By MIKE CORN

mcorn@dailynews.net

Today, emergency preparedness officials in Topeka are practicing how they might respond to the threat of a foreign animal disease.

But State Livestock Commissioner George Teagarden is keeping a close eye on the goings-on in Nebraska, where at least 42 cattle herds are under quarantine because bovine tuberculosis -- a respiratory disease -- has been discovered in at least two animals in one of those herds.

Nebraska's quarantine affects nearly 15,000 animals. Cattle from some of those herds were shipped to Colorado and South Dakota prior to the quarantine. Animals shipped to South Dakota were slaughtered so the threat has been diminished.

In an unrelated instance, Texas has confirmed the presence of bovine TB in a dairy herd.

Bovine TB is a bacterial disease, spread by nose-to-nose contact between animals. It can spread to some other animals, such as deer. It can spread to humans, but the incidence of that is rare.

Teagarden said it's nothing to panic about, and there's no known connection between the Nebraska animals and Kansas.

"It's not a firestorm," he said. "It seems big in Nebraska."

But already, Teagarden has received a call from a livestock sale barn along the northern border of Kansas. That's because the infected herd has been split into much smaller groups, grazing on grass in several Nebraska counties. As a result, cattle in Gage County, where Beatrice is located, have been quarantined.

Although the disease has been found only in one Nebraska cow herd, the quarantine was expanded to include animals that might have come in contact with them, such as through fence-to-fence contact.

Testing is a slow process, Teagarden said, but it's also a slow-moving disease.

"It's not something that needs to get done today," he said, as the animals will remain quarantined and their movement monitored and restricted without specific testing.

Most likely, he said, the animals won't be allowed to move into other areas, other than for slaughter. The slaughtered animals can then be examined.

"Tracking of the disease in this case is the most difficult part," Teagarden said.

There were 500 to 600 cows in the initial herd.

"So they're spread out quite a bit," he said. "I think they found all the original herd, and they're all quarantined."

While bovine TB can be spread relatively easy, it has a long incubation period. Symptoms of the disease are slow to show.

"It's not something to get very nervous about," Teagarden said. "We don't have to run out and say the sky is falling. It's a slow-moving disease."

Nebraska and Texas aren't the only states dealing with bovine TB. At least two herds in California have struggled with the disease. New Mexico has had the disease in at least two counties. Michigan and Minnesota are attempting to eradicate the disease in cattle and free-ranging deer.