Hoof and Mouth -- Why so scary?

Factual Questions
1

So pretty much all of Europe looks destined for a vegetarian diet because of Hoof and Mouth. Once an animal in a herd gets the disease, they pretty much slaughter the whole bunch. But…it’s apparently a debilitating but not fatal disease. So I have two questions:

a. Why is it such a feared disease?
b. Given the economic incentives to do so, why has no one come up with a vaccine for Hoof and Mouth?

2

I dunno (sorry) but my conspiracy-driven mum reckons that rather too many things are going wrong with Britain’s cattle for it all to be just a coincidence. BSE… Black helicopters on whisper mode… hidden government bunkers under Downing Street… Englebert Humperdinck…

3

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=63591

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=63403

4

Ack - hit ‘submit’ instead of ‘preview’, sorry…

Anywho, the answer to your first question is contained in the above links.

In answer to your 2nd question: there IS a vaccination; it’s just not 100%. Someone smart is going to have to tell you why that is :wink:

5

The vaccination problem with hoof and mouth disease is apparently that there are several different viruses that cause it, and each one has a lot of subtypes, and there isn’t a vaccine that covers all of them. Also, when you go to test an animal (or some meat, presumably) to see if it’s carrying the disease, it will test positive if it’s been vaccinated, and it isn’t easy to tell the difference. (Which I assume means they’re testing for antibodies instead of the actual virus.) So some people resist vaccinating their livestock because they’re afraid they won’t be able to sell the meat to countries that test for the virus.

6

I was wrong here to some extent. Part of the reason vaccines for foot-and-mouth disease aren’t used more is that they only prevent an animal from getting sick, but they don’t prevent infection. A vaccinated animal that becomes infected can become a silent carrier, spreading the virus for years without showing signs of being infected.

7

It is estimated by Goverment sources in my country (New Zealand) that if Foot and Mouth became established the standard of living of the average New Zealander would drop by 25%. Have a we think about that for a while. Think how many people would loose their jobs. I find that number shit scary.

8

To put the outbreak in perspective :- according to the London TIMES last week only 2% of farm animals and 0.5% of farms have been affected by the outbreak of foot and mouth disease in the United Kingdom.So,contary to some news reports in the USA,we are not living in a wasteland.Life goes on nearly as normal.

9

I saw some papers and magazines claiming refusal by governments to vaccinate their animals was due to the fact that if you vaccinate your animals you can’t turn round and ban imports from countries that have infected animals as your animals won’t get it from them if they are vaccinated.

10

For the reasons Bob Scene has given, the Government and farmers have been reluctant to vaccinate because it would effectively put an end to meat exports from the UK to other EU countries and the USA. Neither the EU nor the US will admit animals which they cannot test for foot-and-mouth, and it is impossible to tell the difference between a vaccinated animal and an infected animal.

Put simply, the health consequences of foot-and-mouth are trivial; the economic consequences are serious.

This site from the BBC has a great deal of information about the UK outbreak, and there is also a good site provided by the Ministry for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF), which has this to say about vaccination: