Livestock Diseases

Livestock producers should always be alert for possible foreign animal diseases. Veterinarian Dr. Patrick Webb says it is critically important to report potential foreign diseases. "Thereare a certain number of diseases that we don't have here in the United States. They fall on a list of diseases for the World Animal Health Association that if we were a country that were to get these type of diseases then we would run into a situation where we would end up losing our export markets. Our challenge is that a lot of these diseases actually have signs that look almost exactly like some of the common diseases that we have here in the United States.

There are educational resources for producers in the form of posters that describe what these diseases look like. "We would expect that the producer would notify their state animal health official or their veterinarian and the veterinarian would notify state animal health officials. This would make sure that they could do an investigation. Our best chance as an industry in catching a new disease of the got here in the United States would be our producers eyes and ears and their veterinarian's eyes and ears."