Is it hoof and mouth disease
or foot and mouth disease?
What effect if any does it have on humans?
What effect if any does it have on animals with cloven hooves?
Does it have an impact on animals without hooves, such as dogs and pigs?
How is it spread?
I was watching the CBS morning show today, and they had a doctor talking about just this thing. First of all, either “hoof and mouth” or “foot and mouth” is correct, according to her. Basically, what the air-borne virus does is create sores on the hooves and in the mouths of the animals that contract it. The sores make it painful for the animals to eat, and so they don’t. According to this story, humans can NOT contract this, as the virus is killed by the heat from cooking the meat. The reason that the US has banned any British meat is to decrease the risk of the virus infecting our livestock. Not because of danger to humans, but to livestock. There was no mention of any NON-cloven hoofed animals contracting it.
…least thats what we call it here in Britain 
.
Non-cloven hooved animals will spread it about, thats why there are restrictions on infected farms for both humans and cars. It gets spread by carriers (any animal including birds can carry it, they also think that it can be spread by the wind but I’m not sure about that one.
Apparently there is a similar disease for humans but I dont think that we can get it from the animal form.
Is it hoof and mouth disease
or foot and mouth disease?
Foot and mouth is the UK English name, hoof and mouth the American English.
What effect if any does it have on humans?
None
**What effect if any does it have on animals with cloven hooves? **
Blisters on feet and mouth. Apparently much worse for cattle and pigs than sheep. Long term reduction productivity. Not normaly fatal.
Does it have an impact on animals without hooves, such as dogs and pigs?
Don’t pigs have hooves? I don’t think it affects cats, dogs or horses.
How is it spread?
Through direct contact, on farmers boots and tractor tyres, possibly airbourne. Some suspicion that foxes may also carry it from farm to farm (difficult to train then to run over disinfectant pads :))
Sorry, that 
should have been a
One thing it can’t be called is foot in mouth disease, although I coulda sworn I’ve heard it called that on a couple of occasions…
Thanks for giving out this information… all of the other information I have heard is “I think that” or “I heard that” and so it is nice to get some difinitive answers. I didn’t think it was a huge problem till I went to get my passport for my England/Germany visit last week (I am leaving in 14 days whoohoo) and the passport guy said I should reconsider my trip because of it. (It would have to be REALLY dangerous for my to reconsider my trip right now as I have been planning it with my family for the last year and am really looking forward to it.) I don’t think even someone telling me a hijacker was going to be on the plane would stop me. but it is nice to know I won’t be facing imminent death. Now all I have to do is to make sure I have two REALLY clean pair of socks for my two departures from England (to Germany and home to US) so that when I have to take my shoes off to get scrubbed I don’t have to look too silly.
I keep seeing pictures of backhoes loading mountains of slaughtered animals into dump trucks for disposal. If this disease has no effect on humans, why aren’t the slaughtered cows/pigs/whatever still viable sources of beef jerky & bacon?
http://hoshi.cic.sfu.ca/epix/topics/animal/f_m_d.htm:
Why does the industry suffer so much from this disease if the meat of the infected animals poses no threat to humans?
Attrayant, the fear is that it would be easy to spread into the livestock population here, and that would be a long-term problem.
Maybe it’s all an insidious plot by PETA? Sacrifice many thousands of animals for the greater good of turning Europeans into vegetarians! That’s right. Spread the disease, destroy the industry, make people afraid to eat meat. Where’s Oliver Stone when you need him? 
Until this outbreak, I never knew how easily foot-and-mouth disease could spread. I heard on NPR that the virus could be transmitted if someone had contaminated dirt under their fingernails! A terrorist organization could have a field day ruining the animal-raising capacity/economy of a target nation.
One thing I didn’t catch (I had to pay attention to traffic) was, why is the vaccine considered a “last ditch” effort to control the disease?
When the outbreak first happened, alot of sites had details and one of the factoids was that hedgehogs and rats are also effected by the virus, and last I checked, neither have hooves.
Interestingly, fox hunting was in the news recently. Something about banning it. Maybe it’s a fox hunter conspiracy?
Irishman was responding to Attrayant’s query:
*I keep seeing pictures of backhoes loading mountains of slaughtered animals into dump trucks for disposal. If this disease has no effect on humans, why aren’t the slaughtered cows/pigs/whatever still viable sources of beef jerky & bacon? *
That still begs the question of why the infected animals aren’t slaughtered in the usual way and shipped to market. Are the steaks or hamburger a danger of infecting other animals?
Another question - we see lots of pictures on TV of burning carcasses. If the disease is airborn, doesn’t this release a lot of it into the air? Not everything that “goes up in smoke” has been burned (small particles carried aloft by the fire-created wind).
I don’t understand why if “foot and mouth” is English and “hoof and mouth” is American, why does our American media call it “foot and mouth”. Makes me want to turn off my tellie.
The reason that vaccination has not been used up until now is that prescence of the incubating virus is detected by discovering antibodies to it in infected beasts. It would not be possible to differentiate between those animals that had already been infected before vaccination and those which were antibody immune.
Since it takes time for the vaccination to work there is the potential for the animal to be infective before the vaccine has taken full effect.
The protection offered by vaccine is apparently only short term.
From what I gather this disease is rarely fatal, the vast majority of animals get over it, but they lose weight and it costs money in time and feed to put it back.
This is an economic disease more than anything else.
One reason it has spread so fast is that the livestock industry has changed beyond recognition since the last outbreak in 1967.
Animals are moved from one location to another,in growing stages, from just weened, to young adulthood, then to be sired, then for birthing, then for settling and weening their own young, then again for specialist weight gain, and then maybe again for slaughter where the distance travelled may well involve overnight stops in holding fields.
