Letter to the Editor
Another View on Yellowstone Brocellosis
By R. M. Thornsberry, R-CALF-USA, Guest Writer, 12-22-06
(Editor's note: The following piece by R. M. Thornesberry, vice president and region VI director of the Ranchers-Cattlemen Legal Action Fun (R-CALF), is in response to the recent New West story by Brodie Farquhar, entitled "R-CALF Wants Brucellosis Eradication In Yellowstone".)
I would like to address your article titled "R-CALF Wants Brucellosis Eradication In Yellowstone."
I am disappointed you chose to exclude the substantial scientific and historical information I shared with you on the subject of Brucellosis during our lengthy telephone interview. Your article was, instead, focused almost exclusively on sensationalized and erroneous claims. This type of reporting is a disservice to your readers who would have benefited greatly had you written a more factual and less biased report.
Your article stated in part:
“A national cattlemen's organization normally associated with meatpacker concentration issues is urging the U.S. Department of Agriculture to eradicate brucellosis in Yellowstone's bison, even if it means the death of hundreds, perhaps thousands of bison and elk.
Barring development of 100 percent effective vaccinations, that eradication goal could only be reached by a massive test-and-slaughter program, said Larry Cooper, a USDA spokesman.
Brucellosis is a disease that can cause abortions in cattle, bison and other animals. It was first detected in a Yellowstone National Park bison in 1917 – and probably was contracted from cattle in the Lamar Valley…”
First, R-CALF-USA probably is best known for its ongoing efforts to protect the health and safety of the U.S. cattle herd by challenging the U.S. government’s efforts to prematurely relax our import restrictions for countries with ongoing disease problems. R-CALF USA has long been involved in animal health, trade, marketing and meatpacker concentration issues. Recently, R-CALF USA formed a Property Rights Committee to address current concerns of our membership. It is erroneous to claim that R-CALF USA is “normally associated with meatpacker concentration issues.”
Second, the R-CALF-USA Animal Health Committee is made of a number of veterinarians and ranchers from across the United States, included among these veterinarians is a former USDA Ph.D. Epidemiologist. We are not a bunch of hicks from the sticks presenting policy that has not been well thought out. R-CALF USA was directly asked by our members in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho to address the Brucellosis problem in wildlife in the Yellowstone Ecosystem.
I have very personal experience with Brucellosis, having been forced into the Brucellosis eradication program within one month of my starting veterinary practice in 1977. A local farmer sold some cows, and one tested positive for Brucellosis at a local livestock market. Upon initial testing of that farmer’s cattle, 65 cows with Brucellosis were identified, out of approximately 200 head of breeding-age cattle. Needless to say, I got my education quickly. I have also contracted the human form of Brucellosis, termed Undulant Fever. I know the disease intimately, as do many other members of the R-CALF USA Animal Health Committee.
You may be too young to remember, but up until the early 1970s, the USDA and the U.S. Park Service conducted an excellent Brucellosis-control program for the bison in Yellowstone National Park. I remember watching numerous Walt Disney programs on the subject in the 1960s. Brucellosis control in the bison population has been performed, and it can be again.
Regardless of what Mr. Cooper is quoted as saying in your editorial, there are no 100 percent effective vaccination programs for any disease. Nevertheless, there are new, quite beneficial vaccines for Brucellosis that are very effective and have a proven track record. There is no excuse for not utilizing them to control Brucellosis in bison. In a population where Brucellosis exists, there is also an effective adult vaccination program that helps to control the disease. Your statement that “hundreds, if not thousands of bison,” would have to be destroyed if a Brucellosis-control program was again initiated in the Yellowstone Ecosystem is exaggerated, if current science and management is utilized. The adult vaccination program has been utilized in numerous states to control Brucellosis in adult cattle populations.
Brucellosis control is a complex issue, but Brucellosis control can be accomplished. I speak from a point of considerable experience. What is wrong is to ignore the problem! It would have made a much more interesting editorial if you had interviewed a rancher whose cattle had contracted Brucellosis from wildlife and obtained a personal perspective on this profit-robbing disease condition directly from the source of most concern in this issue.
