With 978 herds of cows infected with the virus in the past year, the mass dismissals of federal employees followed by equally brutal attempts to rehire them raise fears of disruptions in the monitoring and management of the crisis…‘ Blocking information at the level of the US Department of Agriculture would be dramatic because it would raise questions about the American strategy, which is a major poultry and dairy producing country,’ warns Gilles Salvat, deputy director general of the National Agency for Food, Environmental and Labour Health Safety, responsible in France for the epidemiological surveillance of animal diseases. Meanwhile, in the US, an investigation is being conducted by the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division.
