New Mexico is seeking to regain its “split-state” status after USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) downgraded the state’s entire bovine tuberculosis ranking Sept. 11 to Modified Accredited Advanced (MAA).
New Mexico wants USDA to reinstate its split-state designation back to both Accredited Free and MAA by November because the bulk of the state’s livestock is moved in the fall, says Myles Culbertson, executive director of the New Mexico Livestock Board, a state agency.
“We’re hoping to get the rest of the state relieved during shipping season,” Culbertson says. “But that’s lightning fast for a federal agency.”
The MAA status requires a negative TB test and official identification for all breeding cattle leaving the state. Even more stringent requirements may be required by other states importing New Mexico cattle.
New Mexico had a split-state status – free and MAA -- for the disease before the September decision. The small MAA zone straddled Roosevelt and Curry counties in the eastern part of the state. USDA’s September decision put the entire state into an MAA stage.
New Mexico has more than 1.5 million cattle and calves, including 340,000 dairy cattle. Half of the state’s dairies and more than a third of its cows are located in Roosevelt and Curry counties. The state ranks seventh in U.S. milk production. Average herd size is 3,700.
“We can provide surveillance, monitoring and control of movement,” Culbertson says of the state’s desire to regain split-state status.
Moreover, he added, there’s zero to low risk for bovine TB in New Mexico.
“It’s really important to remember there’s no case of bovine TB in Mew Mexico that we’re aware of,” Culbertson says.
The 2008 TB finding was “a single, mystery cow,” he says, that had been purchased in a sale ring and transported to a feedlot in the Clovis area. In the 2007 TB detections, some 40 cows from a two-herd dairy in eastern New Mexico tested positive. The two herds, totaling about 6,000 animals, were depopulated.
Since those findings, more than 100,000 cows, mostly dairy, have been tested, Culbertson says. Testing continues.
September’s status downgrade was “necessary to reduce the likelihood of the spread of tuberculosis in the United States,” APHIS says in the interim ruling in the Federal Register.
USDA has five status levels, or stages, for states and zones with bovine TB.
New Mexico livestock officials estimate the state’s new MAA status will cost dairy producers $6 million in testing costs, movement requirements and market value.
“We hate it, of course,” Sharon Lombardi, executive director of New Mexico Dairy Producers Association, says.
Lombardi was disappointed that USDA had put the entire state under the new TB status, “since it took so long for us to get split-state status” after the 2007 detections. Lombardi and several of the producers she represents suspect Mexican roping steers as the source of the bovine TB detections. The animals enter the U.S. too easily, she says, adding, “USDA is not safeguarding our livestock in the U.S.”
New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson joined the state’s livestock industry in opposing the loss of its split-state status. Richardson asked USDA Secretary Ed Schafer in September to expand New Mexico’s MAA zone in Roosevelt and Curry counties rather than downgrade the whole state.
“We have the resources, statutory authority and capacity to effectively control this problem,” noted Richardson.
Because of its extensive stretches of 200 miles or more with no towns, herds or infrastructure, a split-state TB designation works better for New Mexico than it does in other states, Lombardi says.
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