Foot and Mouth Disease and other Exotic Diseases

David Harwood BVetMed, FRCVS asks if your goats and other livestock are still at risk?

I'm sure many readers of this publication still vividly remember the awful events of 2001, when the Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) virus entered our shores and spread so rapidly around the country. FMD was confirmed in livestock on a total of 2026 premises across Great Britain between 20 February and 30 September 2001, estimated to have cost the Uk economy around £8.5billion. There was also a smaller local (yet still alarming) outbreak in 2007. Although in the 2001 outbreak, infection was confirmed on these 2026 premises, in order to control the spread of infection many more animals had to be slaughtered with the final figure around six million (mainly sheep and cattle). As a government vet, I was heavily involved in both outbreaks initially working in the field visiting infected or at-risk farms looking for evidence of disease, I also spent time working in the World Reference FMD laboratory at Pirbright in Surrey and also in the national disease emergency control centre at Defra headquarters in London.

FMD IS TERMED AN EXOTIC DISEASE