Animal docs fill homeland security slots

A first responder mentality
“Veterinarians absolutely fit in [to our homeland security plans],” says David Kaufman, deputy director of Preparedness Programs for the Department of Homeland Security.  “While it may not be the first thing you would think of, veterinarians are on the group of professional disciplines that need to have awareness of what to look for, in terms of signs of symptoms, for the pets they would be seeing in urban areas,” Kaufman says, “because that can often be a precursor of something going on in the public health arena.”

Though most efforts aimed at thwarting agro-terrorism are directed by state programs using federal money funneled through the Department of Agriculture, just how much federal homeland security funding goes directly to veterinary purposes isn’t known.  The DHS budget “doesn’t get to that level of granularity,” Kaufman said.  Instead, veterinary services are rolled into a confusing array of projects and funding agencies that include:

• A total of $596 million in the administration's 2006 proposed budget for the USDA, HHS and DHS is aimed at improving the country’s ability “to detect and contain intentional and unintentional contamination of America’s agriculture and food system,” according to the White House.
• A proposed $218 million in 2006 is budgeted for information gathering and analysis in conjunction with the national biosurveillance initiative that began last year.
• A proposed $669 million in the DHS 2006 budget is earmarked for critical infrastructure threat assessments and protection programs.
• And a proposed $385 million for 2006 is aimed at the DHS Biological Countermeasures Office, to develop animal vaccines.

From farm to fork
Although much more attention has been given to other areas of national vulnerability, such as borders, seaports and commercial aviation, American agriculture, from farm to fork, remains vulnerable at nearly every turn.  A single case of foot and mouth disease in the United States  would immediately shut down all livestock exports said Ty Vannieuwenhoven, a USDA veterinarian working in Wisconsin as an area emergency coordinator.  “If we had one case of FMD in Wisconsin, it would stop the entire country’s ability to ship any kind of susceptible [animal] to rest of the world if it were a cow, a sheep, a goat or a pig,” he said.

Experts say an outbreak in the United States would likely cripple the nation's economy; the beef industry alone is worth $70 billion. Because of a single case of mad cow disease discovered in the United States in December 2003, the industry lost nearly 80 percent of its exports between January and September 2004. 

Agriculture “is a very open system, distributed across the country, and guarding it and protecting it totally is economically and physically impossible,” said Marianne Ash, a biosecurity and preparedness planner on the Indiana Board of Animal Health.  “Our key to success then is going to be early detection,” said Ash, a veterinarian herself, “because obviously the earlier we detect that we have a problem the greater the opportunity to control and contain it, minimize the damage and get back to business.”

Veterinarians also play a key role as part of agriculture’s early warning system, Ash said.  Nearly 75 percent of new and emerging diseases in man and “a very, very high percentage of defined and potential bio-terrorism agents” listed by the federal Centers for Disease Control are diseases that can be transferred from animals to humans, Ash said. “This means that the veterinarians are sometimes the first to identify and see these diseases,” Ash said, “or in the event of an intentional introduction of a weapon of mass destruction, the animals being smaller, the veterinarian might also be the first person to see a case of weaponized anthrax or plague or anything of that nature, because animals are susceptible to those agents.”

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