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Foot-and-Mouth NOT Foot-in-Mouth Disease

© Neal Rolfe Chamberlain

The British farmers have had a lot of bad news lately. Mad Cow Disease resulted in huge losses over the past decade. Now a new epidemic is hitting the farmers of the UK called Foot-and-Mouth Disease (FMD). No, it is not Foot-in-Mouth Disease. My wife accuses me of this malady oftentimes. The cure for Foot-in-Mouth disease is to not talk as much or to think before speaking. Unfortunately, there is no cure for FMD.

FMD is due to a virus that belongs to the picornavirus family of viruses. It can infect all types of cloven hooved animals (cattle, pigs, sheep, and goats). The disease is highly contagious and may spread over great distances with movement of infected or contaminated animals, products, objects, and people. Pigs are usually infected by eating infected food. Cattle are usually infected by inhaling the virus. Unfortunately, large amounts of virus are excreted by infected animals before clinical signs are seen, and winds can spread the virus over long distances. As a result one infected member of a herd can infect the whole herd while still appearing healthy.

These apparantly healthy FMD infected animals will then develop symptoms that include: increased saliva production, depression, loss of appetite and lameness caused by the presence of painful vesicles (fluid-filled blisters) in the skin of the lips, tongue, gums, nostrils, spaces between the toes and teats. Fever and decreased milk production usually occur before the appearance of the vesicles. The vesicles break, leaving large raw areas which may become infected by bacteria. In pigs, sheep and goats the clinical signs are similar but milder. Lameness is the most noticable sign.

This viral infection is more likely to kill young animals with up to 75% of the young dying. Deaths in adults due to this infection can result in losses of up to 5%. Cattle and sheep that have recovered from the infection can still give the infection to uninfected animals for several months (sheep= 1-2 months; cattle= 18-24 months).

Because this virus can infect many different animals, has the ability to infect most of the animals it contacts, and due to the fact that the virus is shed before any symptoms occur, FMD is one of the most feared of the reportable animal diseases. This outbreak of FMD could cost British farmers millions of dollars in lost production, exports, and loss of animals during eradication of the disease. To eliminate these FMD epidemics any animals with the disease or near infected animals must be killed.

People can be infected through skin wounds or the inside of the mouth by handling diseased animals, working with the virus in the laboratory,

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