Wildlife and Conservation Review of 2001
FMD is an acute, feverish, viral condition of domestic and wild cloven-hoofed mammals. It can
cause high mortality rates in young stock, but older animals generally recover, although with reduced
meat quality and milk production. There are many different approaches to management of the
disease. Many countries simply live with it, accepting the losses, and in the future, with increasing
globalisation of agriculture, we may have to do the same. But in the short term, it is not seen as an
option, as acceptance of FMD would lead to a loss of major export markets to FMD-free countries.
For the same reason, vaccination was not adopted as an approach, because of the difficulty in
distinguishing immunised animals cytologically from those which had been exposed to the live
virus. During the outbreak, there were many voices raised in favour of vaccination, at least of ring-
vaccination around the points of infection, and it may be that in any future epidemic it may be an
acceptable technique, given that methods are being developed to discriminate between vaccinated
and exposed animals. But until such methods arc reliable and widely available, any immunised
animals would have to be slaughtered to maintain FMD-free status.
A third approach, and the one favoured here, is to contain the spread of the virus by slaughtering
infected herds and, as a precaution, those in the vicinity; and to control potential vectors of the
disease so far as possible. As the virus is airborne, the wind is one vector which cannot be controlled,
but it is believed that it could spread on clothing, vehicles, dogs etc. Thus we saw widespread
disinfection of footwear and tyres around infected sites, as well as the premises themselves, and the
effective closure of large tracts of the countryside to public access, along with stringent stock
movement restrictions.
Although a similar containment approach has been adopted in response to other recent FMD
outbreaks in Britain, there is little scientific interest to underpin certain elements of the suite of
measures, such as blanket access restriction. It is actually very hard to draw parallels with past
epidemics, however, as they have run very different courses. The last big outbreak in 1967 was
fairly well contained to the west Midlands, and that in 1981 was restricted to Jersey and the Isle of
Wight, presumably due to their natural geographical isolation. Perhaps the key differences between
1967 and 2001 which resulted in the much greater spread in this year are changes in agricultural
stock management practices. In particular, stock are now transported much longer distances, both
in trade and to slaughter, given the much reduced number of local abattoirs. It is easy to see how
large-scale movement during the incubation stage, together with unlicensed, illegal stock movements
which are believed to have taken place, could be to blame.
So what were the direct effects of the 2001 outbreak? There were 2030 confirmed cases, resulting
in the slaughter of nearly 6 million animals, the majority of which were not from infected flocks,
but part, of the precautionary cull, or killed for welfare reasons following movement restrictions.
This figure represents one-eighth of all farm animals in the country, comprising some 4.86 million
sheep, 763,787 cattle, about 42,000 pigs, 7429 goats, and 300 others, such as llamas and buffalo.
9677 farms in 30 counties were affected and an estimated 7,800 farmers and farm workers lost
their jobs: it cost the economy around £3 billion and has been classed as the world's worst outbreak
of FMD. While Britain bore the brunt, infections were reported in the Netherlands and France,
again probably through stock movements before the epidemic was discovered.
There were of course other casualties, apart from the animals and farmers. The rural tourism industry,
with so many footpaths, nature reserves and other attractions closed, was very badly hit, from the
acknowledged best bits, like National Parks, to relatively ordinary countryside, like Essex. It soon
produced the surprising statistic to many that tourism makes a bigger contribution to the national
economy that agriculture: we really do live in 'theme-park' Britain! Presumably not unrelated to
Essex Naturalist (New Series) 19 (2002)
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