Abstract
A Legislative Turn For the Better
WASHINGTON, D.C.-The first half of 1979 has seen a great deal of legislative and regulatory activity affecting aviculturisrs and pet bird owners everywhere in the country. And, for a change, it is all good news-mostly. Below is a short description of each one of four major regulations that are either proposed by the Federal government or are now law. Each has some good and some bad from the aviculturist's point of view, but each represents a further step toward making aviculture the legitimate, respected industry/hobby it should be. Each of you reading this has played an important part in shaping these regulations either by being a member of AFA or by the letters and mailgrams you sent to various government officials or your Congressman. Because of your membership, AFA now has the clout to influence, in a significant way, the form regulation and legislation is taking.
Bird ImportsOff Again, On Again
March 28, 1979 was the date that all bird import permits were cancelled until further notice. like most USDA actions, this caught the majority of us by surprise and many importers and aviculturists spent the weekend running up their phone bills to determine if it was true and, if so, why.
The answers came at the beginning of the week. Everything was brought into sharp focus on April 2 when APHIS (USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service) held a meeting with bird importers, aviculturists, AFA, and other interested parties such as poultry industry representatives.
Briefly, their reasoning for closing the stations was based on the following situanons:
• Exotic Newcastle Disease (VVND) appears to be reaching epidemic proportions worldwide. More lots of birds in approved quarantine stations have been destroyed this year for having been diagnosed as having VVND than in any similar period since the program began.
• There were significant outbreaks of VVND in imported birds during the months of January, February, and March of this year in California, Florida, Arizona, and Nevada.
• The Florida and California outbreaks were closely associated with quarantine stations. In both instances, the disease was diagnosed in the holding facilities outside the stations, proper.
• Additionally, at the Florida holding facility, there had been four (count them, four) break-ins or burglaries of the infected facility, three of them after VVND had been diagnosed and depopulation was in progress. (Dates of the break-ins: Feb. 16, March 24, 25, 26. The facility was found positive for VVND by lab tests in Ames, Iowa on March 19.) The burglaries resulted in many missing birds as well as escaped birds taking up residence in the neighborhood trees. To make matters worse, the birds were not only known to be infected with VVND, but were already being treated for several other devastating diseases of aviary and cage birds before VVND was discovered. APHIS really had a mess on their hands. APHIS officials and police worked diligently on the case and, within a short period of time, apprehended a small group of teenagers who admitted to the break-ins. Most of the stolen birds were also recovered.
• In an unrelated incident earlier this year, five macaws were stolen from a quarantine station in Jamaica, Long Island while it was being depopulated for positive VVND. Those birds are still at large.
• In both the Florida and California outbreaks, all evidence suggested that the carrier of the Newcastle Disease was not a smuggled bird as is usually the case, but human beings transmitting the disease on their person by moving from the quarantine station itself to the holding facility. This is obviously prohibited by regulation but apparently not enforced, at least at these two stations. Further investigation disclosed that this "biological" security was lax in many other stations. Often the owners did not permit their employees to move from place to place without showering and changing clothes, but the owners, themselves, ignored the regulation. They are the Boss, after all.
The sum total of these situations caused APHIS to wonder whether the current operational and handling procedures were adequate to stop VVND from entering the U.S. They decided to close imports while they reevaluated the security regulations, both physical and biological.
The April 2nd meeting saw little disagreement among the various organizations. Representatives from USDA, AFA, (Cliff Witt), IBI (International Bird Institute-the organization representing quarantine station owners), and the poultry industry spoke. AFA and IBI jointly opposed penalizing the ''clean'' quaranriners for the wreckless behavior of a few of the 84 station operators. Otherwise it was generally agreed that additional security was needed.
APHIS officials worked on the new regulations while a committee comprised of quarantine station representatives and one AF A State Coordinator (Ruth Hanessian) drew up a list of changes or additions to the procedures that were acceptable to the bird industry and aviculturists. This combination of efforts brought about the new regulations which eventually were published in the Federal Register.
Before this final rule-making, however, there was an unusual snag. For reasons still not clear, the new regulations had to be approved by the Secretary's office. Now, in Washington, this is a big deal. We all wondered why such things as tamper-proof windows and electronic burglar alarms had to be approved by the Secretary of Agriculture himself.
The General Counsel for IBI, Marshall Meyers, pursued the situation and, in a meeting with Deputy Assistant Secretary Jerry Hill, finally smelled a rat. It seems that the delay in approving the new regulations was the result of the people in the Justice Department (Legal Counsel for USDA) dragging their feet. Further, the liaison between Justice and Agriculture was a man who has gone on record, publically, as opposing bird impons of any kind. This was while he was working for the Department of the Interior. Thus it appeared that we were faced with an attempt by the Dept. of the Interior and the Justice Department to exert pressure on USDA to use this temporary halt to imports to close the quarantine stations once and for all, thereby ending bird imports altogether.
When alerted to this situation, Dr.
Baer, AF A President, activated AF A's Emergency Operations Plan so that all AFA members and member clubs could immediately take action by sending mailgrams to the Assistant Secretary of Agriculture, P.R. Smith Gerry Hill's boss) as well as congressmen and senators, demanding the reopening of the quarantine stations. If you were not called by your state coordinator or club delegate, you should, at this time, call them and find out why. It is imperative that our Emergency Operations Plan work if we are to succeed in these efforts. It has been used twice this year.
Thanks to you, the mail grams had the effect we hoped for. As they piled up by the hundreds in P.R. Smith's office, attitudes magically changed and three days later we were told publication in the Federal Register would be May 18. And sure enough, on May 18, 1979 the temporary ban on bird imports ended.
That did not mean, however, that bird imports resumed immediately. First the quarantine stations had to comply with the new regulations, be inspected, get their leg bands to the USDA Veterinarian in Charge in their state (see below) and THEN import permits would be issued. Some stations are still wrestling with this.