There may also be some confusion due to the fact that there is a disease in humans with a similar common name and similar symptoms - a type of coxsackie virus infection known as hand, foot, and mouth disease. It causes painful sores in the infected person’s mouth and on the soles of the feet and palms of the hands (and sometimes on their <ahem> bottoms). However, coxsackie is not the same virus as the one that causes hoof and mouth/foot and mouth disease in hooved mammals. HF&M is also typically a mild disease. Usually little kids get it, and although they may be miserable, pain killers, lots of fluids and lots of TLC are typically all that’s needed to nurse them back to health. A far cry from what happens to hooved critters infected with hoof and mouth disease.
Cocksackie can also cause other kinds of infections, and it’s very much possible to develop immunity to it without even knowing you’re infected.
The whole foot & mouth situation is starting to remind me of the “Mr. Neutron” skit from Monty Python. For those who’ve never seen it, it was one of the few Monty Python shows where the entire half-hour was devoted to a single theme. Mr. Neutron was an alien superbeing deemed so dangerous that the government would (always too late) hysterically carpet-bomb every location where he’d been sighted.
The funny thing is that I began reading Joyce’s Ulysses a couple months ago. One of the many sub-themes woven through the book is hoof and mouth disease threatening Irish and British cattle. As I was reading, the parallel with Mad Cow Disease suggested itself to me. I though of hoof and mouth disease as one of those old-fashioned livestock problems that was now obsolete.
Then, just about the time I finished Ulysses, concidentally the biggest hoof and mouth disease scare in many years hits the news! Weird. It makes me worry what will happen next: I’m now reading Finnegans Wake…
Humans can contract and get mildly ill from this disease. That is not the concern so much as it is extraordinarily contageous among livestock and spreads rapidly.
I am not a farmer/animal husbandry expert/economist . . . so I’m confused.
If it’s not fatal, why are they killing the animals to control the spread rather than quarantining them? I realize it’s more likely to spread if you have a live breeding ground, but keeping them isolated can’t be much more difficult than the mass slaughtering and disposing of bodies happening now. It’d take time (from what casdave said) to fatten the animals back up again, but surely that’s still cheaper than raising a new one from scratch?
But of course the isolation has proven fantastically difficult, judging from the fact that we’ve failed to do it so far, despite the measures taken. What further measures would prove easier than slaughter and disposal?
…and also those animals with the disease do suffer considerably. I saw images a few nights ago of cows incapable of moving because of their hoof blisters and also, quite literally, streaming at the mouth from the bursting blisters – it was very disconcerting. I have no idea if all cases result in this level of pain.
With mouth blisters on this scale, one imagines they couldn’t feed – not that they could graze, anyway (because of the foot blisters).
Another problem relating to vaccination is that there are, at least, 70 strains of F&M. Although the authorities do know what they’re dealing with, it also mutates relatively easily.
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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 reason for not eating the meat from infected animals is that leftover food from schools and restaurants often finds it’s way back into animal feed (in the form of pig swill). Usually this is boiled prior to consumption to kill off any nasties, however the latest theory on the source of the current outbreak suggests that a farmer failed to take this precaution.
I had no idea it was that bad. Here’s a time when that dichotomy smilie would be useful–I feel so sorry for those poor animals and their suffering, yet I’m unlikely to stop eating meat.