0103106 USA Tests Pigs for Virus, Bans Equipment Imports

Washington – With suspected cases of foot-and-mouth disease in North Carolina, the United States stepped up efforts against the highly contagious disease by banning imports of used farm equipment from nations with the virus.

U.S. officials said a handful of pigs suspected of carrying foot-and-mouth disease in a North Carolina slaughterhouse facility tested negative. Two other pigs in a neighboring county were also being tested as a precaution.

The devastating virus cripples pigs, cattle, sheep and goats for months and sharply reduces milk and meat production. The virus, which rarely endangers humans, can be spread by shoes and clothing.

U.S. animal health inspectors and border patrols have been on heightened alert since the highly contagious disease jumped from Britain into France earlier this month.

The disease has since spread to the Netherlands and Ireland. Argentina, Saudi Arabia and a number of other countries have also discovered cases of foot- and-mouth.

American officials have warned that an outbreak in the United States, which has been free of foot-and-mouth since 1929, could cause billions of dollars' worth of losses to farmers.

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman said officials remained vigilant against an outbreak. “I think we should be very confident that the systems we have in place in the United States are working to protect American agriculture,” she said in an interview on CNN's “Wolf Blitzer Reports.”

She said the testing of pigs in North Carolina suspected of carrying the disease was part of that protection.

“That is, there was an animal with some disease -- there are several diseases that look very much like foot-and-mouth -- because people are on their guard, as they always are, they made sure to take a sample, get it up to be tested immediately.

“It tested negative, and so what we saw today is the system working and making sure we aren't getting such diseases.” she said.

USDA Investigates Case

An inspector on a routine visit to Robersonville Packing in Martin County, near Raleigh, North Carolina, found fever- and blister-like lesions in the mouths and between the toes of at least three hogs set for slaughter, said Danny Peet, owner of the plant.

“They (inspectors) saw little lesions ... that appeared on the foot. Bruises were on the foot, and it looked like blisters in the mouth area,” Peet said. His slaughterhouse processes about 85 hogs a day, along with cattle, goats and lambs.

The hogs were immediately moved to an isolation pen. After slaughter, tissue samples from their lungs, feet, mouths and tongues were sent to a USDA lab in Plum Island, New York.

USDA spokesman Kevin Herglotz said test results issued on Friday showed the pigs did not have the disease.

The USDA also quarantined and took tissue samples from two pigs in neighboring Sampson County, he said. Tests results from the Sampson County pigs were expected early on Saturday.

“They are being tested as a precaution,” Herglotz said.

The pigs were from the same supplier and showed similar symptoms as the slaughterhouse animals, he said. USDA officials would not disclose the name of the supplier.

North Carolina's $1.2 billion-a-year hog industry is concentrated in the eastern part of the state, a rural area hard hit by Hurricane Floyd in 1999. North Carolina ranks as one of the largest U.S. hog-producing states, with 3,600 hog farms and 63 slaughterhouses.

Rep. Bob Etheridge, a North Carolina Democrat, urged the Bush administration to approve emergency funding for USDA inspectors and veterinarians.

“This disease represents a threat to our national economic security,” Etheridge, who owns a cattle farm, said in a letter to President Bush . “I am concerned that even rearranging our resources to move inspectors from low-risk ports of entry to high-risk ones could leave cracks in our nation's defense system.”

Routine Inspections

In Chicago, live cattle and hog futures traded at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange fell sharply near midday in reaction to news of the suspected case in North Carolina. Prices rebounded immediately after the USDA reported the tests were negative.

USDA officials said they routinely tested some 400 animals annually for foot-and-mouth disease.

Industry officials expected the number of U.S. animals tested for the virus to escalate as the crippling disease spread in Europe.

Other recent investigations for foot-and-mouth disease included pigs with flu-like symptoms in Illinois and calves in Idaho. All tested negative for the virus.

As an added effort to keep out foot-and-mouth, the United States on Friday banned imports of all used farm equipment from the EU and other places suspected of having the virus.

Earlier this month, Alabama officials quarantined a shipment of some 100 used tractors that had been displayed at a farm trade show in Britain.

Alabama state officials began disinfecting the John Deere tractors earlier this week at a U.S. port in Mobile.

Molly Frazier, a USDA port director at Mobile, said the used farm equipment was unloaded from shipping containers at a special facility on the Alabama dock and immediately sprayed with a bleach and water solution.

The shipment was headed for a tractor dealer in northern Mississippi, an Alabama official said.

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