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Robb Russell
Member
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Posted: Mon Jun 2nd, 2008 02:29 pm |
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Hog put-and-take proposal's slippery
By Mike Leggett
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Sunday, June 01, 2008
I feel, if you'll pardon the expression, a little like the pig caught in the gate. Squealing for help, but not too loudly lest I attract the wrong kind.
The Texas Animal Health Commission — in the name and under the banner of disease control — is proposing a set of rules for feral hog transportation and control that will allow trappers to move boars to state-approved, escape-proof preserves for hunting.
Yes, it's put-and-take hunting, and true Texans oppose that, even for wild hogs. Yes, there's no such thing as a truly "hog-proof" fence, and some escaped pigs are inevitable. And yes, if feral hogs are disease carriers, then we should probably look past moving them and only at removing them.
But in this case, at least, the Animal Health Commission is acknowledging there's an underground industry already operating that moves feral hogs from one place to another in violation of state laws. They're just saying that a dead hog is a dead hog, however he dies, and that they'd rather have some control and possibly encourage trappers to remove even more of them if they have a legal and ultimately lethal way of disposing of them.
"We wouldn't begin to say that we need more wild hogs in this state," said veterinarian Dee Ellis, who serves on the commission. Ellis has been the liaison between his fellow commissioners, commission staff and pork producers and trappers who have been working to develop the set of rules about to go out for public comment. "We just think this way they could be worth more money (to a trapper) and still be going to a 'terminal' location. That could encourage more trapping and help reduce the number in the wild."
Any boars or barrows (castrated boars) caught by trappers currently must be taken to an approved processing location where they must be killed, Ellis said. Those rules are in place to prevent the spread of pseudorabies and swine brucellosis, which are rampant among feral hogs.
Some 10 percent of wild hogs are infected with brucellosis and 20 percent have pseudorabies, which is actually a viral infection that can be carried by older pigs that have survived a bout of the disease. If there are two million feral hogs in Texas, and that's the estimate, there could be as many as 400,000 infected animals. "It's a public health hazard," Ellis said. In the past two years, there have been 26 confirmed cases of swine brucellosis in cattle in Texas.
But a boar at a processing facility may bring only 50 cents per pound, Ellis said, compared with $300 to $400 if he's sold to a hunting preserve. The result has been "an underground industry where hogs were being moved illegally to these locations," he said.
The preserves would be locations previously approved for hunting by Texas Parks and Wildlife, and they would be subsequently inspected for egress control by Animal Health Commission field staff, Ellis said.
The animals released for hunting would have to be tagged so that should one escape and be captured or killed in another location, biologists would be able to track it to its source. Trappers and preserve operators will be required to maintain paperwork on each animal for five years after its release, Ellis said.
Ellis noted that Animal Health Commission staff and trappers and landowners still are trying to settle on an acceptable tagging system that will work but not be too obtrusive.
Texas produces more than one million hogs per year through commercial operations, which do not have disease problems, Ellis said. Cattle operations and small, homestyle pig operations are threatened by contact with infected feral hogs, and the new rules, part of a concept approved by the 80th Legislature, are designed to protect them and to reduce the feral hog population in the state.
Noble gestures all, but we're still left with the touchy issue of put-and-take hunting, even for feral hogs. People do hunt hogs in Texas. They hunt them everywhere they exist, in every way possible and they enjoy it. Nobody wants to threaten that opportunity or the financial gains of landowners who allow it.
That said, all it takes is one ugly video showing up on the Internet for things to turn really nasty.
Remember the kid and his Alabama hog last year? It turned out to be a relocated domestic pig, and its killing turned into a public relations disaster for everybody, even though killing it was absolutely legal.
The proposed rules will be available for public comment from June 6 to July 6, Ellis said. The Animal Health Commission is scheduled to hear public testimony and vote on the changes July 29.
Meanwhile, I wait, in the gate, caught between the logical arguments about the threat of disease and the growing underground hog relocations, and the feeling that this is still put-and-take hunting and maybe — even though it's happening already — it's a step down a dark road.
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Robb Russell
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