Agricultural veterinary medicine
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1994:
The trade journal Beef Today and the
Colorado Cattlemen’s Association have urged the beef
industry to join animal protection groups in urging the
USDA to abolish face-branding cattle imported from
Mexico. The cattle are painfully face-branded––and cows
are spayed without anesthesia––as part of an anti-bovine
tuberculosis program. Of 438 cases of bovine TB found in
1993, 427 were in cattle of Mexican origin. Exposed in an
ongoing series of newspaper ads by the Coalition for Non-
Violent Food, face-branding was also discussed recently by
the Animal Welfare Committee of the AVMA. AVMA
policy presently supports face-branding, but related pro-
posed policy amendments are up for review by the AVMA
executive board.
“The presence of New Zealand brushtail pos-
sums in this country is a major threat to the health of
domestic animals and wildlife in the U.S. because these
animals are known to be highly infectious carriers of bovine
TB,” acting USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection
Service head Donald Luchsinger warned on April 28. “We
are taking emergency steps to locate all of these imported
possums,,” he continued, “to prevent them from establish-
ing a population here that could become a reservoir for
bovine tuberculosis.” Nearly 600 brushtail possums, con-
sidered a common pest in New Zealand, have been sold in
the U.S. as pets since 1991. Imports have now been halted.
The USDA announced May 19 that psuedora-
bies has been eliminated from domestic swine in Idaho,
Montana, and Oregon. Twelve states are now certified
free of psuedorabies, which is still found in all the major
hog-farming states.
Cattle exports from the central Philippine
island of Samar were quarantined by the Philippine gov-
ernment on May 20 to halt the spread of two diseases that
have killed at least 1,068 water buffalo. Details of the dis-
eases were unavailable at deadline.
More than 3,000 cattle have died of pleurisy in
eastern Ethiopa, the government news service said May
11, suggesting the epidemic might bring still more starva-
tion to the famine-plagued nation.
