Every Sunday, “Back in the Day” looks at an article that ran on this date in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. The items are verbatim, so don’t blame us today for yesteryear’s bad grammar.
All of the estimated 9,000 cattle on Molokai are being slaughtered, an attempt by the government to rid the Island of bovine tuberculosis.
For a year after the slaughter, no cattle will be allowed there.
The disease is chronic and has plagued cattle rangers there for years. But some have been unwilling to accept what appears to be a drastic remedy. A few say they will sue the government to stop the killing; none has so far.
The “depopulation” program, as the government calls it, has raised questions about why it must be done and whether it will be effective in ridding Molokai of bovine TB.
Why must all of the cattle — and not just infected herds — be eliminated when less than 2 percent are said to be diseased? And is the meat that will go to market safe to consume?
Bovine tuberculosis is not an immediate threat to human life, officials say. Strict federal inspection at slaughterhouses keeps unsafe meat off the market.
But the disease is a threat to Hawaii’s cattle industry — a threat that is made even more serious by the nation’s depressed beef market, which has been called the worst in history, officials say.
Had the Sept. 10 order to eliminate all of Molo-kai’s cattle not been given, Hawaii’s legacy would have been a stigmatized cattle industry and the loss of its “modified accredited-free TB status,” said Dr. Gary Chun, federal veterinarian. That status indicates to the federal government that a state has had cases of bovine TB within the last five years, but has taken adequate measures to control the diseases, he said.
With the loss of that status, all cattle in Hawaii — not just animals on Molokai — would have to be tested for TB. And the sale, exchange and breeding of Hawaii’s cattle would have been severely restricted, Chun said. …
Although almost all states have been certified as TB free, five — including Hawaii — have continued to turn up cases of infected herds every year. (The other states are North Carolina, Texas, Louisiana and New Mexico.)
