Are California cattle at risk?
County, state officials preparing for worst-case disease outbreak
By TIM MORAN
BEE STAFF WRITER
Last Updated: April 16, 2005, 10:13:17 AM PDT
"Mother Nature has been kind to us this year," said Jim Cox, who raises cattle in the foothills near Patterson.
The winter and spring rains have brought lush pastures, which means high-quality feed for grazing animals. Better feed means higher weight gains, and ultimately, more money at auction.
Beef prices themselves have been at record prices, Cox said, giving ranchers an ideal situation — although that also means consumers may be paying high prices for a while longer.
But the good times ranchers are experiencing now can quickly change. The danger is as small as a microbe that could wreak financial havoc on the industry. It may arrive naturally, or with the help of someone with evil intentions.
West Side cattle ranchers heard county and state officials talk about that issue at a meeting Wednesday at Frank Raines Park in Del Puerto Canyon.
The most chilling note was sounded by Stanislaus County Agriculture Commissioner Dennis Gudgel, who warned of the danger of a disease outbreak.
The recent exotic Newcastle disease outbreak in Southern California served as an eye-opener, Gudgel said. The disease caused the destruction of several million birds in flocks of commercial poultry there, he said. Had it spread to the Northern San Joaquin Valley, it could have wiped out major poultry producers.
Just disposing of the dead chickens from one major ranch here would require all the landfills in three counties, Gudgel said.
"I learned we better have our act together. Chickens are one thing. Think about your livestock," he told the cattle ranchers.
California is one of the few areas in the world that does not have hoof-and-mouth disease, Gudgel said. If the highly contagious disease does break out here, it could cost the industry $15 billion, he said.
"It would immediately break us," Gudgel said.
The fear of an accidental outbreak of such a disease is bad enough, he added, but with global terrorism, there may be people intentionally trying to introduce diseases.
The local industry needs to be prepared before an outbreak happens, Gudgel said. The alternative is to be at the mercy of federal and state agencies, he explained.
"People will come to get us out of the fix, and they will not be real interested in your business. They will do whatever they think needs to be done regardless of what you think," Gudgel said.
"We can't wait two or three days to get started. We have to demonstrate that we have our act together to keep them from running all over us."
Got ear tag?
Part of that effort should be a computerized geographical information system the county is working on, which would contain data about cattle numbers and locations, and roads available to reach them, he said. His department will work to keep the information classified, Gudgel said.
He also said he wanted a communications system in place so that he can reach ranchers any time of the day or night to deal with contagious outbreaks.
"I can't save one of you guys, and you can't save yourselves either," he said. "We have to find out how to work together and do it before we have an event."
The ranchers heard about another food safety effort as well: a national animal identification system, using radio-frequency ear tags to track animals as they move through the food chain.
The ear tags will allow regulators to track where animals have been if a contagious disease or food poisoning occurs, said Daniel Rolfe, veterinary medical officer with the California Department of Food and Agriculture.
Rolfe used a past tuberculosis outbreak in cattle in Tulare County as an example. State regulators had to destroy three herds and test many more, Rolfe said. If the ear tag system had been in use, far fewer cattle would have required testing, saving time and money.
The issue is complicated by the fact that cattle routinely move through several states as they are fattened up for auction.
U.S. Department of Agriculture officials want all states to have an operational ear tag system by July of this year, Rolfe said, but realistically it may take a few more months.
The program is starting out as a voluntary one, but will become mandatory, Rolfe said.
"You might as well jump on the program and be ahead of it," he told the ranchers.
West Side cattle rancher Ray Murphy commented that the animal identification program has been in the works for several years, since the mad cow disease outbreaks in Europe.
"It's something we need, so that if there is a disease outbreak, it won't spread too far," Murphy said.
In the meantime, ranchers are enjoying those lush pastures and good prices.
