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Having Just returned from England where the scourge of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) is more evident in newspapers and on "the telly" than it is upon the land, I can advise people not to cancel travel arrangements.  Unless they visit a farm, an unlikely event for most tourists in normal times, all is as charming as ever. The one major drawback for people who like to walk is that most of the traditional footpaths have been closed, a precautionary measure to help prevent spreading the disease organism from one area to another.  There are many quiet paved country lanes to explore on foot as well as by car, however, and the amount of traffic is greatly reduced.

I do not mean to make light of the epidemic, however. It has been
devastating for farmers and businesses that cater to tourists to say nothing of the more than two million animals who have been killed or are awaiting the slaughter teams.

The government adopted a "scorched earth" policy of slaughtering healthy as well as infected animals on neighboring farms as well as on the farm where the disease erupted. but also all those on adjacent farms, and often all those within a 3 to 5 mile radius of the infected farm. The magnitude of the killing has now caused the government to reverse its policy of killing healthy cows to prevent them from getting and passing on the disease.

This extreme measure to combat the disease backfired when it was found that animals were being killed faster than they could be burned or buried.  The army was belatedly called in to expedite carcass disposal.  The smoke from the funeral pyres has adversely affected the health of some nearby residents and there are worries of water contamination from the massive burial trenches. There was also concern that disease particles from the dead animals could be carried on the wind to infect new areas.

"Many (farmers) have plotted outbreaks (of the disease) in line with the
wind direction from one or other of the pyres" according to The Westmorland Gazette columnist Jeff Swift (April 6). An outbreak on the Isle of Wight in 1981 is thought to have blown across the English Channel from Normandy.  The present epidemic is theorized to have originated from illegally-imported East Asian meat, bits of which wound up in pig swill. The disease was detected at a slaughterhouse 250 miles away from the farm where the pigs are raised.

The disease is extremely contagious. Animals are infectious during the
2-14 day incubation period before symptoms appear in the form of
painful sores in the mouth which spread to the feet. Young animals
often die from it, but adults, especially sheep, recover. Cows are usually less productive of milk and meat for some time after their recovery,
however. For strictly business farmers, this makes being compensated more attractive than saving their animals,           while farmers who have carefully built up their herds and associate with their animals weep over their loss.

A milder form of the disease sometimes affects humans who work very
closely with infected animals, but only very rarely. Scientists agree that
there is no danger of humans contracting the disease from eating dairy
products or meat from infected animals.

So why not vaccinate against the disease? There are a number of reasons, the most important of which seems to be that tests don't distinguish between an infected animal and a vaccinated one, This automatically reduces a country's disease-free classification a notch, which means its products are less in demand in the international marketplace. There are seven strains of the disease and, as with any vaccine, it cannot be guaranteed to protect all the animals from the disease.

The government is now considering a plan to vaccinate all cows in the
vicinity of outbreaks to halt the spread of the disease. All vaccinated
animals would be killed after the disease is wiped out in order to regain
the highest classification for Britain's animal products. Farmers are
about equally divided nationwide over whether to vaccinate or not. In
general, the wealthier farmers and National Farmers Union oppose
vaccination and the smaller ones are in favor of it.  Cumbria News
polled farmers in Cumbria, the county hardest hit, and found that 80%
were in favor of vaccination,

Dr. Wendy Bundell, a histopathologist at Furness General Hospital,
Barrow, called for immediate emergency vaccination of all ungulates in
affected regions including sheep, not just cows, as the government
was considering. In an open letter to farmers published in The
Westmorland Gazette" (April 6) she explained that a new "sub-unit"
vaccine would allow vaccinated animals to be distinguished from
infected ones and that the whole country would regain complete
"disease free" status 12 months after the last documented case.

My personal assessment that extreme measures to eradicate the
disease prevent animals from developing some degree of immunity
was confirmed by comments from Kenya where the disease is present
but does not cause the wholesale destruction of animals and the
economy that has occurred in Britain.

Elders of the nomadic Masai tribe offered to travel to Britain and
demonstrate how they treat infected animals by rubbing their lesions
with cow urine collected from the whole herd. If that doesn't work,
they follow up with rock salt from the Rift Valley's Magadi Lake.
No Masai has ever caught the disease by drinking milk or eating
meat from infected animals, they say.

In a letter to The Economist (April 7),  Kenyan farmer H. Stutchbury
described how farms there and elsewhere have been handling the
disease for 50 years. When an infection occurs, the farm and those
surrounding it are quarantined until the disease subsides in a month
or two. The animals recover and life goes on as before. "We who
have farmed cattle as well as crops must despair of being ruled by
petty-minded civil servants who may well have never visited a farm,
let alone mucked out a stable," he wrote