Wyoming Cattle All Show Clean;
Ranchers Want Bangs Tests Over

GREEN RIVER, Wyo. —(AP)— Several Wyoming cattle producers are calling for the end of a brucellosis testing program mandated by the Wyoming Livestock Board last fall.

None of the nearly 14,000 cows tested in Fremont, Hot Springs, Park, Lincoln, Sublette and Teton counties has tested positive since the program began in January, state officials said.

And many ranchers claim the program is unfair because other states using the same federal grazing areas are not required to test their animals for the disease.

Brucellosis can cause livestock to abort, and, in rare cases, can cause undulant fever in people who drink unpasteurized milk from infected cows.

Interim Wyoming State Veterinarian Jim Logan said that through May, none of the 13,808 cows that were tested, tested positive.

Logan and other state officials have said they too would like to see the program end, but Wyoming is committed to at least one full year of testing.

The program was initiated to ease concerns that infected Wyoming elk and buffalo might transmit the disease to domestic cattle.

After two states imposed sanctions against Wyoming cattle in February 1997, Wyoming officials agreed to follow the recommendations of the federal Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.

Over the objections of state officials and Wyoming producers, who routinely vaccinate their cattle for brucellosis, APHIS recommended a testing program in six Wyoming counties.

Pam Hamilton of the Flying W Land and Livestock Company near Big Piney and several other ranchers have complained that the testing rules are "stacked against" southwest Wyoming ranchers.

"Utah and Wyoming cows are grazing on the same allotment, subjected to the same exposure to brucellosis, but out-of-state cattle don't have to be tested before they go to market and ours do," said Jeff Rawson, of the Bureau of Land Management's Kemmerer Resource Area.

Kemmerer rancher Sue Herschler Hunt said her V Cross Cattle Company grazes about 500 cows on the commons allotment and on a U.S. Forest Service allotment on the Bridger-Teton Forest.

"It seems to me that the livestock industry is shouldering the burden of brucellosis testing when the wildlife is what has brucellosis," she said. "And putting in untested cattle with our cattle after they've been tested doesn't make any sense to me."

Big Piney veterinarian Bob Beiermann said he would push for an end to the brucellosis testing program during a meeting of state veterinarians this week.