The National Milk Producers Federation on Monday endorsed an Agriculture Department draft framework for the United States and Canada to address an outbreak of a serious foreign animal contagion, such as foot-and-mouth disease.

The plan, drafted by USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, “calls for the United States and Canada to recognize each other’s efforts to control an outbreak, while regionalizing how the outbreak is handled, so as to allow continued trade with disease-free areas of the country,” National Milk said in a news release announcing it had sent a letter of comment to APHIS.

The framework calls for the two countries to cooperate in establishing quarantine areas that would be the focus of disease eradication efforts in an outbreak while trade could resume or continue in areas considered free of disease, National Milk said.

National Milk also said the proposal should be a template for similar plans involving other important dairy export markets including Mexico, China, Philippines, Indonesia, South Korea and Japan.

The dairy group added that it remains opposed to an APHIS proposal for the importation of fresh beef from certain parts of Brazil which have a history of foot and mouth disease because it considers the proposal “flawed.”

▪ National Milk Producers Federation comment on U.S.-Canada Foreign Animal Diseases Zoning Arrangement Draft Framework