Foot in Mouth Disease

Foot in Mouth Disease

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.
Washington State Department of Agriculture’s Mike Louisell talks cattle diseases and prevention. "The disease that most livestock industry people would come up with that’s most feared here or across the globe is foot and mouth disease. We have not had that incredibly debilitating disease in the US since 1929. But some of our foreign trading partners do occasionally have outbreaks so we have to be careful about that. Another disease is BSE which is sometimes called mad cow disease that Canada and the United States experienced back in 2003 – 2004. There was a long investigation where we did have to go through boxes of paperwork to trace where that cow had gone to and it caused a lot of concern. That was one of the prompting points for the United States Department of Agriculture and for states to beef up their ability to stop using a paper based system and moved to a computer system so that we can quickly track down animals that may be impacted or exposed and where are they? We need to contain and manage that situation. Any disease that causes concerns or fluctuations in the marketplace are diseases that we want to prevent and if there is an outbreak we want to quickly contain it. Having an adequate animal disease traceability program is one of the key tools we use.”

 

Food safety is one of the major challenges facing agriculture and this certainly helps.

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