Foot‐and‐mouth disease in Europe

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Abstract
On February 21, 2001, the United Kingdom officially declared an outbreak of foot‐and‐mouth disease (FMD) in England. Since then, the disease has spread like a bush fire among farm animals—mainly sheep and cattle—reaching a total of 1461 confirmed outbreaks by April 20, and, in March, appeared in continental Europe with one confirmed outbreak in The Netherlands. To prevent further spread of FMD—so far, a hopeless effort—British officials have slaughtered and destroyed more than 2 million animals, such a massive undertaking that the British army had to be ordered to help. (Updated information can be found at the Office International des Epizooties: www.oie.int). This is the first major FMD epizootic in the UK since 1968, and it represents a monumental set‐back for the non‐vaccination policy that the EU implemented in 1991. Losses were initially estimated to be 6 billion Euros, but this is likely to be an underestimate. The FMD outbreak, added to the BSE crisis, must call into question whether the existing human and animal health policies in the EU are still adequate in the context of a highly competitive and a global economy. Foot‐and‐mouth disease virus (FMDV), a representative of the aphthovirus genus of the Picornaviridae family, causes the disease that is ravaging the UK. The term aphthovirus derives from the Greek ‘aphtha’, which refers to the vesicles found in the mouth and feet of affected animals. It was first identified in 1898 by Loeffler and Frosch (Bachrach, 1968). Earlier, Fracastorius described (in a book published in 1546), a disease of cattle, which occurred in Venice in 1514, and which, most likely, was FMD. The disease was endemic in Europe from the seventeenth until the nineteenth century, and became more frequent in the first half of the twentieth century, as a result of more intensive cattle breeding and …