Forget About Logic in Government’s Approach to Illness on the Farm

One of the things that has hit Doug Kirkpatrick hardest about the bovine TB outbreak that has nearly destroyed his farm is the absence of logic in U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Michigan Department of Agriculture (MDA) practices.

“It can drive you mad if you think about it too much,” he told me. “There is no logic.”

One of the things that doesn’t make sense is the idea that if a few animals are sick, the entire herd, and even non-herd animals, need to be destroyed. “If one of your kids gets sick, you don’t kill the entire family,” he says.

He especially mourns the 16 purebred hogs he had to destroy, even though it was cattle that tested positive for bovine TB. (“The biggest waste of prime pork I’ve ever seen.”) What would make much more sense would be to destroy the sick animals, and then regularly monitor the others to see how they do. Restrict their movements until it can be confirmed they aren’t becoming ill. Doug says that is how some European countries do it, though I haven’t been able to confirm that.

I’m intrigued as well with Miguel’s question as to whether the factory farms are treated the same, with their cattle being regularly tested for TB, and the farms shut down if a positive result occurs. I assumed the quarantining approach was a factory-farm practice inappropriately applied to small farms. But maybe it’s a factory-farm approach applied unequally to small farms. Anyone know more?

The most frustrating part of the government’s approach is the difficulty of getting back to farming. It’s understandable that the government wants to prevent another disease outbreak, but the issue Kirkpatrick has confronted is that the government seems most preoccupied with ensuring it doesn’t have to pay any additional compensation for sick animals. Thus, the USDA tries to impose impossibly strict rules on the farmer resuming operations.

Another disconcerting practice associated with condemning a herd is allowing some of the meat to be sold commercially—without warning to consumers. Seems to me that if the animals are considered so potentially dangerous that they must be destroyed, then consumers should at least be made aware of the event, even if the animals are safe enough to eat.

This is exactly what happened to Doug Kirkpatrick’s herd. As I described in a BusinessWeek.com article, some 35 of his 55 animals made it into the food supply, including two animals that were diagnosed after their slaughter with bovine TB. Bon Appetit!