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The Beagle Brigade

   When returning to the United States from a trip abroad, passengers will have their baggage inspected at U.S. airports by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Beagle Brigade, a team of beagles and their human partners. Working with their human partners, the beagles search for agricultural products carrying diseases and pests which are likely to infect American agriculture.

   An orange or apple, for example, might harbor a Mediterranean fruit fly. Ham could carry a disease such as cholera. These and other pests could do harm to farmers’ crops. “Once we introduce something that is not part of the environment, there may not be any controls for it in the environment,” notes USDA’s Lisa Davis at the National Dog Detector Training Center in Orlando, Florida. “The best thing for us to do is to prevent it from coming across the border and spreading.”

    When a beagle smells food smells, it signals its partner by sitting there. The human partners then investigate. When the dog is right--which happens 90 percent of the time—it gets something to eat.

  “The dog is not out there working,” explains Davis. “It’s out there playing. It’s a game to the dog.” The partners give the beagles plenty of food and loving. They make sure they get first-class medical attention, too. When the dogs finally retire after 9 to 11 years, the USDA finds caring homes for them. It’s a dog’s life indeed!

   Their people partners work and study somewhat harder. As specialized quarantine(检疫) officers, most hold degrees in the biological sciences or related sciences.

   How well does the Beagle Brigade do its job? “On the average,” notes Davis, “each year our 54 teams prevent around 75,000, restricted(限制的) items.” Since even one infected item could cause widespread destruction, that’s a great result for America’s agricultural environment.