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May 18, 2001

'Operation Roving
Sands' a bad idea

By Donald Patman
TFB President

Now let me get this straight. The U.S. Army wants to bring 25,000 troops composed of American soldiers and European allies, and hundreds of pieces of equipment to Texas, for a military exercise. The equipment will be offloaded at the Port of Beaumont and tracked across several hundred miles of Texas soil to Ft. Bliss, near El Paso. What could they be thinking?

The exercise has one of those catchy military titles. It's called "Operation Roving Sands, 2001." For Texas farmers and ranchers, the scariest thing about Operation Roving Sands is not the guns and bombs.

We are very worried that an unwelcome hitchhiker could stow away with the troops or the equipment. That potential visitor is foot-and-mouth disease.

Europe is still grappling with the disease and it's nothing short of a catastrophe. This devastating viral infection has claimed thousands of head of European livestock. As the name implies, it causes painful and severe blistering on the hooves and in the mouths of the animals. It spreads like a grass fire in a drought. Infected herds must be destroyed.

It is one of the most contagious animal diseases. It infects animals with cloven hooves, like swine, sheep, goats, deer and cattle. It can easily be introduced here by just one mistake, one careless action. Are those military maneuvers that important? I do not believe they are. That's why I wrote to the Secretaries of Defense and Agriculture, and copied President Bush, requesting that the maneuvers be postponed until the European outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease is under control. At press time, we still did not have an answer.

We are told that the troops to be involved in Operation Roving Sands are based primarily in Great Britain, The Netherlands and Germany. Great Britain and The Netherlands have suffered outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease. In addition to the troops, hundreds of pieces of motorized equipment are scheduled to take part in the exercise. This equipment is to be shipped to the Port of Beaumont and then moved by railroad from the Gulf Coast to Fort Bliss in El Paso.

We have also been promised that the troops and equipment will be subjected to "decontamination and sanitizing" procedures. In my view, you just can't be too safe with foot and mouth. Let the troops and especially the equipment stay in Europe for a while longer.

The timing is very bad. It would only take one of those European soldiers who has been near infected animals or one tire on a single vehicle to bring it here. Under no circumstances should those troops and equipment come to Texas until Europe has controlled the outbreak. We are asking our government to protect Texas agriculture and put a stop to Operation Roving Sands.

If the government turns a deaf ear to our pleas, then we'll just have to pray that foot-and-mouth does not find its way aboard a Humvee.

I hope our fears are groundless, but I believe Texas' $80 billion agricultural industry will be at great and terrible risk. If great numbers of Texas cattle, sheep, goats and hogs should be infected, the markets for feedstuffs like grain, soybeans and cottonseed will be impacted. It's anyone's guess to what degree our wild herds of deer and other hoofed game will be affected, but it would be negative.

This is a military training exercise that can wait. The risk is simply too great.