Word: aftosa
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...coastal jungle of Vera Cruz state, bulldozers chewed their way last week through rain forests and matted vines. They were clearing a path across the waist of Mexico for an 800-mile-long fence. Its purpose: to check the northward spread of aftosa (foot-&-mouth disease), which had already infected about one-sixth of Mexico's 13 million head of cattle and brought nightmares to Texas ranchers...
Other U.S.-aided attempts to wipe out aftosa by killing all infected and exposed cattle had bogged down against the iron-hard resistance of the Mexican campesinos (TIME, Dec. 8). So slaughter was replaced by quarantine and vaccination; a part of the substitute plan is the fence now abuilding. From a starting point on the Gulf of Mexico, it will run across the states of San Luis Potosi and Zacatecas, then southwest to the Pacific at Puerto Vallarta. North of the line, which is guarded by more than 15,000 Mexican soldiers, 1,000 Mexican and U.S. technicians, there...
South of the fence line, in the infected area extending all the way to the Isthmus of Tehuantepec (where another, shorter fence will be built), veterinarians are experimenting with aftosa vaccines shipped from The Netherlands and Argentina. If they work against the Mexican virus, and if the government can persuade skeptical campesinos of the necessity of sticking a needle into their animals every six months, Mexico hopes at least to control aftosa. U.S. experts are bearish, point out that the quarantine-vaccination method has failed in Europe. Like most U.S. cattlemen, they believe that the only cure for aftosa...
...campesino's resistance to the anti-aftosa cattle slaughter had been tragically bitter. A veterinarian and his seven-man soldier escort had been murdered in Senguio; bands of armed men, threatening violence to cattle-shooters, roamed the states of Guerrero, Michoacán and Zacatecas. Only last week, sanitation workers who had come to disinfect a village in the state of Querètaro were driven out with cries of: "You've killed our cattle, now you can't kill our children...
...infected cattle ran between 1,500,000 and 2,000,000 of Mexico's 13 million. Up to last week, approximately half a million diseased cattle had been shot and buried in lime pits, and thousands of exposed but uninfected animals had been sent to market. The anti-aftosa campaign, in which the U.S. alone has spent about $35 million, has enlisted 500 U.S. and 500 Mexican technicians, 2,000 civilian workers. More than 15,000 Mexican troops have assisted. From the U.S. has come about $3,000,000 worth of equipment-bulldozers for digging mass graves, spraying outfits...