FAZD Biosecurity Economic Papers & Presentations
Biosecurity Papers and Presentations
These are papers and presentations arising out of the TAMU Biosecurity Economics Group. These are being posted for purposes of documentation and not as endorsement of the content.
Operating under the FAZD Center – the National Center for Foreign Animal and Zoonotic Disease Defense
A Department of Homeland Security University Center of Excellence
and
Department of Agricultural Economics, Texas A&M University
Faculty Level Team Members Categories of papers listed below
David A. Bessler Decision Making
Frederick O. Boadu Market Analysis
Bruce A. McCarl (Lead FAZD Economist)
Decision Making – Investigations regarding disease outbreak decision making
Pandemic Woes: WHO Declares Flu is Over
WHO Chief Says Swine Flu Pandemic Is Over (Yahoo! News) World Health Organization director general Margaret Chan announced Tuesday the end of the swine flu pandemic, more than a year after it was declared, just in time for the upcoming flu season.
Good Grief Charlie Brown!
Appeals Court Rules Against GPS Tracking
This bears watching. With this ruing there also may be distinction between short and long time GPS tracking without a warrant in agriculture.
Source: Wired Magazine
A federal appeals court ruled Friday that the police can’t covertly track a suspect’s car using a GPS device for an extended period of time without getting a warrant.
The ruling in the D.C. Court of Appeals overturned the conviction of a suspected cocaine dealer, saying that the use of a secret GPS tracking device on the man’s vehicle for two months violated the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. The ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a friend of the court brief supporting the challenge.
The government argued that a 1983 Supreme Court case U.S. v. Knotts, which allowed police to put a tracking beacon in a container to follow a driver to a secluded cabin, made it clear that GPS tracking was allowed without a judge’s approval.
But the court found otherwise in its ruling (.pdf), drawing a distinction between short term monitoring that’s not much different from a police tail and ongoing, secret and ubiquitious tracking.
OIE Tightens Food Supply Controls
The United Nations OIE is at it again taking a big step in cinching tight their food control network after a week long annual conference in Paris, France to discuss the fine details of world agriculture with 175 countries participating. The primary focus of the OIE during this particular conference was to emphasize joint animal & human “health, safety and welfare” mandates. When this particular language is used it is known as the abused “Emergency Clause” which suspends sovereign State’s and Nation’s constitutions and their right to referendum. That means whatever the OIE and partners pass is permanent and cannot be changed. The government, in collusion with the OIE, is going for the jugular vein to terminate your rights to absolute-right-in-property. That is a fancy term for private ownership of everything from real estate to your own body. Our country was established upon our God given, natural right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. You also have a God-given RIGHT against unlawful search and seizure of your personal property.
Food Communism
The vision of global communism to spearhead total food control began as a quiet initiative back in 1924. That total food control initiative was a living document constantly evolving as it strangled the life-blood out of free-market food. Today the OIE boasts about its “liberalization” and “smooth flow” of the international food trade but in actuality is the modern equivalent to a ball & chain. The United Nations Millennium Declaration summarizes the challenges to common good power, also known as Communism, while the Millennium Development Goals target the sea of humanity for special mandates and powers. The OIE has set itself up as the ‘expert’ on the world’s agricultural issues, demanding that all countries participate, forsaking their sovereignty to form this new, strange Communist organization.
Unconstitutional Checkpoint! Are the THC Chickens Coming Home to Roost?
Notification of Illegal Transport (Notice the sign is in grid fashion)
Celeste Bishop
In this article I photographically documented 2 miles of checkpoint signs leading up to the actual checkpoint. These photographs were taken on Friday, July 30, 2010 in Montana.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, —
Are you aware that an international agricultural health code has been implemented down to the state and local level? There is actually a trilogy in the Terrestrial Health Code (THC) series, each over 1300 pages with the mandate to control all life. Many of us have become desensitized to the mostly unconstitutional travel checkpoint. In researching this article I made an attempt to discover the history of travel checkpoints but was unable to find their origins. Societies that desired the strong arm of control instituted capricious and demanding checkpoints. Today the government has expanded their checkpoint system from border crossing inspections to state and local roads for a variety of “reasons” from the war on drugs (DUI), insurance mandates, vehicle defects, to seatbelts. Most Americans are unaware that around 2006 most states have instituted unconstitutional agricultural checkpoints. What are the implications of such actions taken by these United States of the Republic?
