(7-A) ~ Exotic Species Mobility and Effects ~
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Cornell University ecologist David Pimentel estimates that non-native species, such as noxious weeds and harmful insects cost the US more than $122 billion/ year. Government officials estimate that the nation's public natural areas are being lost to invasive species at a rate of 4600 acres/ day (2625 square miles/ year). Over the past 2 decades, bee mites on fruit from Asia and the UK have killed 90% of the nation's honeybees. Formosan termites from southern China arrived in the US around WWII in wooden packing materials. They now cause $2 billion/ year in damages even though they have only gotten to 12 states so far (Larry J. Schweiger, Update, Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (1/7/00)).

African ticks, Amblyomma marmoreum can harbor a bacterium that causes heartwater, an animal disease that is endemic in sub-Saharan Africa but has spread to the Caribbean. In the US, where cattle, sheep, deer, and elk have no immunity to the disease, heartwater could wipe out whole herds. And now worries about heartwater have spread to ranchers. The tick that spreads heartwater threaten ranch and farm economies throughout the world (00G1).

'Bio-invasions' like mad cow disease, which decimated Britain's cattle industry, has now been identified in Belgium, France, Ireland, Switzerland, and Portugal. Markets are slamming shut to Britain's exports of hogs, which have been hit with an outbreak of classical swine fever. In Asia, Japan and Korea are battling outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) in cattle, which may have slipped in from China. In Mexico, just 200 miles from the Texas border, nearly 14 million chickens were slaughtered this spring because of a highly contagious virus called Exotic Newcastle Disease. A virus Nepha has destroyed the Malaysian pork industry and killed 105 people. In North America, veterinarians are fighting a deadly parasitic disease called leishmaniasis. Rarely before found on these shores, it has sickened and killed hundreds of foxhounds in 21 states and Canada (00G1).

Experts blame the spread of these and other pests on an explosion in world trade, business travel, and tourism. Global trade policies aggravate the problem by putting strict limits on countries' abilities to ban animal trade. Meanwhile, in the US, years of flat budgets for border inspectors and disease researchers have left populations of animals -- and humans -- doubly exposed. Such oversights can incur appalling costs. Even in the US, which has been spared the worst of the recent plagues, the price tag for battling agricultural blights ran to $9 billion in 1999, according to a Cornell University study. A serious outbreak of FMD would more than double that figure and ripple straight across the whole farm and food economy. The implications are so dire that the National Intelligence Council -- the research arm of the CIA -- issued a report listing foreign animal diseases as a risk to national security. Hundreds of common diseases are "zoonotic", meaning they affect animals and humans alike. Indeed, scientists estimate that as many as 70% of all pathogens are capable of jumping species (00G1).

Leishmaniasis and West Nile virus show why this is so frightening. In the US, the former has been detected only in hunting dogs. But in countries such as India, the parasite is endemic -- and deadly -- in humans as well. West Nile virus can also be fatal to chickens, pigs, and horses. And since it can be carried by ticks as well as by several species of mosquito, experts say the chances of eradication are slim (00G1).

Britain provides a chilling illustration of how economic costs and human suffering become intertwined in animal plagues. Britain has already spent an estimated $6.25 billion to clean up mad cow disease--not including the jobs lost. Beef product exports are still down 99% from 1995, and the economic effects could easily stretch another 15 years. The illness seems to have jumped to humans. More than 80 people in Europe have been stricken with the new, human form of this always-fatal disease. As many as 136,000 may eventually become sick, according to an Oxford U. study reported in the August 2000 issue of Nature (00G1).

Animal researchers have long been tracking prion-linked diseases among wild US populations of deer and elk. The human errors that led to the BSE outbreak may be atypical in animal plagues. And all human influenzas originate in birds and beasts, killing an estimated 40,000 a year. But even where they do not affect human health, animal plagues can cripple whole industries. Japan and Korea are now struggling with FMD -- their first outbreaks of the virus in more than 70 years. To date, Korea has had to slaughter 350,000 head of cattle at a cost of $90 million. That loss pales, however, next to the 3.8 million pigs Taiwan was forced to destroy in a 1997 outbreak of FMD. The disease, thought to come from the mainland, could eventually cost Taiwan as much as $15 billion in lost exports of pork and other products (00G1).

The threat is vastly amplified by soaring agricultural trade, along with ever-greater numbers of world travelers. Since 1995, agricultural imports to the US have risen 28%. International travel to the US is up 33%, to more than 100 million travelers annually, since 1988. Most of those visitors make their trips in far less time than it takes diseases to incubate. By some estimates, worldwide customs officials inspect just 5% of all luggage. About 30,000 people cross US borders illegally every week (00G1).

A virus such as FMD is brilliantly adapted to exploit these channels. Notoriously difficult to kill, it can survive for several weeks on clothes and for up to 24 hours in the human respiratory tract. At risk are US agricultural exports--currently worth $50 billion annually and expected to grow to $76 billion by 2009. A 1999 study by the University of California at Davis estimates that an FMD outbreak in the Golden State alone would result in losses of up to $13.5 billion (00G1).

By 1998, 11 million pigs in the Netherlands had to be destroyed, about two-thirds of the national herd. Now, a similar catastrophe may be brewing in Britain. Biologists say the source is probably pork from Asia. In America, meanwhile, health authorities are watching these developments. 'The Netherlands, Germany, and England all have superb veterinary systems, and they're getting hammered (00G1).

Well-intentioned global trade policies may actually have weakened protections against bio-invasion. The WTO, for example, has sought to weed out fake health issues that nations sometimes use as ploys to shut out agricultural imports. But in its zeal, the WTO adopted agricultural trade policies that critics say are unrealistic and too rigidly scientific. Proof of a disease threat is often elusive (00G1).

Budgets for inspectors have also been pared to the bone. Veterinary Service (VS), the USDA division responsible for safeguarding livestock and poultry health, has just 98 full-time and 28 seasonal inspectors overseeing the import of nearly 17 million animals. And at the US Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS), there are only 91 field inspectors to process an estimated 20 million animals -- 200 million including fish. Forty-four positions for criminal investigators tracking animal smuggling are vacant due to lack of funding. While the US has escaped large-scale animal plagues in recent years, several near-misses suggest that its luck finally may be running out. Since the 1950s, the US has spent tens of millions of dollars eradicating screwworm -- a horror story of a maggot that feeds and breeds on the open wounds of both man and beast -- down to the southern Mexican border. But last March, a polo pony imported from Argentina, where the scourge is endemic, breezed through USDA quarantine in Florida, only to have an infestation discovered by a private veterinarian less than 24 hours before the emergence of adult flies. Exotic Newcastle Disease (END) also looks like a narrow miss. END hasn't made its way north -- yet. In the early 1970s, 12 million birds were destroyed, and 46,000 square miles of California and Arizona were placed under quarantine. The END threat is so serious that in 1996, the mere rumor of an outbreak in Missouri was enough for China to cut off its poultry trade with the state for nearly two months. A full-scale outbreak would end the export market (00G1).

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