(Editor’s note: Ed Wengryn serves as New Jersey’s Secretary of Agriculture.)
This month, I’m advancing our ongoing series examining the various divisions within the New Jersey Department of Agriculture.
For those fascinated by science or curious about New Jersey’s diverse animal population and the efforts required to maintain their wellbeing, the Division of Animal Health (DAH) offers compelling work.
DAH ranks as one of our most scientifically-focused divisions, alongside the Division of Plant Industry. Similar to how its plant-focused counterpart protects vegetation, DAH focuses on stopping diseases that could establish themselves among New Jersey’s animals and cause widespread damage to livestock operations.
The division prioritizes preventing invasive species and diseases from taking hold, since these threats lacking natural predators or defenses in New Jersey can rapidly dominate entire ecosystems.
DAH employs some of the state’s leading veterinarians, led by New Jersey State Veterinarian Dr. Amar Patil, who serves as the division’s director.
The division also operates a nationally recognized laboratory that performs various livestock health screenings for animals entering New Jersey, conducts testing to prevent poultry diseases from infiltrating the state’s approximately 40 live bird markets, and carries out necropsies on request for animals ranging from chickens to a zoo giraffe and dolphins that appeared on Jersey Shore beaches several years ago.
Another segment of this division handles animal cruelty complaints.
This work primarily involves our humane-law chief and a team of Certified Livestock Inspectors (CLIs). This aspect often proves most challenging for the public to comprehend.
Within our state, only approximately 1.5 percent of residents participate in farming. Among that small group, even fewer operate farms involving animals.
Consequently, people driving past livestock farms typically lack specific knowledge about whether an animal they observe is experiencing abuse, neglect, illness while receiving veterinary care, or has no health issues whatsoever – knowledge that varies by species and season.
This situation results in individuals without livestock expertise filing humane-law complaints against animal owners.
When law enforcement responds, similar unfamiliarity with livestock diseases can lead to sick animals being removed from properties, creating potential for those animals to transmit contagious diseases to other animals.
In cases involving “zoonotic” diseases (which can cross species), this could even result in disease transmission to humans.
This concern explains why the division collaborates through the Animal Emergency Working Group at its annual training symposium to enhance Humane Law Enforcement Officers’ understanding of proper biosecurity protocols when responding to farms or other livestock properties.
The most important precaution involves always contacting DAH when complaints involve livestock, ensuring a CLI expert can visit the location and provide context regarding any animals’ “condition.”
New Jersey has long worked to ensure that misunderstandings about animal husbandry don’t unfairly affect farmers operating within animal-cruelty laws.
In 2009, the Department, guided by DAH and assisted by veterinary and livestock experts, established The Humane Standards for the Care and Keeping of Livestock.
This comprehensive regulation, the nation’s first of its kind, establishes minimum standards farmers must meet to remain in a “safe harbor” from animal-cruelty complaints stemming from livestock health misunderstandings.
Ultimately, the division’s primary mission involves protecting the state’s agriculture industry from economically devastating diseases.
Over the past five years, the main disease requiring DAH attention has been Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI, or “bird flu”).
The current “HPAI outbreak” across the United States started in early 2022.
It has primarily affected very large poultry operations in the Midwest, West, and South, including cases where the disease jumped (zoonotic) from poultry to animals like dairy cows (impacting the milk industry) and even farm cats (which consumed raw milk from infected cows before farmers knew about the infection).
A significant component of New Jersey’s surveillance involves continuous monitoring of approximately 40 “live bird markets.”
These markets, typically located in urban areas, import live birds from producers in states like Pennsylvania and Midwest and southern states, allowing customers to select live birds from current inventory.
Market staff then process and prepare the birds for customers to take home.
New Jersey lacks many commercial-level chicken-raising facilities, so most birds entering live bird markets come from other states, some of which have experienced far more birds requiring depopulation due to HPAI infection on their originating farms.
New Jersey has experienced several thousand birds needing depopulation for HPAI during this outbreak, while other states have seen millions of birds destroyed to stop HPAI spread.
New Jersey, through DAH, has also conducted milk testing from dairy cows to ensure HPAI doesn’t infiltrate their milk as occurred in several other states.
To date, no evidence of the disease entering New Jersey dairy products has been documented.
However, HPAI isn’t the only livestock disease DAH monitors.
The division was activated when Mad Cow Disease spread through European herds in the early 2000s, remains constantly aware of potential Foot and Mouth Disease in livestock possibly reaching our shores, must stay vigilant against horse diseases like Equine Herpes entering the state from horses arriving for various horse racing and show events held here, and in the latest development, tracks how far north into Mexico the New World Screwworm is progressing, as this parasitic fly disease that deposits eggs in livestock tissue can devastate the livestock industry.
Since much of DAH’s work involves natural phenomena that can create severe emergencies, it’s logical that they’re among the NJDA divisions most deeply involved in preparing for and planning responses to other disaster types.
DAH staff coordinate the County Animal Response Teams (CARTs) that many counties maintain to prepare volunteers for staffing animal shelters located near human evacuation shelters during events like hurricanes.
This “co-located” evacuation shelter approach developed following Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana and other Gulf states in 2005.
Many residents refused to evacuate their homes and escape danger because they were told they couldn’t bring their pets.
Some died after refusing to leave their homes. This recognition that “pets ARE family members” created the CART system in New Jersey, with the state and counties now planning for those co-located pet shelters.
Additionally, DAH collaborates with volunteers and agricultural groups to ensure livestock also remain safe when severe weather strikes the state.
Some counties make their fairgrounds or other properties available where stalls and other animal accommodations already exist.
While large numbers of large livestock are difficult to relocate during storms, sometimes “sheltering in place” in barns isn’t feasibly safe.
State facilities like the Horse Park of New Jersey can also serve as temporary livestock shelters.
One of DAH’s newest responsibilities involves how the division and its laboratories will support the brand-new veterinary school at Rowan University.
Until now, New Jersey’s lack of a veterinary school has meant students leaving the state for education and typically remaining in those areas to practice rather than returning to New Jersey.
DAH is collaborating with that school’s leadership to design a “practicum” using the division’s facilities at the Public Health, Environmental, and Agriculture Laboratories headquarters located on the State Police compound in West Trenton, providing hands-on experience for those veterinary students.
Certainly, volumes could be written about the extensive programs and animal disease-prevention efforts of the Division of Animal Health, but I hope this column has provided at least a foundation for understanding what this part of the NJDA accomplishes.
