State officials say they are bolstering efforts to protect New Hampshire’s food supply from disease and from potential bio-terrorist attack.
New Hampshire Agriculture commissioner Steve Taylor says the possibility of a major epidemic – to crops or livestock – makes disaster planning a necessity.
'We can hardly comprehend what a major disease outbreak would occasion in terms of disruption of the food supply of the United States. We are spending considerable resources to asses that threat and to have a strategy for all of these potential threats that we know about.'
Although threat assessment took on increased urgency in the wake of the September 11th attacks, State Veterinarian Clifford McGinnis says New Hampshire’s efforts to improve how it handles agricultural emergencies dates back three years, to the first local case of West Nile Virus. McGinnis says that limited outbreak, together with last years mad cow problems in Britain, spurred the agricultural department to reexamine its policies concerning a wide range of diseases.
'Brucellosis, tuberculosis, anthrax, rabies, we certainly have gotten ourselves tunes up, we’ve gotten ourselves some new supplies in, and issues biosecurity regulations for farmers.'
McGinnis says those regulations largely amount to keeping possible contaminants away from animal feed, water supplies, and livestock itself. The state advises all farmers need to keep strangers away from barns and feed.
'All sombody's got to do is walk in with one germ on them and a chicken gets in and in 3 days you’ve got a hundred thousand dead birds……Down in Pennsylvania avian influenza probably killed a million birds…So bio security at the poultry farms is probably at the highest peak it’s ever been.'
And though New Hampshire has few large farms, state officials still have large worries. Agricultural commissioner Steve Taylor says a lot of these concern the logistics of coordinating local anti-disease efforts with neighboring states and pertinent federal agencies.... overlapping jurisdictions make things complicated.
'It would involve at least 26 different federal agencies. So your really talking about a huge bureaucratic apparatus that needs to be mobilized and coordinated….You’ve got to have everyone ready to play or at least sing of the same page of music on this….So that’s really the big challenge.'
Taylor says New Hampshire’s planning efforts will be put to the test in May, when the federal government will conduct a two-day drill to test the New England states’ ability to handle a region-wide agricultural emergency..
The exact dates and the nature of the emergency will be a surprise to state officials.
