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International Rule, Regulation, and Standards Making Bodies
With the formation of international bodies like the World Trade Organization (WTO), Office International de Epizooties (OIE), and the Codex Alimentarius Commission (Codex), international commerce and it's attendant rules and regulations such as the Sanitary and Phytosanitary Agreement, affect the small holder more now than ever before. With increased imports to the USA and relaxed standards, we, the small holders, are ever more exposed to the threat of foreign animal diseases (FAD). Often times, rules/regulations are made on the international level with little or no consideration made for their impact on the small holder. One aspect of international rules/regulations that we quite often are unaware of, are the methods used to contain, control or eradicate animal diseases. Some of these methods are determined by the country's disease free status or lack there of. The OIE grants two types of disease free status - disease free with vaccination and disease free with out vaccination.. Of the two, disease free without vaccination is the gold standard, especially in regard to OIE List A diseases such as foot and mouth disease (FMD). An example of potential exposure to a List A disease due to animal imports is the February 2006 quarantine of 8 farms in Quebec, Canada, after they had imported live ducks and hatching eggs from a farm or farms in France immediately prior to the discovery of High Pathogen Avian Influenza (HPAI) in France. Fortunately no HPAI was discovered in any of the imports and the quarantine was subsequently lifted, but one has only to pose a scenario in which HPAI had been discovered to understand the grave consequences that would have followed from quarantine to the stamping out process used to eliminate a List A disease, such as the mass depopulation - killing - of animals, both domestic and wild, in order to contain a disease outbreak. Instances of containment where massive depopulation has been used to contain a List A disease are the Asian countries where H5N1 Avian Influenza has been detected and the outbreak of FMD in the UK where 11 million animals were killed in order to contain and 'Stamp Out' an outbreak that had less than 300 confirmed cases. While the goal of this article is not to scare people into thinking that a serious animal disease outbreak is going to happen tomorrow at 6:00AM PDT, it is intended to point out the fact that we are all at risk to a greater or lesser degree, and that those risks and how we will respond to them, even how we may be allowed to protect our selves from them, are determined in part by international rules/regulations.
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International Trade :: Agriculture :: Health
Unless otherwise noted all content © Joanne Rigutto
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