America Needs a CDC for Animal Health

SCHAUMBURG, Ill., Sept. 15 - The following is an op-ed by Ron DeHaven DVM, MBA, CEO and Executive Vice President, American Veterinary Medical Association, Former Administrator, U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (2004-2007):

For more than 60 years, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta has served our nation's human health care needs with cutting-edge research and scientific innovation. The result has been the control or eradication of some of the most deadly human diseases and illnesses, including smallpox, malaria and Legionnaires disease.

The CDC has rightfully gained international recognition for the monumental results it has achieved in public health, results that have saved countless lives in the United States and abroad.

Today, there is an urgent need to take the highly successful CDC model for human disease diagnostics and research and apply it to animal disease diagnostics and research that will preserve a safe, healthy food supply and a sustainable, successful agriculture infrastructure. It also will provide for critically important protection against zoonotic diseases, which are those traded between humans and animals.

An effort to meet this need with a new facility is already underway. The National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF) will have the critical mission of diagnosing and developing vaccines and countermeasures for treating, controlling and eradicating disease threats such as foot-and-mouth disease and African swine fever.

These dangerous diseases, if introduced into our nation's food supply, either intentionally or naturally, would have a devastating impact on our country if we are not properly prepared. Indeed, reports such as World at Risk, released last year by former Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL) and Sen. Jim Talent (R-MO), have highlighted the serious threat of a terrorist attack on our country using biological weapons.

That is where the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility comes in.

A new NBAF will bring our animal disease research capabilities into the 21st century. The new facility will provide urgently needed state-of-the-art laboratories and a cadre of world-class scientists highly focused on an animal disease research mission designed specifically to safeguard America's dinner table.

As has happened at the CDC, the NBAF will attract some of the best and brightest scholars from across the nation and around the world. These scientists will collaborate, innovate and publish. They will develop technologies and medicines that will spin out of the laboratory and into the marketplace.

In this era of global travel and ever-changing disease threats, veterinarians and farmers alike have appropriately raised concerns about potential disease outbreaks for years. The NBAF is an essential step forward in addressing this national challenge safely and effectively.

The commitment to the NBAF has been solidified by congressional funding for development and design. Reaffirmation of the NBAF research mission by Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano and inclusion in President Obama's budget underscore the importance of this facility.

This momentum must continue without delay if we are serious about food safety and public health in America. The result will be nothing less than another crown jewel of American science -- in essence, a CDC for animal health.

With the pressing animal disease threats we face today, and the ability of some diseases to jump from animals to humans, the opening of the NBAF can't come a day too soon.