Foot and Mouth Outbreak

[Steve Baker]

Talking of the vaccine that is available for the cloven hooved animals, i have heard that it costs around 10p per animal.. (i might be wrong) also i have heard that the animals with FMD recover and the reason that they have to be slaughtered is for an export liecence the country has to be 100% FMD free. Again i may be wrong BUT it does make you think of what is going on. Also all the arable land has been closed off to humans, but deer can get this disease and spread it to. At this point in history when hunting public opinion is at an all time low the deer population is at an all time high, and deer have a large range they can move between. So we may not be spreading the disease at all.....

 

[Fergal Scully]

The foot and mouth vaccine is like most vaccines a weakened form of the disease itself. If you use the foot and mouth vaccine in your country you cannot consider your herd disease free therefore you lose your export license. This is why the vaccine has not been used in Ireland (I don't know about Britain ) because we depend on our export market.

 

[Carp Angler]

Yet the disease has been endemic in Argentina for so may years that the animals are nearly immune to it.
They seem to have no problems exporting their corned beef to the rest of the world.
The whole farming industry stinks of hypocrisy, double standards, underhand deals and cost cutting.

 

[Steve Baker]

How long did the last outbreak last for?

 

[GrahamM]

If I remember correctly fishing was banned for two months. But this present outbreak is worse than the last one.

 

[Steve Baker]

If fishing is banned for 2 months again how can the local tackle shops survive?

 

[GrahamM]

In one respect the tackle dealers and us have been lucky. This outbreak has come just before the rivers were due to close anyway, and at a time of year when the least number of anglers are fishing.

It would have been a different matter if it had come in mid-June.

 

[Carp Angler]

I'm too young to remember the last outbreak
but I read somewhere that it was confined to just 2 areas in the country.
I believe one was around the north midlands, Shrewsbury area I believe and the other was somewhere in the south west.
I'm not sure if this is true, but the current outbreak is massive in comparison.

 

[Steve Baker]

There has been a sign erected about 1/2 mile from where i live in stafford.

Foot and mouth infected area.

I will notbe going anywhere near farm land or the countryside for a while.

 

[Tony Miles]

I had just started the Coventry Specimen Group in 1967 when the last outbreak occurred. If I remember correctly, fishing was banned on most waters for about three months, from November until February. It was not confined to just two areas, the problems were felt nationwide. To put it into perspective, so far around 45,000 farm animals have been slaughtered in the present outbreak. In 1967, the figure was half a million!.

 

[Ron Clay]

If I remember correctly FMD is also endemic to South Africa. In fact we had outbreaks of the desease regularly especially amongst wild antelope species in the game reserves and game farms. There was very little restriction on movements of people. (Hard to do that in Africa) and no-one ever died by eating meat from a FMD infected animal. In fact most of the cattle in Southern Africa are quite immune to FMD. There was never any BSE in the cattle or for that matter salmonella in the eggs. The main reason I suppose is that cattle in countries like SA are ranched - free range.
Not only that but the beef, lamb and pork tastes a hell of a lot better than it does here.