You also made a very controversial statement. You propose that bison may have initially contracted Brucellosis from cattle. That is impossible to support, as my understanding is Brucellosis has been in wildlife since time began. This disease causes abortion, infertility, stillbirth, and weak offspring. The disease is self-limiting since the female loses her first offspring but develops enough immunity to prevent loss in future pregnancies. The problem compounds itself. Throughout her life, that female continues to shed the organism that causes Brucellosis, possibly infecting other herd mates. Therein lay the danger. One cannot identify a positive animal without blood testing.
I work with confined bison and elk in Missouri. We test them for Brucellosis routinely. I fully understand the complexity of Brucellosis control in wild elk. It will not be easy, but something is better than nothing. Humans can contract Brucellosis by butchering an elk in the infective stages of the disease. Undulant Fever is not a pretty sight. The hunters I have met are quite concerned about any disease in elk that could harm the population or reduce hunting harvest success. Elk are an issue, but not nearly so much so as bison.
Although you chose to concentrate on Brucellosis control in bison and wildlife, a major portion of our Animal Health Policy involves asking the USDA to continue Brucellosis surveillance across the United States. Although we have done an excellent job of controlling and eradicating Brucellosis in cattle in the U.S., our free trade partners to the south have not been so successful. We still run the risk of reintroduction of Brucellosis by our own wildlife and our free trade partners that have not controlled the disease. Why kill a program that has been a resounding success? We have asked USDA to continue the program and reconsider their plans to scrap the program in several states.
As Chair of the R-CALF-USA Animal Health Committee, we believe our policy is a good one for cattle producers. It was well thought out, rewritten a number of times, and unanimously supported by my committee members, including former and current veterinarians. Besides all that, the National Brucellosis Control Program is the only truly functional Disease Trace Back Program currently in effect for cattle within the United States. It has worked for over 50 years. Why destroy such a successful program now?
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Comments
"Elk are an issue, but not nearly so much so as bison." And why is that, Mr. Thornsberry? Two states surrounding Yellowstone have lost their brucellosis-free status due to elk. No bison to cattle transmission has EVER taken place. What an immense crock.
We know you and your committee are not a bunch of hicks, and we know your policy has indeed been well thought out. A policy of greedy disrespect for wild animals and those who value them. A policy based on clever subterfuge.
What was that "excellent brucellosis control program" undertaken by the NPS in the 70's? And if it was so excellent, why did brucellosis become such a threat only 20 years later?
Of course there are no vaccines that are 100% effective against brucellosis -- or many other more serious diseases. But as "there are new, quite beneficial vaccines for Brucellosis that are very effective and have a proven track record. There is no excuse for not utilizing them to control Brucellosis in..." CATTLE!
You stated that the article's contention that hundreds if not thousands of elk and bison would die under your plan is an exaggeration. Did you think we don't know that almost a thousand bison were killed by the NPS JUST LAST YEAR to satisfy your group's greed?
Your contention that "Brucellosis has been in wildlife since time began" rather than having been introduced from cattle is most interesting. If you are right, you just shot down the Park Service's #1 rationale for their bison slaughter -- their contention that brucellosis is an introduced exotic (not native) disease. I'm sure they will be pleased to know this.
And finally, "Elk are an issue, but not nearly so much so as bison." In this, perhaps, as you are not from around here, it is your ignorance rather than duplicity to blame. In recent years both Wyoming and Idaho have lost their brucellosis-free status due to transmission from elk. To this date there remains no record of transmission from wild bison to cattle. Not that it couldn't happen, it just never has. But it has from elk. And though the infection rate is lower in elk, there are orders of magnitude more elk than bison in the Greater Yellowstone -- making control in elk more difficult and more important if the area were ever to be "brucellosis-free." And if you don't know it, surely your compatriots in the area know that your control plans for elk (apart from being even less likely to succeed from a biological point of view) are going nowhere politically.
Yes, we're already spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to "eradicate" brucellosis from bison. But hey, it's Federal tax money spent for the benefit of a few ranchers, so let's spend some more!
And, because it's a biological impossibility, it's job security for you and your buddies at USDA-APHIS!
