This page has been quite active in recent years. Really there should be no need for me to have a page about Foot and Mouth Disease and I hoped I would never have to use it again. Foot and Mouth Disease is still a problem in Africa, South America, Asia and parts of Southern Europe.

The most recent outbreak has been reported in Egypt, started March 2012. 100,000 cases are thought to have occurred so far with up to 10% of affected animals dying of the disease. Many African countries have a casual attitude to diseases of their livestock. In the past they have relied upon a erratic vaccination programme to get them through. This is a new strain of the virus, SAT2 and current vaccines give no cross protection against it. There are serious concerns about the food supply in Egypt without thought for the welfare of the animals concerned.

It is estimated that there are 6.3 million cows and buffalo and 7.5 million sheep in the country. Some farmers have reported a drop in milk production of 80% and news agency reports are that 5,000 cattle have died in the lower Nile district of the country. There are reports of dead animals dragged through the streets and buried in shallow graves. Until there is a vaccine against this strain of the virus there will be little to stop the infection spreading to neighboring countries.

The virus is still stored and used for research purposes in this country, no doubt there will be further escapes if this situation continues, but hopefully that will not be for a very long time in the future when there are a different generation of scientists working on the problem.

There are new rapid on farm testing methods that have been developed to identify all of the common serotypes which should be of great benefit as early cases can readily be confused with other conditions.

This is the disease that is responsible for the movement restrictions that we have to observe on all farms. There are no signs that these will be relaxed in the foreseeable future

It is still important to clean and disinfect, make sure there is disinfectant and cleaning materials at your farm entrance so that visitors can disinfect their footware before entering and when they leave.

Last time we were able to publish first details of the out break in Surrey twenty minutes after the first text message alert. I may not be quite so quick next time but you can be sure that if the is anything going on news of it will appear here. Please feel free to ring the Surgery 01743 791246 if you have any questions about Foot and Mouth Disease.