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May 4, 2001

Memories of the
Aftosa campaign...
It was a tough life. But a devastating livestock disease needed to be eradicated. Here's the story of the men who did it...

By Edith Chenault
Extension Communications Specialist

It sometimes meant sleeping wherever night found you. Or traveling by jeep to the end of the road and riding a mule six days to your final destination. Or having ice to keep cool vaccines dropped by airplane. But for Homer Faseler of Raymondville and other inspectors and veterinarians involved in the Comision Mexico-Americana para de la Erradicacion de la Fiebre Aftosa (Mexican-American Commission for the Eradication of Foot-and Mouth Disease), in the late 1940s and early 1950s, it was a job that needed to be done.

"If anyone has seen the disease, the effects it has on cattle, it's not a pretty sight. Calves can't nurse," Faseler said recently in a telephone interview. "(The program) made a lot of inroads. It was quite an operation, both medically and logistically," he said.

Foot-and-mouth disease, or la fiebre aftosa as it is called in Mexico, is a highly contagious disease that can cause serious, chronic illness in cloven-footed animals such as cattle, swine (feral or wild and domestic), sheep, goats, captive and wild deer, elk, bison and llamas. It also can cause high mortality in young livestock, such as pigs. Infected animals develop blisters in the mouth, tongue, muzzle, teats and skin between the hooves.

According to An Industry in Crisis: Mexican-United States Cooperation in the Control of Foot-and-Mouth Disease, written by Manuel Machado Jr. and published in 1968, the disease struck a "tragic blow to the Mexican livestock industry," when it was officially declared infected in December 1946. The virus spread rapidly from the original outbreak in Veracruz to much of central and southern Mexico.

"In any country where foot-and-mouth disease strikes in massive proportions for the first time, the shock on the affected livestock raisers renders them seemingly helpless. A herd of healthy cows that just the night before manifested no symptoms whatever, by morning is groaning with pain from the ulcerations that have formed on the udder, teats, mouth, and feet. In addition, the cows are feverish, their joints have stiffened, and they will suffer severe weight loss," Machado writes.

The American/Mexican Commission for the Eradication of Aftosa was formalized April 2, 1947, and through the considerable and combined efforts of both countries, foot-and mouth disease was eradicated and Mexico was given free status in September 1952. This effort required the slaughter of nearly 1 million animals plus the manufacture and use of nearly 60 million doses of foot-and mouth vaccine, said Dr. Bruce Lawhorn, veterinarian with the Texas Cooperative Extension and the Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine department of large animal medicine and surgery.

"Another foot-and-mouth disease outbreak occurred in 1953 and it was not until Dec. 31, 1954, that restrictions on the importation of livestock from Mexico were again lifted," Lawhorn said.

As part of the cooperative program, inspectors like Faseler and veterinarians were dispatched to Mexico to help fight the disease. Every American inspector had a counterpart from Mexico. In addition, the vaccination teams usually included 10-15 cowboys and helpers to assist with livestock. In many places, the teams included soldiers for security reasons.

Faseler's job was to oversee the activities of the livestock inspectors in his area. Animals had to be vaccinated every 90 days, and the inspectors had to regularly check every cloven-hoofed animal in their sector for the disease.

When he served in the program between 1949-1951, Faseler, then 23, was fresh out of military service in World War II and between his junior and senior years at Texas A&M.

“I was single, and it was pretty good money at the time,” Faseler said.

Once there, inspectors, veterinarians and soldiers traveled either by jeep, horse or mule. One of his most memorable moments was traveling to the end of jeep-passable roads to ride six days by mule to their final destination.

“You stayed wherever night found you. If you were in the mountains, you stayed in the village, usually in the municipal building, which was a pole barn-type of structure. It was very primitive, and you ate with the local people.” At other times, k-rations were dropped by plane to workers. “After the War, I said I would never eat another k-ration, but sometimes there, they tasted pretty good.”

Fifty-pound chunks of ice to keep vaccines cool were wrapped in sawdust and burlap and dropped from airplanes, along with mail and money to operate on. “It was the first (blocks of) ice many of the people in the mountains had seen,” Faseler said.

At one time, government workers were called “cow killers” in Mexico because of the initial slaughter of the animals, but Faseler said the teams generally were well-received. “The bigger ranchers understood what was going on, but some of the people in the smaller villages didn’t want their animals vaccinated,” he said.

There were misconceptions about the program, Faseler added. The women, who generally kept the families’ pigs, thought the vaccine would bring about infertility in the pigs. In addition, the women believed the vaccination would get into the milk of the families’ cows and make the women themselves infertile. “As a whole, (the reaction) was positive, though,” Faseler said.