Courtesy of USDA/APHIS
At the recent Alabama Agribusiness Council annual meeting, Southeast AgNet had the opportunity to sit down with Hassey Brooks, Alabama Department of Agriculture Deputy Commissioner. Brooks discussed how Alabama is responding to the Texas New World screwworm detection saying, “Well we’re in a great position with our leadership at the department with Commissioner Payton and also to Dr. Tony Frazier.”
“Dr. Frazier is known around the country for his work that he does. He’s respected by his peers and other states and actually last week Dr. Frazier did host a New World screwworm workshop. What we brought in state vets and government officials from other states, actually had Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, and Mississippi represented graciously,” added Brooks.
Brooks also said, “Midstate Stockyard hosted that workshop where we all got together and talked about New World screwworm as a whole and talked about response situations that we would do in our state and neighboring states and certainly Dr. Frazier has communicated the message to the public since the positive cases that have come about in Texas.”
“Anybody can go to our website www.agi.alabama.gov right at the front we do have a tab where you can click on screwworm to learn more about movement restrictions that we have and and a little bit of 101 about the New World screwworm,” said Brooks.
Audio Reporting by Elizabeth Sanders for Southeast AgNet.