Day: January 7, 2009

Texas is among nearly 30 states tracing and testing horses that might have been exposed to contagious equine metritis (CEM), a highly contagious disease that can be transmitted during breeding or artificial insemination. CEM can cause temporary infertility of horses. Continue reading… 

Schaumburg, Ill.  — The American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) is warning potential pet owners not to fall for Internet scams that bilk victims of hundreds of dollars and fail to deliver the animals they promise. Dr. Walter Woolf, owner of Air Animal Pet Movers, a pet moving service, has researched these scams after his company began being mentioned in recent postings by Cameroon-based scammers promising pets at below-market prices. The scammers post on popular Internet market sites offering the pets to buyers who wire money to Cameroon or a money-drop in the U.K. Air Animal Pet Movers

Nationwide identification system to be used for disease, contamination control Investigators spent an average of 199 days tracing the sources of animals infected with bovine tuberculosis between October 2005 and August 2007, according to information from the Department of Agriculture. Export sanctions connected with a Newcastle disease outbreak in 2002 and 2003 cost nearly $1 million weekly in lost income, department information states. Cows won’t have passports under the NAIS, but their identification tags can be used to track their movements throughout the country. Dr. John Clifford, deputy administrator of Veterinary Services for the USDA Animal and

No vaccines, no treatment, no countermeasures. This description covers a number of the foreign animal diseases that scientists are studying now at Plum Island Animal Disease Center or will be studying in the future at the new National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility. The NBAF will improve the capabilities of the Department of Agriculture to develop vaccines, conduct diagnostics, and train veterinarians in the recognition of foreign animal diseases. The Department of Homeland Security, which has oversight of the facility on Plum Island, N.Y., announced recently that it is recommending Kansas State University as the site of the

Barack Obama’s election to the presidency has implications not just for the United States and the world but, in less dramatic ways, the power and influence of the Obama White House will also be felt by the veterinary profession. Obama’s cabinet appointments, for example, especially to the departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services, have implications for regulations concerning food safety and animal welfare. Moreover, Democrats have strengthened their majorities in Congress, where legislation banning horse slaughter and limiting antimicrobial drug use in food animals could gain momentum. Dr. Mark Lutschaunig, director of the AVMA Governmental