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    US ranchers fear disease from Mexican border-crossing cattle

    Another reason to build the fence diseased illegal immigrant cows

    US ranchers fear disease from Mexican border-crossing cattle
    by Zachary Slobig
    Wed Aug 9, 9:41 AM ET



    PALOMINAS, United States (AFP) - Mexican free-range cattle wandering across the border into the United States could be ill with tuberculosis, hoof and mouth disease or mad-cow disease and infect US herds, ranchers in the border state of Arizona say.

    Ranchers in southeastern Arizona said they have found it increasingly difficult to prevent their cattle from mingling with the Mexican animals when their property is located at some of the busiest entry points for undocumented immigrants along the 3,140 kilometer (1,951 mile) US-Mexico border.

    For Jack Ladd, a third-generation cattleman whose ranch hugs the US-Mexico border for 16 kilometers (10 miles), the problem is escalating.

    Mexican cattle wandering north and grazing on his land was once rare, more and more holes have appeared in his fences since the flow of illegal migrants has shifted away from urban entry points, where security has tightened, to places like southeastern Arizona.

    "We just couldn't keep up with all the repairs," Ladd told AFP on his ranch southeast of the town of Palominas, as he drove south in his Jeep to inspect his property. "At the peak we've gotten 300 illegals coming through our ranch in a day."

    In the last two years Ladd and his son have rounded up and returned more than 400 head of Mexican cattle.

    The south side of the Ladd ranch is marked by an assortment of border barriers, from 4.6-meter (15-foot) tall corrugated steel barriers installed in 1994 to seven-strand barbed wire fences.

    Last spring the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, a militant, volunteer Arizona-based group opposed to illegal immigration, offered to build Ladd a fence.

    The group saw Ladd's land as an ideal location for the prototype of their planned four-meter (14-foot) tall, Israeli-style containment barrier. The proposed structure would have two parallel fences topped with razor wire and surveillance cameras separated by an anti-vehicle ditch.

    Chris Simcox, who heads the Minutemen, has said that he would like to see this type of barrier running the entire length of the US-Mexico border.

    "It sounds like a grandiose plan," said rancher Dave Walker, a nephew of Ladd. But undocumented migrants are "gonna come anyway. You show me a 14-foot fence and I'll show you a 15-foot illegal pole vaulter."

    Ladd passed on the proposed military style fence, believing it to be far more than he needed.

    "That thing was a monstrosity," he said. "My concern isn't to keep people out, it's to keep cows contained."

    The Minutemen recently completed a basic livestock containment fence on the Ladd ranch which runs nearly five kilometers (three miles).

    A concern with livestock disease was the original reason for setting up a fence along the US-Mexico border in southeastern Arizona, according to Gary Thrasher, a local rancher and large animal veterinarian. The first fences were built by ranchers in response to Texas tick fever, he said.

    Thrasher, a member of the Arizona Livestock Incident Response Team, has worked with livestock on both sides of the border for 35 years. Arizona livestock is susceptible to a host of diseases brought from the south, but foot and mouth disease concerns him most.

    "These foreign animal diseases scare me to death," said Thrasher. "With all this fence-busting, you can't possibly keep a clean herd."

    The San Pedro River, just west of the Ladd ranch, is a perfect example of possible disease conduit, Thrasher said. The state-owned land around the river is not properly fenced at the border, he said, creating a natural corridor that lets Mexican livestock wander as far as 80 kilometers (50 miles) north, mingling with local herds along the way.

    "It's like leaving your back door open all the time," said Thrasher. "This could decimate the US cattle industry and in turn the entire US agriculture system."

    Arizona livestock health authorities downplayed these alarms.

    "We are fortunate here in Arizona to be adjacent to the Mexican state of Sonora which has no significant disease problem," said Katie Decker, of the Arizona State Veterinarian Office. "We have long had more things coming in from other US states than from south of the border."

    Thrasher agrees that Sonora offers a disease buffer, but believes prevention must be a priority. He would like to see border fences maintained and patrolled by US Department of Agriculture quarantine officers.

    "Unfortunately, it seems like no one will take foreign animal diseases seriously until there's some sort of poodle plague in Los Angeles," he said.
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    "Unfortunately, it seems like no one will take foreign animal diseases seriously until there's some sort of poodle plague in Los Angeles," he said.

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