Posted: Monday, June 29, 2009 12:00 am
Star-Tribune Editorial Board
The federal government been working for 75 years to eliminate brucellosis, and it has succeeded everywhere but greater Yellowstone, where the bacterial disease persists in elk and bison. Faced with seemingly impenetrable scientific and political barriers, including disagreement with other federal agencies, the U.S. Department of Agriculture is essentially at a standstill on the subject.
So it's heartening to see Wyoming step forward, in cooperation with Idaho and Montana, to tackle the brucellosis issue. Two pieces of news last week show that the Cowboy State is serious about making progress against the disease, which can be transmitted to cattle. It causes cows to abort and is a major headache for the state's cattle industry.
The first was the groundbreaking for an addition to the State Veterinary Laboratory in Laramie. While a variety of wildlife diseases will be studied at the $24.9 million University of Wyoming facility, the biggest target is brucellosis.
The research will include developing an effective vaccine for the disease, both for cattle and wildlife. An existing brucellosis vaccine for cattle isn't reliable, and the vaccine doesn't work at all in elk. A breakthrough on those fronts could be a big step toward getting rid of, or at least controlling, the disease in northwest Wyoming.
Another focus at the lab will be developing a fast and efficient test for the disease. As it stands now, it takes four tests on each animal to begin to determine if it has brucellosis, and the only way to know for sure is to kill the animal.
The second piece of news was the announcement that federal officials and livestock agencies in Wyoming, Idaho and Montana have reached a broad agreement to alter the government's approach to brucellosis. The accord came after the USDA earlier this year forwarded a plan that would shift efforts to control the disease from a nationwide program to one concentrated around Yellowstone. That proposal had been met with suspicion by the states.
Under the tentative agreement, ranchers in the Yellowstone area would face disease testing on their livestock indefinitely and be subject to strict quarantine if infections occurred. But infections would not lead to statewide penalties, as is the case now.
That part of the plan is basically the same as the original USDA proposal, but there are a couple of significant differences: The areas where testing would be required would be called "designated surveillance areas," not the "National Brucellosis Elimination Zone"; and states would be in charge of setting the boundaries of those areas. Giving the states more authority likely will help make the approach more precise and effective.
Now, the challenge is refining the broad plan and selling it to animal health officials around the country.
When it comes to brucellosis research, Gov. Dave Freudenthal pointed out that the federal government "is not doing much." One of the fears created by the proposed new federal approach to brucellosis is that if the problem is relegated to a relatively small number of ranchers, federal funding for research, testing and management of the disease might go away altogether. One of the reasons for the expanded state lab, the governor said, is that the state intends to try to lead brucellosis research efforts.
Perhaps it's naive to expect that the state will succeed where the federal government has failed. But we think the chances are better for a solution to this sticky, complex problem with state officials leading the way. They certainly deserve credit for trying.