And it is not in error to say R-CALF was initially associated with fighting against meat packer company concentration -- not according to one of the co-founders of that group, Kathleen Kelley, a rancher near Meeker, Colorado. In fact, here's her note to me:
Hey Brodie!
Knowing R-CALF is going to come off the wall at your article, please know I thought you did a terrific job with it. I was particularly pleased with how you couched my comments. My husband and I have a particular attachment to Yellowstone. He was a park ranger there in the mid to late '70's. It saddens me R-CALF is building a wedge between cattlemen and our consumers who enjoy and appreciate the wide-open spaces of the west. There couldn't be a worse way to do it.
Bottom line, we have an effective management tool as ranchers against Brucellosis. It's called vaccination and while it is not 100% effective, it is fundamentally why this nation is mostly brucellosis free in our livestock. Colorado recently dropped its vaccination requirements, but any wise rancher needs to keep vaccinating breeding heifers. So for R-CALF to take this up as a priority issue when Swift is collapsing in Colorado from pathetically bad management is truly sad.
Please keep trying to keep the boys honest. They can be a damn hard group to try and save from themselves.
Kathleen Kelley
One of the points missed by Dr. Thornsberry is that there is a significant difference between control of brucellosis, and eradication of brucellosis in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Control can easily be done by vaccinating cattle and by eliminating conditions which cause bison and elk to concentrate in unnaturally crowded conditions: i.e. the feeding grounds in Wyoming.
Eradication of brucellosis -- the official goal and policy of USDA -- can only be accomplished by a massive roundup of both bison and elk, run them through corrals, run tests on blood samples, then slaughter any animals that come up positive. APHIS has NEVER, I repeat NEVER, successfully eradicated ANY disease with vaccinations, but only with test 'n slaughter programs of entire herds, wildlife or livestock.
Imagine what "eradication" would really entail: treating Yellowstone's wildlife like livestock and yes, killing hundreds and possibly thousands of infected animals on the tenuous risk that wildlife can infect livestock. If brucellosis from the wild was a real risk, I submit it would infect hundreds of livestock, not the rare and isolated cases that have cropped up.
Eradication would be difficult to pursue in terms of logistics, money and staff. It might be possible to roundup bison and run them through a 100 percent test 'n slaughter program, but I can't imagine how the many thousands of GYE elk might be rounded up and run through a similar program. Because of the level of brucellosis infection in bison and elk, hundreds and thousands of wild animals would be slaughtered. So far, the limited test 'n slaughter of bison in Montana and elk in Wyoming has not elicited much public outcry. Just wait until APHIS and company go into industrial overdrive and the mounds of bodies start piling up.
George Wuerthner, co-editor of "Welfare Ranching: The Subsidized Destruction of the American West," has some thoughts on the brucellosis issue, as follows:
The threat of brucellosis transmission from wild free-roaming bison is grossly exaggerated. Most bison don't even have the disease.
Secondly, even if infected with brucellosis, transmission to livestock can only occur by contact with body fluids. In other words, brucellosis can be harbored in many parts of a bison's body and still not pose a threat to livestock. Thus even if a bison tests positive for the disease, it may not pose a threat to livestock.
The only bison body fluids that pose a threat to livestock are those associated with birth or abortion. This alone means that even brucellosis infected bison wandering near cattle outside of the primary abortion or birth season don't pose a threat of infection at all. Yet this hasn't prevented agencies from killing them.
In addition, since only mature bison cows pose any threat of transmission, the killing of bison bulls makes no sense if your goal is mitigation of brucellosis transmission and only makes sense if control of bison is the ultimate goal.
Third, the brucella bacterium is extremely sensitive to things like heat, dehydration, and exposure to the environment. Even if a bison aborted a fetus it is unlikely the bacteria would remain viable (this is why the notion of wild free roaming bison not posing a threat is important). Under a laboratory situation you might be able to transmit brucellosis from bison to cattle, but that's like suggesting you could grow oranges in Montana under laboratory conditions. It's meaningless in the wild. No attempt to determine the real risks has been performed. The risk isn't zero, but it's darn close-essentially if other mitigation measures such as mandatory brucellosis vaccination for livestock and other measures were implemented.
