Kansas is a high traffic cattle state
Volume of animals increases risks, health officials say
Dec. 11, 2006
Amy Bickel
The Hutchinson News
Cattle trucks by the hundreds roll across Kansas each day, carrying thousands of head of cattle. They come from across the country and beyond -- Texas, Iowa, Canada, Mexico.
They come to graze in Flint Hills pastures or be fattened at a western Kansas feedlot before hitting their final destination -- a Kansas slaughterhouse.
In an era of contagious diseases and agriterrorism, some wonder: Could those trucks be carrying something more than beef for the dinner plate?
The fact is, said Kansas Livestock Commissioner George Teagarden, there isn't any assurance that the live cargo is safe.
More than 5,500 roads lead in and out of Kansas. An estimated 800 to 1,000 trucks travel those roads each day, carrying about 50,000 head of cattle.
Meanwhile, more than 4 million heads of livestock come into Kansas each year from places like Florida, Oklahoma and Mexico. In all, within 24 hours of shipment, livestock from either coast could pass through Kansas as part of a production cycle that includes more than 9 million head a year.
"We're wide open," Teagarden said. "Agriculture is vulnerable throughout the United States. We don't have razor-wire fences around our operations, and anyone can drive down a road and get to livestock across a fence."
Still, there are checkpoints to help prevent the spread of disease, Teagarden said. Cattle entering the state are required to have health papers, and cattle arriving from Canada and Mexico are inspected at the border.
Tuberculosis tests are required of all dairy animals six months or older used for breeding, as well as beef animals from states not tuberculosis-free (Michigan and Minnesota), Teagarden said. Brucellosis tests are required on animals from Texas and Idaho, states considered not free of that disease. Brucellosis can pass to humans who encounter infected animals.
Kansas is considered free of all those diseases.
Still, Teagarden notes that not every animal that enters the state is inspected, and not all health papers are checked.
"As far as having the veterinarian check everything, that would be out of the question," he said. "Just trying to do it, the logistics."
When the 9-11 terrorist attacks hit the East, Ken Winter was thankful he lives in Ford County, an area where the tallest building is a grain elevator.
But he admits the cattle fattening at his feedlot, Winter Feed Yard, pose another threat -- whether terrorist-related or by accident.
"We live in the middle of nowhere and (there's) no important building standing in the sky," he said, "but we have an important part of the food system in the United States out here, with our crops, our huge elevators, our packing industry and cattle feeding."
A contagious animal disease such as foot-and-mouth could seriously hurt the Kansas economy, Winter said. More than 40 trucks enter and exit his feedlot on any given day, and like those entering the state, it's not always possible to inspect each one coming and going.
Some 80 percent of the nation's cattle are on feedlots within a 100-mile-wide strip stretching from Amarillo, Texas, to Garden City.
Any problem, Winter said, "could affect a lot of cattle."
The transportation industry was how foot-and-mouth disease spread by accident during an outbreak several years ago in the United Kingdom, said state Rep. Dan Johnson, R-Hays.
The threat of intentional spread of animal disease by bioterrorism is a common subject in the House Agriculture Committee, where Johnson is chairman.
He said the industry is more aware and educated than it was before 9-11, and the state has a bioterrorism plan in place to guard against the spread of disease. That plan includes stopping all movement of trucks.
But disease can spread quickly, he said.
"You a have a truck go down the road and unload and then other animals have it," he said. "All you'd have to do is carry a vial in there, throw it in a feed bunk, and it wouldn't be but a matter of days that some of those cattle would be all over the United States."
