.5 percent.
A cooperative federal-state testing program began in 1954; the number of known infected herds dropped from 124,000 in 1956 to 700 in 1992, and just 21 five years later. States achieve Class Free status by going without more than one detection over a period of 24 consecutive months; on Feb. 1, 2008, when Texas attained Class Free status, APHIS declared the entire country rid of the costly reproductive disease.
But it didn't last. Montana lost its Free status in June; that same month, Wyoming discovered an infected herd, and its status is in jeopardy. Those two states and Idaho have something in common — Yellowstone, where infected bison and elk are thought to pose an ongoing threat to commercial cattle.
So APHIS is proposing to target its brucellosis resources within a "National Elimination Zone" that encircles the Greater Yellowstone Area. In October, APHIS chief veterinarian John Clifford laid out the plan to the United States Animal Health Association's annual meeting in Greensboro, N.C.
According to Fitch, Clifford told the animal health professionals, "'Instead of a brucellosis eradication program, we're going to go to a brucellosis elimination program'… I said, 'I'm sorry; would you explain to me what the difference between those two is?' And he basically said, 'Well, the taxpayers are not going to continue on this long-term program, and we have decided that we can't eradicate it'."
This means Arkansas will lose over $100,000 in grants it had received every year for surveillance and testing; in addition, with the loss of the Little Rock lab, the closest testing facilities would be in Missouri and Texas. Fitch hopes to prevail upon APHIS to leave the equipment in Little Rock, where his employees would operate it; his planned budget also includes $77,000 for the state's Calfhood Vaccination Program. In addition, because APHIS is moving all testing to slaughter facilities, some of the state money will go toward providing personnel and vehicles for continued testing at sale barns. Currently, Fitch said, cattle are subject to a "card test" at the sale barn and a second test at the lab; he only plans to conduct the lab test if the card shows a reaction, reducing the turnaround time to a couple of days.
Arkansas has been Class Free since 1997, and Fitch said he doesn't want to jeopardize all the hard work of state employees and the sacrifices of Arkansas producers. If Texas and surrounding states remain Free over the next two years, he said, "we can slowly phase out the program."
