Meeting Summary

Date
August 29, 2008

  TABLE TOP

New Mexico State University with the guidance of the Southwest Border Food Safety and Defense Center conducted a table top exercise on August 29, 2008, from 8:00 to 11:00 AM at the Safety Training Facility located in Academic Research Building C, room 110. The purpose of the exercise was to provide an opportunity for NMSU and local agencies to deal with a zoonotic disease involving employees, students and animals on campus.

The NMSU Communicable Disease Response plan is listed as the second bullet under "Communicable Disease Guide" at http://www.nmsu.edu/~safety/emergency.htm

PARTICIPANTS:
NMSU Central Administration Response Team (CART)
NMSU Communicable Disease Preparedness Committee
NMSU College of Agriculture and Home Economics Response Team
Dona Ana County/City of Las Cruces Office of Emergency Management
NM Department of Health
Department of Homeland Security Emergency Management
NM Livestock Board
Memorial Medical Center  Emergency Services 

POST TABLETOP MEETING NOTES

There were 69 attendees of the Agricultural Disease Outbreak tabletop exercise on August 29, 2008.

Action items from the exercise included;

a.       Engage College of Agriculture in planning for disease

b.      Dead animal surveillance

c.       Lou Bender, Fisheries, Wildlife and Conservation Ecology, offered to do spatial and temporal plotting of surveillance data acquired throughout the state.

d.      Feral cat program: foodstuffs placed throughout campus attract unintended carnivorous species that may pose a risk to campus animal population.  A risk assessment was suggested.

e.       Dissemination of planning from senior administration (CART) to departments was found to be going well. 

f.        In a pandemic crisis, academic operations will cease for the duration of a declared emergency or a crisis situation.

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