WASHINGTON, D.C. — It has been nearly 50 years since North American farmers have had to deal with foot-and-mouth disease and if they’re showing some jitters over the growing worldwide outbreaks, it’s for good cause.
The highly contagious virus has been labeled one of the most dreaded of all animal diseases by the United States Department of Agriculture. It can weaken and disable entire herds, causing economic catastrophe for livestock producers and loss of export markets.
About the only good thing that can be said about foot-and-mouth is that affected cattle, swine and other cloven-hoofed animals can’t pass the disease along to humans.
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U.S. agriculture secretary Ann Veneman declared to Congress March 14 that she would “take every means to prevent its spread here” from Britain, France, South America and Persian Gulf states.
While foot-and-mouth disease is common throughout the world, recently infecting livestock in areas ranging from Taiwan to Kosovo, North America has been free of the disease since 1953, when Mexico suffered its last known outbreak.
The previous year, livestock in Saskatchewan contracted foot-and-mouth. Before the problem was eradicated, 1,343 cattle, 97 sheep, 293 swine and 2,372 poultry were destroyed and compensation paid to the owners, says the Canadian government.
But those numbers are dwarfed by outbreaks in the U.S. during the early 1900s.
There have been nine outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease in the history of the U.S., according to USDA. The last occurred in 1929, when 3,600 swine, cattle and goats had to be destroyed in California.
The disease was traced to garbage from ships returning from foot-and-mouth disease-infected countries.
The largest outbreak was in 1914. That is when foot-and-mouth spread rapidly from stockyards in Chicago and the eastern U.S. to more than 3,500 herds in 22 states and the District of Columbia. By the time the outbreak was controlled a year later, 77,000 cattle, 85,000 swine and 10,000 sheep were destroyed, the USDA estimated.
Two other large, unrelated outbreaks were recorded in California and Texas in 1924. That time, more than 100,000 animals in California and 23,000 in Texas were slaughtered.
American livestock operations have dramatically changed from the early 1900s when small family farms dominated agriculture.
Today, thousands of animals are often raised in a relatively small area, making it easier for any disease to spread rapidly.
“If the disease were to get into the United States, it would be devastating, not only to farmers, ranchers and the whole meat complex, but to consumers as well,” said Greg Frazier, a former trade and agriculture official in Bill Clinton’s administration.
Lyle Vogel, director of scientific activities for the American Veterinary Medical Association, said one problem in controlling foot-and-mouth disease is that there are many variations of the virus, just like human influenza.
As a result, “every year, you’ve got to change the vaccine based on the variant” that is anticipated.
The U.S. and Canada do not routinely vaccinate animals because the two countries have been free of the disease for so long, Vogel said.
But there is a vaccine bank available in case an outbreak occurs, he added.
Once the virus gets into a herd, it is too late for a vaccine. While the disease typically will not kill an adult animal, it can cripple the beast with painful sores on its feet and mouth, which slow growth and reduce milk production.
“If the aim is to eliminate the disease from a country, slaughter is the only real, feasible method” to prevent it from spreading, Vogel said.
That’s an outcome North America is hoping to avoid in the face of Europe’s outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease.
