Posted on 02/25/2003 4:37:40 AM PST by MeneMeneTekelUpharsin
Once one of the state's largest producers of milk and cheese, El Paso County is getting out of the dairy business. Tucked away in the nearly $400 billion spending bill President Bush signed last week was $15 million to finish a buyout of 10 Texas dairy farmers in El Paso and Hudspeth counties. The money will be added to $44 million the U.S. Agriculture Department already has set aside to end dairy farming around El Paso, a move officials believe is a necessary step in eliminating the scourge of bovine tuberculosis in this country. The farmers can use the money to make a new life, even in the dairy business, just as long as they don't do it in the El Paso area, where bovine TB has been a chronic problem.
But the benefactors of the government bailout aren't celebrating. "I like to say somebody put a gun to my head and asked me if I'd like to negotiate," said Brad Bouma, 46, a fifth-generation dairy farmer with 6,000 head on 400 acres. The drastic measure is part of an overall strategy to eliminate bovine TB, a disease that can infect humans. "We're getting close to eradication," said Dr. John Clifford, associate deputy administrator of veterinary services for the USDA's animal and plant health inspection service. A USDA study estimated bovine TB will cost U.S. farmers as much as $2.8 billion over the next 10 years in potential lost earnings if it is not eradicated. Many foreign markets are closed to U.S. cattle because the disease remains a problem in pockets here.
Bovine TB has been wiped out nearly everywhere except in a portion of upper Michigan, a few pockets in California and around El Paso. In California and Michigan, the USDA buys infected cows, slaughters them, and is trying to prevent future infections by helping farmers limit contact between wildlife that can be potential carriers and livestock. But in the El Paso area, officials believe they face another hurdle in conquering the disease -- the existence of vast dairy farms in neighboring Mexico, where bovine TB is at an epidemic level. Dr. Dan Baca, TB epidemiologist for the Texas Animal Health Commission, said bovine TB has been a consistent problem near El Paso for at least 20 years. Almost all the dairies there have been hit by the disease in recent years. Each time, the farms were quarantined and disinfected, the infected cattle destroyed. And each time, an infection returned within two or three years. Bouma said his herd was infected three times in three years.
The source of the infections was never officially determined, but state and federal officials have their suspicions in the dairy farms located across the Rio Grande in Juarez, Mexico. Officials believe birds or other wildlife probably carry the disease across the Rio Grande, although no definitive link has been documented. "If you looked at birds as being a potential vector for TB, birds feed in a trough in Juarez, get bacteria on their feet and legs and they fly across (the Rio Grande) and feed in a trough in El Paso. They could carry it," Baca said. By buying out the dairy farms in the El Paso area, the USDA is hoping to create a buffer zone that will prevent the disease from crossing the border and infecting U.S. herds ever again, said USDA inspection service spokesman Ed Curlett.
In all, the USDA will give the dairy farmers $59 million. The money will pay for 22,000 head of cattle, which must all be destroyed even though the vast majority aren't infected, and compensate the farmers for the devaluation of their land and the income they would have earned from their businesses. A dairy cow can sell for more than $2,000 on the market. The alternative would have been to let the farmers stay in business and continue to battle bovine TB outbreaks, said Curlett. "TB isn't putting them out of business per se, we're asking them to go out of business so we don't have this risk any more," Curlett said.
Dairy is a big business in Texas and El Paso County has been a big part of it. In 2001, milk receipts topped $802 million and represented nearly 6 percent of all agriculture income in Texas, according to the Texas Department of Agriculture. Agriculture is the state's second-largest industry behind oil and gas. El Paso County was one of the top five producers of dairy products in the state. Now, it is getting out of the business entirely. The federal buyout will be implemented over the next two years to ease its impact on the local economy and to avoid driving prices down at the slaughter markets. Bouma said he intends to take his federal money and use it to open another dairy farm far from the border. He is eyeing property in the Panhandle. He can take a lifetime of experience with him, but none of his herd.
"I've got 25 years of breeding stock and genetic development and it's gone. I can't replace that. I've got to go back into the market and buy the average Joe Blow's cows versus years and years of breeding," he said. "None of us in the dairy business went to the USDA and asked them to do this. They came to us," he said. "Is it the end of an era? Sure. Is it anything any of us wanted? No."
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