Worse yet, the figures compiled by the Hidalgo County emergency management coordinator don't include indemnity payments to pay producers for livestock destroyed to prevent the spread of disease, or lost revenue due to inevitable state and federal quarantines that would restrict livestock and livestock product movement for months, or possibly, years. Marketing opportunities would be restored only when a affected region could prove it is disease-free. This disease also strikes a variety of species, so it was an excellent choice for a test exercise. Costs were calculated by Hidalgo County Emergency Management Coordinator Charlie Montgomery, who worked with personnel dispatched to the site of the first simulated case in the practice exercise. In addition to the enormous direct costs of fighting the disease, there are also the lost opportunities for trade.
Immediate action is required.
We hope to use this experience to reinforce the need for producers to report animal illnesses or death losses to private practitioners or regulatory agencies. A planning team of livestock health regulatory officials from the U.S., Canada and Mexico developed the exercise with the goal of testing international communications, and decision-making regarding where and how extremely limited supplies of FMD vaccine would be distributed among the three countries. The system is a network of county and state agencies capable of providing much-needed manpower, equipment and technical support. TERT is a cooperative effort of the TAHC and Texas' U.S. Department of Agriculture's Veterinary Services staff and is prepared to address disease outbreaks or natural disasters affecting animals. The disastrous scenario began in mid-October, but for purposes of the exercise, was not reported to livestock health officials until the first of November.