Fourth, elk and other wildlife also carry the disease. And if brucellosis transmission were really as much a threat as the livestock agencies would have us believe, the target of control efforts should be elk, not bison. There are far more elk in the Ecosystem than bison. Even if a lower proportion of elk carried the disease, their greater numbers and distribution poses a far greater potential threat. Yet the livestock agency ignores elk. Why? I think because ranchers do not view elk as great a competitor for forage as bison.
Fifth, snowmobile use and roads in the park has facilitated movement of bison, yet livestock agencies make no effort to restrict snowmobile use. If they were truly concerned about minimizing bison movement, they should be among the staunchest supporters of restrictions on snowmobile travel in the park. But they are silent.
Sixth, mandatory vaccination of all livestock in the region is still not required. A serious attempt to limit brucellosis transmission from wildlife should include such mandatory vaccination as a prerequisite.
Seventh, part of the problem rests with federal and state laws and regulations. For example, APHIS continues to suggest that if brucellosis is discovered among domestic animals, it will have no choice but to yank a state's brucellosis free status. Yet it does have a choice. They have the authority to restrict any quarantine to a much smaller area from a county to even a single herd. State livestock industries need not suffer merely because a single herd or a few herds contract the disease. The agencies don't readily admit this to the public because they want to create a crisis situation to justify their extreme actions.
Eighth, for a fraction of the funds currently expended on the capture and killing of bison, compensation fund could be created to assist ranchers whose livestock may contract the disease from wildlife to pay for their extra expenses incurred by quarantine. Better yet, buying out of ranches in or near public lands where bison roam-such as the Church Universal Triumphant ranch near Gardiner, Montana and a few other strategically located ranches would go a long ways towards removing any threat of livestock-bison contact.
This is one article about it, it appears they die within a relatively short time of being infected. This might help explain why one researcher is finding cows just dying, not being predated upon.
I fail to see how controlling an infection like this is in any way a subsidy for ranchers. Eliminating the disease would seem to me to be beneficial to all wildlife.
I seriously doubt anyone involved with this issue fits that criteria. Oh, that it were so simple...
You are proposing the impossible; that we eradicate brucellosis by a massive capture, test, and slaughter of a globally renowned wildlife resource. Or barring that, that we begin a massive vaccination program using vaccines with (from all indications) low efficacy on wildlife, delivered by as-yet-nonexistent technologies.
You honestly think even a remotely significant portion of the GYA elk could be captured?! A lot of elk hunters I know find that idea quite amusing...
George Vincent's commentary above sums it up the best I've seen.
Truly, you have become your own worst enemies.
Brodie – I have been on vacation since the evening I briefly talked with you on the phone. I feel the lead for the story you wrote for New West is misleading, and needs to be corrected. It appears you were focusing only on the Greater Yellowstone Park issue while I was discussing only national surveillance of COMMERCIAL CATTLE herds. As you are no doubt aware the GYA is a unique situation involving a complicated multiple-agency management plan. Policy is determined and implemented cooperatively. That plan involves strategic implementation of a number of options. What I did say is if national surveillance and testing detects the infection in commercial cattle herds, slaughter of infected commercial livestock animals will continue to be an option to prevent the spread of the disease until a vaccine is developed that proves to be 100 % effective. USDA-APHIS is continuing to work with the cooperative plan agencies to explore and implement all acceptable and agreeable options for the GYA and your implication that standard protocol for infected commercial cattle nationally is somehow a new development in the GYA is inaccurate and disturbing. I am asking you and New West to make a correction.
Thank you for your attention.
Larry Cooper
USDA-APHIS-LPA
NOTE: APHIS veterinarian Bret Combs was asked last summer whether brucellosis could be eradicated without treating wildlife like livestock?
Clearly uncomfortable with the question, Combs said that was a policy decision for others – and at a higher pay grade. He did explain that historically, brucellosis has been eradicated elsewhere only through test and slaughter.
“You find infected animals and you remove them,” he said.
Further, “Vaccination is not an eradication technique,” he said, explaining that it is a control approach that buys time until a test and slaughter program can be implemented.
'Nuff said.