CDC reports on Cryptococcus gattii in Pacific Northwest
After Cryptococcus gattii infections started popping up in the Pacific Northwest in 2004, state, federal, and British Columbia health officials set up a working group to collect human and veterinary case information and isolates. Today in MMWR they reported that as of July they had received reports of 60 human cases of the fungal disease since January 2004 from four states: California, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. C gattii spores can colonize the nasal cavity and spread to other sites, causing meningitis, pneumonia, and the development of lung, brain, or muscle cryptococcomas. Treatment includes prolonged intravenous antifungal drug therapy and resection of infected lung or brain tissue. The highest proportion of cases was in people aged 50 to 69 years, and among 47 patients for whom medical history is known, 38 had underlying conditions, including 3 with HIV infections. C gattii infections were the cause of death in 9 cases, and the disease may have played a role in 6 other deaths. CDC experts said the emergence of the fungus in a temperate climate could mean the pathogen has adapted to a new niche or that climate warming may have created more favorable conditions for it to survive and spread. Other possibilities, they said, are that environmental conditions that support the fungus may be broader than previously known and that some cases might have occurred in the Northwest in the past but gone unnoticed. The CDC urged physicians to consider C gattii infections in patients who have cryptococcal disease symptoms and to ask patients about travel to areas where the pathogen is endemic.
Jul 23 MMWR report
Statehood: The Territorial Imperative
If your state is moving towards state sovereignty or you know someone in the trenches fighting for state sovereignty this is a must have manual. The book is written by Bill Howell and Bill Redd. It is 524 pages with a Table of Contents and an index.
You can listen 24/7 to a riveting interview with hostess Devvy Kidd and co-author Bill Howell on Devvy’s June 8, 2010 show. www.devvy.com (under archives)
You can obtain this great state sovereignty resource for $20 (that includes shipping). Send a check or money order to:
Bookcliff Publishing
57 N. Main Street
Helper, UT 84526.
I am very pleased with my new resource!
From the trenches,
Celeste
Is the Fat Lady About to Sing?
The long winter flu season has passed and trees, bushes and flowers are budding out and you know that spring is in the air. A joyful time of listening to songbirds sing their melodious songs. It has always been a highlight in my life each year. But is that all about to change?
For Educational Purposes Only from FAZD
Scientists have discovered that 22 species of passerines–songbirds and perching birds–in the contiguous U.S. are carriers of low-pathogenicity avian influenza. Pathogenicity is the ability of a germ to produce an infectious disease in an organism.
The researchers report their results in the journal BMC Infectious Diseases.
The research is supported by the joint National Institutes of Health (NIH)-National Science Foundation (NSF) Ecology of Infectious Diseases (EID) Program. At NSF, EID is co-funded by the Directorates for Biological Sciences and Geosciences.
The prevalence of influenza in waterfowl has long been known.
But the researchers’ analysis of samples taken from 225 passerine species in 41 U.S. states indicates that the number of songbird species with low-pathogenicity avian influenza is greater than the number in eight other avian orders, including waterfowl.
“Avian influenza virus [AIV] is an important public health issue because pandemic influenza viruses in people have contained genes from viruses that infect birds,” says Trevon Fuller, lead author of the paper and a biologist at the Center for Tropical Research at UCLA.
“Some AIV subtypes have periodically mutated from low pathogenicity to high pathogenicity forms that are lethal, for example, to poultry.”
Since passerines share the same habitat as poultry, they may be more effective transmitters of this disease than aquatic birds to humans, Fuller says.
From the trenches,
Celeste
Public Hearings: WA State Small Forest Owners
The Department of Natural Resources will be holding three dog and pony show meetings under the Forestry Riparian Easement Program (FREP) (don’t you just love those these governmental acronyms?) to lure the public into compensation programs for lost timber sales due to riparian regulations. Riparian is a fancy word for fish and compensation is a fancy word for terminating property ownership via the eco-socialism toolkit.
UN agriculture agency adopts new strategy to combat animal disease outbreaks
Strengthening measures to prevent and control outbreaks of animal diseases could result in the saving of large amounts of money for governments, the United Nations agriculture agency said today, announcing a new strategy to more effectively detect and combat the diseases.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said it had drawn on its experience in past animal health emergencies to develop the “One Health” initiative, which aims to improve global response to disease outbreaks, implement effective prevention and containment strategies and manage risks.
Check the One World tab over on the right to find out what this program is really about.