Information Related to "Foot-and-Mouth Disease: A Virus with Global Reach"

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A Serious problem has spread from Britain to Europe and South America with potential worldwide effects.
What lessons can we learn from this costly epidemic?

by John Ross Schroeder

A medieval horror story seems to be in the making. The foot-and-mouth epidemic that began in Britain has so far spread to the Irish Republic, France, the Netherlands and even Argentina.

The United States is on red alert as Department of Agriculture inspectors check passengers from France and Britain who might inadvertently carry the virus on their shoes or in other ways. Meat imports from Europe are banned from American shores.

The lesson

Time magazine accurately assessed the problem and inscribed a warning for future years. "The worldwide foot-and-mouth is a sobering demonstration of how quickly a single isolated infection can hop from farm to farm and continent to continent" (March 26, Atlantic edition).

Foot-and-mouth disease, also called hoof-and-mouth disease, is a contagious fever-inducing disorder especially of cloven-footed animals marked by blisters in the mouth, about the hooves and on the udder and teats.

Six days after a veterinarian discovered an infected sow in an Essex slaughterhouse, the countryside in Britain virtually came to standstill. "I had always hoped that I would never see the disease," said the vet, "but I was sure it was foot-and-mouth."

According to a feature article in The Independent on Sunday: "The type O strain of foot-and-mouth disease involved in the new British outbreak is the most virulent mutation of the virus yet known. First identified in India in 1990, it has penetrated countries untouched by the disease for decades. Last year it appeared in Japan, South Africa, South Korea, Mongolia and Russia. Its arrival in the UK belies the belief that foot-and-mouth had been eradicated in Western Europe" (Feb. 25).

When it did arrive in Britain and before the first visible symptoms appeared, "the virus was spreading to farms all across the country as animals were shipped to slaughterhouses hundreds of miles away" (Time).

Read the full article at www.gnmagazine.org/issues/gn34/footmouth.htm