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North Platte (Neb.) Bulletin – Monday – August 25, 2008 Guest Opinion: USDA works backward, increases disease risks World history is replete with examples of how governments successfully desensitized entire populations into accepting actions and policies that reasonable people would consider absurd. The method used to desensitize reasonable people is grounded in psychology. It involves a progressive, repetitive campaign in which the population is first asked to accept a seemingly small absurdity and, once accepted, the absurdities are progressively increased until, over time, the public loses sight of any frame of reference for their government’s actions. The U.S. Department of Agriculture is now using this very technique. Recent news releases document USDA’s desensitization attempts. During the 1940s, the 1950s, the 1960s, the ’70s and the ’80s, U.S. farmers and ranchers patriotically worked with USDA to eradicate serious animal and zoonotic diseases. During this period, hog cholera, foot-and-mouth disease (FMD), brucellosis, Texas fever ticks, screwworms and various other serious diseases were eradicated or controlled. University level courses were taught to instruct veterinarians and livestock producers how to assist in these organized state and federal eradication endeavors. USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service was established to conduct surveillance of these and other diseases. APHIS was given a mandate by the U.S. Congress to keep animal and plant diseases out of the United States. The USDA recently has taken a position that its responsibility is now to support and encourage trade with countries that have documented cases of infectious foreign animal diseases. In a presentation by Dr. Jere L. Dick, Associate Deputy Administrator, USDA-APHIS Veterinary Services, to the Animal Agriculture Coalition on July 24, this point was made clear. In the USDA presentation about regionalization and compartmentalization of countries with FMD, Dick said the World Trade Organization Sanitary and Phytosanitary Agreement and the North American Free Trade Agreement obligates the USDA to allow imports from areas within an FMD-affected country that has been determined to currently be free of FMD. This would be similar to allowing a county within a brucellosis-affected state to be classified as brucellosis free, which, in fact, USDA disallows in the United States. In a recent request to solicit comments on a proposal to allow pork rinds to be imported from certain regions around the world, the USDA-APHIS no longer refers to countries where FMD, swine vesicular disease, African swine fever and classical swine fever (closely related to the hog cholera virus) have been identified. Instead, the USDA says that because these diseases are not communicable from animals to humans, APHIS will allow importation of cooked pork rinds into the U.S. market. Although the public can offer comments on these imports of pork rinds – if sent by Sept. 2, 2008 – those comments will not deter USDA from proceeding with this and other dangerous trade-related plans. APHIS says it has a strong system in place to detect and respond to outbreaks of foreign animal diseases and that APHIS places trade restrictions on affected regions – not countries – to protect against the introduction of foreign animal diseases, yet most accredited veterinarians recently have taken mandatory courses to identify foreign animal diseases that have been absent from the United States for over half a century. My grandparents and parents paid a heavy toll to eradicate these dangerous and costly foreign animal diseases. By the process of desensitization, USDA-APHIS will undo decades of hard work and epidemiology, all for the sake of free trade at any cost. The mission statement for USDA-APHIS is to protect the health and value of American agriculture and natural resources. In its strategic plan, APHIS states that by keeping this mission statement in mind, the agency will work and make decisions that will direct APHIS to carry out its mission. The Secretary of Agriculture, by law, must take an oath that, in part, states: “I do solemnly swear or affirm that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same.” We have a problem. The last time I checked, it was the United States Department of Agriculture, not the United Nations Department of Agriculture. By Dr. Max Thornsberry, a veterinarian and president of the board of directors of R-CALF USA -- the Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, United Stockgrowers of America. R-CALF USA is a national, non-profit organization dedicated to the continued profitability and viability of the U.S. cattle industry. http://www.northplattebulletin.com/index.asp?show=news&action=readStory&storyID=15001&pageID=29 Copyright © 2008 northplattebulletin.com - All rights reserved. NOTE: In
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