Each stage involves movement, and then there are the normal trading transactions such as selling excess stock, or selling just when the price is best.
An animal can be moved many times in a short period, the only good thing is that that these movements are well documented, this was implemented as a result of the last outbreak, and it in those days circumstances when movements were fewer it would have been easier to control.
There have been otubreaks since 1967 but the signs were noticed very early on and the spread was controlled, in this case it appears that on the main site of infection the affected animals were not disclosed by the owner but rather by others to whom the animals had been sold and later showed signs of infection.
When inspectors arrived on the main site it seems that the signs by then were very obvious yet no report had been filed, it was only a delay of around a week but that was enough.
I have seen some reports that say that foot & mouth is the equivalent of say measles, or mumps in terms of animal health, very infectious but not usually that harmful to the animal.
As a matter of fact they are. The theory that the source of current outbreak might have been a infected beef or ham sandwich brought from abroad may be a media myth but it cannot be completely discounted. The concensus is that the source is likely to have been some form of imported meat product, in other words, an already dead animal being shipped to market. Using the meat for human consumption is just about the dumbest policy which could be adopted. The issue is not whether humans can catch the disease; it is rather that the transportation of the carcasses risks spreading the virus to other parts of the country. As it is, concerns are being expressed about the distances the carcasses are being transported to the designated disposal sites.
Concerns have also been expressed about the policy of burning the carcasses before burial for precisely the reasons PlanMan suggests.
The question of which would have been the optimum policy - slaughter or vaccination - is a close call. Slaughter involves large-scale disruption of the sort currently being witnessed. The arguments in its favour are that it has a high chance of stamping out the disease for a generation and the costs are mainly short-term ones. Vaccination avoids the massive periodic disruptions but may nevertheless be more expensive over the longer term. It also risks a permanent export ban on all meat products by Britain’s major trading partners. The similar slaughter policy adopted in 1967 is generally agreed to have been cost-effective. Whether the same will be true of the current outbreak remains to be seen. Farming practices are now very different and the economy of rural England has been transformed. Now is probably not the time for a cool, dispassionate assessment of which approach is better.
DJScherr, there is almost certainly no need to alter your travel plans. You might even discover that there are advantages in visiting Britain at the present time. The only disadvantages you are likely to find are that a number of tourist attractions in rural areas will remain closed for the time being and walking close to farms in areas which have been affected won’t make you popular with the locals. Enjoy your trip.
I guess the “why don’t we just eat them” question has already been answered, but just in case there is any semblance of doubt still in people’s minds, let me ask you this:
What slaughterhouse would you use? Where would you process the meat?
There isn’t an abbetoir on every farm - the diseased animals would have to be transported if they are to be eaten. This would be disasterous.
Saying that, the solution we seem to have come up with, which is “slaughter the animals and then leave them lying about for weeks for crows to come and peck, thus picking up the disease on their feet to pass on to other areas of the country” seems also less than ideal.
On another issue - to say that ‘just because the disease wouldn’t kill the animal it shouldn’t be a problem’ is rather idealistic. The disease leaves animals lame, sickly, unwilling to eat and in pain. Basically in the kind of state that would encourage a vet to put the animal down. One cannot simply compare it to a mild human virus - the aftermath is nasty even if not fatal.
Furthermore we still do have a small deer population in this country. The last thing we want is for foot ‘n’ mouth to cause havoc there.
As regards the vaccination: I believe that in order to trade animals with certain countries a country must have a certificate certifying that the country is free of foot and mouth. This cannot be obtained if animals are vaccinated - the disease could still be present on the hoof and there are the problems casdave has already identified.
pan
For a while I thought that humans could not get hoof and mouth disease. Then I heard a news report that dozens of people had died from the “human form” of this disease. I doubt the accuracy of those reports, but am pretty confused.
Is there any authoritative information about what the effect of this disease is on humans?
Sounds like it’s getting confused with BSE (mad cow disease)/CJD(human form of BSE). This is also in the news at present. Partly because the measures for controlling BSE have been widely regarded as helping to facilitate the spread of F&M, and partly since a reporting investigating the cause of a cluster of CJD deaths in a particular area was recently released.
The measures taken to prevent BSE entering the food chain were to enforce very strict standards of slaughter to ensure that potentially infective material (brains, spinal cord amongst others) doesn’t not contaminate other bits of the carcass. The cost of implementing these standards and the cost of required official inspections necaessary to get and retain the licence to slaughter, has put many small abatoirs out of business. The result is that animals travel long distances to slaughter, so the potential to infect is increased.
The cluster of CJD deaths centred around an English village. Public health officials have concluded that it is due to the then (1980s) butchery practices, which involved traditional slaughter on the premises. This was unusual even twenty years ago.
The official view is that new infection is unlikely due the stict controls (although there have been concerns about imported meat from Germany and Italy containing banned material), however, the incubation period for CJD is oong, so many more new cases could come to light. Not all experts agree with this view, notably the guy who first made the link (can’t remember his name) who dismissed this report during a recent radio interview.
Here’s a link to MAFF which has everything you could ever want to know about FMD. Additionally there are some pics of the symptoms in cattle which may be TMI, they’re pretty gross.
One of the recommendations of the report on the last outbreak was that cattle should be buried and not burnt. For some reason, possibly due to regulations with regard to groundwater, this advice was ignored.
Several groups have suggested that the real reason for the rapid spread of this disease may well have been due to the illegal movement of sheep to inflate flocks in various parts of the country in order to take full advantage of the common agricultural policy quotas. Naturally, these animal movements will not have been, and I suspect never will be, known to the government.
Of course natuarlly, this is all the fault of the EU.