Of pests and pestilences

ST. JOHN’S, Antigua - There was a time, before global warming and the advent of modern transportation systems, when strict controls of agricultural and animal products imported into Antigua & Barbuda were rigorously enforced. These efforts seemed to work in keeping our local plants and livestock free from invasive attack.
We have recollections where visitors, arriving by air from a neighbouring territory with an outbreak of mad cow disease, were obliged to sterilise their shoes by stepping on a disinfectant mat as they stepped off the airplane.
Such measures predate the vast network of air routes and the development of mass travel. There were requirements for certificates from the originating country as to the health of a particular specimen coming into the islands. These now seem ineffectual.