Now that the USDA has released the revised New World Screwworm Playbook (.pdf), we caught up with Sigrid Johannes with the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association to get their impressions of the playbook.
“We’re extremely encouraged, frankly, by this second draft and this second round of documents we’ve seen out from USDA. I think when the first draft of the playbook and perhaps even more importantly this movement guidance, this continuity of business plan that they’re calling it, basically all of the movement restrictions around a potential domestic outbreak, when those first round of documents came out in October, there were a lot of things we wanted to change. There were a lot of things that I think were perhaps overly restrictive and really would have had a severe impact on the flow of our supply chain. Anytime we have a disease outbreak or a pest like this, we’re trying to right-size those regulations, right? So we’re striking a balance between being aggressive enough to contain the problem, but not so aggressive that we’re choking off businesses and livelihoods within the state or the area that’s impacted. So the second round of documents are a big improvement,” said Johannes.
“I think a couple things that producers should be aware of is definitely start a conversation with your vet now about what they’re thinking on treatments. Another thing that you could do right now to get prepared if you’re again in that southern part of the United States is register a premise ID. If you have gone through this process already for complying with interstate official animal ID requirements, you’ve probably already gone through this process. If you live in a state like Florida that has intrastate tag requirements, you might have also already gone through this process. But the bottom line is if we have an outbreak in the U.S., the playbook does specify that any animals moving out of an infested zone to an area that is not yet infested will need to have that official individual animal ID,” said Johannes.
Audio Reporting by Dale Sandlin for Southeast AgNet.