New Mexico's Poultry Industry Declared Clean of Pullorum-Typhoid
Date: June 19, 1997
Editor: D'Lyn Ford (505) 646-6528, dlford@nmsu.edu
LAS CRUCES -- The National Poultry Improvement Plan (NPIP) recently classified New Mexico as a pullorum-typhoid clean state.
"Pullorum and fowl typhoid are salmonella diseases," said Ron Parker, animal resources department head at New Mexico State University. "Our classification as a pullorum-typhoid clean state simply means that our poultry industry can more effectively participate in national and international markets."
Salmonella pullorum is an egg-transmitted poultry disease that causes serious losses in young poultry and reduces productivity in adult birds, he said. Salmonella gallinarum (fowl typhoid) is a similar disease and reacts to the same diagnostic tests as pullorum. Therefore, NPIP considers the two diseases as one.
Plaques declaring New Mexico as pullorum-typhoid clean were presented to Parker and Steve England, state veterinarian representing the New Mexico Livestock Board, at the NPIP national meeting in Albuquerque June 3. Other representatives at the meeting included John Wortman, New Mexico Livestock Board director; Jere Dick, area veterinarian, New Mexico Veterinary Services, representing Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS); and Melissa Behr, New Mexico Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory.
"This important milestone could not have been reached without these agencies working together," Parker said. "Now, only a few Western states -- Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada and Wyoming -- remain to be completely cleared of pullorum-typhoid."
State programs coordinated by NPIP were started in the early 1930s to eliminate pullorum -- a costly disease that's transmitted from hens to chicks via eggs, said Jerry Schickedanz, interim dean of NMSU's College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences . Standards were established to evaluate poultry breeding and hatchery products, keeping them free of egg-transmitted and hatchery diseases in poultry.
The Cooperative Extension Service is the official state agency for the NPIP in New Mexico, he said. Extension trains inspectors to test adult birds and eliminate disease carriers from breeding flocks.
NPIP monitors other diseases, and provides ways for individual poultry producers and hatcheries to qualify in categories of clean or monitored for several other important poultry diseases, Parker said.
Guidelines also are being developed to incorporate the ostrich industry.
"Although we do not have a large poultry industry in New Mexico, we do have an industry," he said. "People in the state are relying on us to provide standards so that they can stay in business and make a living."
New Mexico's poultry industry has the potential to expand, Parker said. "For local communities in which that might occur, it could mean a boom in economic development."