A-Men

At the Rancho Mil Condones in the state of Mexico, a sweating vaquero roped a bawling steer out of a herd and tethered it to a fence post. While a U.S. livestock inspector examined the beast's mouth, a Mexican technician shaved a spot on its hide, injected 2 cc of vaccine and clipped a tag to its ear. The two men were agents of the Mexico-U.S. commission for the eradication of foot-and-mouth disease, known in Spanish as aftosa. They were winding up the last series of injections in a three-year campaign to rid Mexico of the disease.

The joint commission was formed in 1947, a few months after aftosa had spread from infected Brahman bulls, imported from Brazil, over 16 states of central and southern Mexico. At first the commission's chief weapon was the rifle sanitaria: cattle in the infected zones were mass-slaughtered.

But even though they were paid for the destroyed cattle, angry Mexican farmers began ambushing the control parties and shooting them down (23 were murdered in line of duty). Under the direction of the commission's cochairmen, Major General Harry H. Johnson of Texas, and Oscar Flores, subsecretary in Mexico's Department of Agriculture, A-men relaxed their trigger fingers and switched to a policy of strict quarantine and vaccination.

In spite of the warnings of fearful U.S. cattlemen, who wanted all cattle in the infected area destroyed, the new policy paid off. In 19 months mixed Mexican-American teams, criss-crossing the country in cream-colored trucks, vaccinated the 17 million cattle in the danger zone four times each (immunization lasts only for about four months). No outbreak of aftosa has been discovered since December 1949. This week the last sleek steer received his last injection.

The next few months will tell whether the vaccination campaign has fully achieved its purpose. Quarantine, inspection and disinfection will continue. If in two years there is no further outbreak of aftosa, there is a good chance that the U.S. ban on importation of Mexican beef --which once totaled half a million head of livestock a year--will be lifted.

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