In 2012, the Division of Animal Health developed a five year strategic plan designed to improve our ability to respond to animal disease emergencies.  There are five goals that make up the strategy: Stakeholder Engagement, Business Continuity, Information Management, Response Readiness, Traceability, and Communications.  Under each goal there are objectives and action steps identified for each year of the strategy.  The plan was vetted with over 80 stakeholders from 20 different organizations.  Ninety percent of the actions identified for year one (2012) were completed and many of the year two actions have been started.  Each year, meetings with stakeholders will be conducted to continue the planning and to re-focus efforts based on exercises and actual events.  You can read the overaching strategy HERE.

Preparing for animal health emergencies requires a continuous cycle of planning, training and exercise activities.  The KDA Emergency Management Coordinator works with a variety of stakeholder and partner agencies to develop plans and standard operating guides that describe the roles and responsbilities for responding to animal disease emergencies.  When the plans are developed and finalized, training on the plans is provided to personnel having roles and responsibilities related to the plans.  Exercises are conducted to test our ability to carry out the plans and to ensure the plans are workable.

Kansas has been in leader is preparing for animal health emergencies. Preparedness activities have been on-going for many years and we continue to refine the plans by constant review, adapting to new technology, and the continous cycle of training and exercising. 

Planners in Kansas partnered with the Multi-State Partnership for Security in Agriculture to conduct a bi-state exercise with Oklahoma in 2009.  Responders in Kansas and Oklahoma spent over a year refining plans and meeting with partners to ensure a coordinated response.  There were many lessons learned from the exercise and the KDA has been working with border-states and Kansas state agencies since the exercise to correct deficiences identified.  There is a functional animal disease exercise in October 2013 that will involve several counties, all Kansas border-states and the Kansas State University.

The Kansas Department of Agriculture, Division of Animal Health partnered with USDA to conduct workshops and exercises in zoological parks across the state of Kansas.  We traveled to eight zoos to conduct workshops and followed up with a tabletop exercise with all zoos (KAZOO) in April of 2012. We continue to conduct tabletop exercises in each zoo with the same participants that attended the workshops in 2012.  Exercise participants include zoo workers, law enforcement officials, emergency management coordinators, county extension agents, public health representatives, state and federal animal health officials, and other interested agencies and organizations. 

This project was well received and resulted in many benefits for the zoos, animal health officials and community partners.  Plans have been revised and updated and new partnerships have been formed.  You can read the after action report from the KAZOO exercise HERE.

Responding to food contamination incidents is the responsbility of the Division of Food Safety and Lodging. A description of the actions that occur in response to a food contamination event can be found in the Kansas Food and Agriculture Incident Annex. 

The Department has sponsored several Department of Homeland Security approved training courses focused on Food Defense. Staff also participate in exercises and training activities sponsored by USDA and FDA.

In 2014 the Department will sponsor a recovery exercise in the Kansas City area utilizing a food defense scenario.