Foot And Mouth Essay Research Paper Foot

Foot And Mouth Essay, Research Paper

Foot and mouth disease (FMD) is a severe, highly communicable viral disease of cattle, sheep, and swine. It also will affect goats, deer, and other cloven-hoofed animals. This disease is characterized by fever and blister-like lesions on the tongue and lips in the mouth, on the udders, and between the claws. Many affected animals usually recover, but the disease leaves them debilitated. It causes severe losses in the production of milk and meat. This disease spreads widely and rapidly and it carries with it grave economic and physical consequences. Because of these reasons, many livestock owners dread this disease.

This disease is caused by a virus. This virus has the ability to remain viable in carcasses, in animal by-products, in water, in such materials as straw and bedding and even in the open pastures. There are seven different types and many subtypes of FMD virus. The animal s can become infected by one or more than one virus types at the same type. Recovered animals can suffer repeated attacks of the disease because immunity to one type does not protect against other types.

FMD is spread by animals, people, and materials that bring the virus into physical contact with susceptible animals. Some of the +causes of an outbreak are:

v People wear contaminated clothes of footwear or use contaminated equipment

v Contaminated animals are introduced to susceptible herds

v Contaminated facilities are used to hold susceptible animals

v Contaminated vehicles are used to transport animals

v Raw or improperly cooked garbage containing infected meat or animals products is fed to animals

v Animals are exposed to areas that may have been contaminated with the virus

v Animals drink contaminated water

v Cow is inseminated by semen from an infected bull

There has been no documented case of human becoming infected with the disease; however, they can carry it on heir clothes and hair, even in their lungs and nostrils, the virus, which kills cloven-hoofed animals such as cattle, deer, pigs, and sheep.

Symptoms of the FMD virus are vesicle or blisters on the mouth or on the feel and resulting slobbering or lameness are the best-known sign or the disease. Often the blisters are not seen until they rupture. Some of the other signs that is significant for this disease that have been noticed during outbreaks:

v Temperature rises and falls in about 48 hours

v Rupture of vesicles discharge either clear or cloudy fluid and leave raw, eroded areas surrounding by ragged fragments of loose tissue

v Sticky, foamy, stringy saliva is produced

v Consumption of feed is reduced because of painful tongue and mouth lesions

v Lameness with reluctance to move is often observed

v Abortions often occur

v Milk flow of infected cow drops abruptly

v Conception rates may be low

Meat animals do not normally regain lost weight for many months. Recovered cows seldom produce milk at their former rates. It can lead to myocarditis and death most often in newborn animals.

Foot and mouth disease are commonly get confused with several similar but less harmful domestic. Some of these are vesicular stomatitis, bluetongue, bovine viral diarrhea, and foot rot in cattle and vesicular exanthema of swine and swine vesicular disease in pigs. Laboratory test are used to determine whether the disease causing them is FMD.

This disease is widespread. FMD is one of the most difficult to contain because it occurs in various parts of the world. Animals and animal by-products from areas known to be infected are prohibited entry into the country. Animals in this country are very susceptibility to FMD because animals in this area had not developed immunity to it.

The last reported outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease was in 1981 in England. The most significant outbreak prior to this one was in 1967 when 400,000 animals were slaughtered and the disease took six months to get under control. It has occurred again after twenty years due to the Type O virus of foot-and-mouth, which surfaced in 60 countries in 1999. South America, South Africa and Asia all had outbreaks and through trade with these countries, the infected meat has been distributed worldwide. Once the disease is present, it spreads very quickly within 100 miles of the infection other cases can occur (Brown 2).

Slaughter is the best method of controlling the disease. Foot-and-mouth disease can survive in the respiratory tract of infected animals and is easily transmitted to other livestock. If the disease is allowed to remain in the livestock, higher numbers will become increased and heighten the chances of a cycle of re-infection. Animals that are infected are no longer productive farm animals as some may be lame, milk and meat yields falls and conception rates fall as the increase of abortion is observed.

It is difficult to fully determine the effects of the slaughtering as new cases are still being reported. Studies are revealing that the movement of these animals was much broader than expected, therefore infecting more animals that earlier anticipated. These animals were generally moved by the farmers in efforts to conserve their land.

Animals are being killed to prevent the disease from sp

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