Foot and mouth disease (FMD) is a severe, highly communicable viral disease of cattle, sheep, and swine. It also will affect goats, deer, and other cloven-hoofed animals. This disease is characterized by fever and blister-like lesions on the tongue and lips in the mouth, on the udders, and between the claws. Many affected animals usually recover, but the disease leaves them debilitated. It causes severe losses in the production of milk and meat. This disease spreads widely and rapidly and it carries with it grave economic and physical consequences. Because of these reasons, many livestock owners dread this disease.
This disease is caused by a virus. This virus has the ability to remain viable in carcasses, in animal by-products, in water, in such materials as straw and bedding and even in the open pastures. There are seven different types and many subtypes of FMD virus. The animal s can become infected by one or more than one virus types at the same type. Recovered animals can suffer repeated attacks of the disease because immunity to one type does not protect against other types.
FMD is spread by animals, people, and materials that bring the virus into physical contact with susceptible animals. Some of the +causes of an outbreak are:
v People wear contaminated clothes of footwear or use contaminated equipment
v Contaminated animals are introduced to susceptible herds
v Contaminated facilities are used to hold susceptible animals
v Contaminated vehicles are used to transport animals
v Raw or improperly cooked garbage containing infected meat or animals products is fed to animals
v Animals are exposed to areas that may have been contaminated with the virus
v Cow is inseminated by semen from an infected bull
There has been no documented case of human becoming infected with the disease; however, they can carry it on heir clothes and hair, even in their lungs and nostrils, the virus, which kills cloven-hoo...