Talk:Foot and mouth disease
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Because FMD rarely infects humans but spreads rapidly among animals, it is a much greater threat to the agriculture industry than to human health. Farmers around the world can lose billions of dollars a year during a foot-and-mouth epidemic, when large numbers of animals are destroyed and revenues from milk and meat production go down.
Todo
In many countries, the loss is not so much due to the disease itself. The disease has been stricking here and there for a very long time, and until a few decennies, movements of animals was very limited, so the disease couldnot spread really. When an epidemic occured, farmers just stopped moving animals for a while from one village to another for reproductive and sales issues.
The disease itself is spreading very quickly but usually does not lead to the death of the animal. The biggest issue is that cattle produced in one country is sometimes sold in another. European cattle is sold to the US for example, but the US is requiring the animals to be free from the disease and NOT vaccinated. Consequently, some european prefer to save the market by avoiding vaccination, but take the risk of epidemics. To avoid an epidemic spreading, the only option left, apart from vaccination, is isolation and preventive slaughtering. The money loss comes from the slaughtering due to market pressure, not so much from the disease itself.
Need to put that properly someday. user:anthere
- I was quite appalled. I read the ministry's own website at the time, and if you were thorough you pieced together the admission it was all about the money, not health, not even human health. It was like torching a factory with everyone inside because some worker caught the sniffles. 142.177.24.141 17:50, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)
We've got a redirect from 'Foo-bar-baz disease' to 'Foo bar baz disease', yet 'Foo-bar-baz' is used throughout the article. Which one are we going with as official? -- Rissa 21:32, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)