Talk:Foot-and-mouth disease

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Foot-and-mouth disease was a good article, but it was removed from the list as it no longer met the good article criteria at the time. There are suggestions below for improving the article. If you can improve it, please do; it may then be renominated.
Review: No date specified. To provide a date use: {{DelistedGA|insert date in any format here}}.

Because FMD rarely infects humans but spreads rapidly among animals, it is a much greater threat to the agriculture industry than to human health. Farmers around the world can lose billions of dollars a year during a foot-and-mouth epidemic, when large numbers of animals are destroyed and revenues from milk and meat production go down.

Todo

In many countries, the loss is not so much due to the disease itself. The disease has been stricking here and there for a very long time, and until a few decennies, movements of animals was very limited, so the disease couldnot spread really. When an epidemic occured, farmers just stopped moving animals for a while from one village to another for reproductive and sales issues.

The disease itself is spreading very quickly but usually does not lead to the death of the animal. The biggest issue is that cattle produced in one country is sometimes sold in another. European cattle is sold to the US for example, but the US is requiring the animals to be free from the disease and NOT vaccinated. Consequently, some european prefer to save the market by avoiding vaccination, but take the risk of epidemics. To avoid an epidemic spreading, the only option left, apart from vaccination, is isolation and preventive slaughtering. The money loss comes from the slaughtering due to market pressure, not so much from the disease itself.

Need to put that properly someday. user:anthere

I was quite appalled. I read the ministry's own website at the time, and if you were thorough you pieced together the admission it was all about the money, not health, not even human health. It was like torching a factory with everyone inside because some worker caught the sniffles. 142.177.24.141 17:50, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

We've got a redirect from 'Foo-bar-baz disease' to 'Foo bar baz disease', yet 'Foo-bar-baz' is used throughout the article. Which one are we going with as official? -- Rissa 21:32, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I made some minor edits - added to some stuff I know about vaccination and serotypes. I also took out the line about the vaccine developed in 1981 because it was dated (quite dated).

Please change redirect

This article should be at Foot-and-mouth disease with this entry redirecting there. -- postglock 13:34, 2 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Change/redirects done - worked out how to do it -- postglock 02:32, 4 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Delisted from GA

No refereces appear in article, so I'm delisting it. AndyZ 21:05, 7 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Stolen bio-weapon???

At what point was it confirmed that the 2001 outbreak was the result of a stolen bio-weapon? This is pure speculation on behalf of the Express. I have reworded it as such.

Removed the sentence -- it is non-encyclopedic tabloid newspaper speculation. "The Sunday Express has speculated that the foot and mouth virus was released deliberately out of Porton Down bio-weapons facility and could have possibly been the source of the outbreak two months later [1]." --mervyn 13:30, 6 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

History of Disease

This article would benefit from having a section about the history of the disease. That is, its history as known to humanity. When was it first identified? How did it start or stop within natural populations of animals before vaccines, etc. The current information in the article is very "present-day" based, with little background beyond the discovery/proving that FMD was a virus in 1897. The disease was around long before that, affecting agriculture, but the article has no real information about that history. QwertyUSA 21:20, 6 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Animals being slaughtered: Real need fror clarification in the article

It is with dismay I learned (thanks to the contributing Wikipedian) that FMD was not a letahl disease and that most animals were recovering from it. Yet Millions have been slaughtered in the uk for fear of sprteading + there seems to be sopme damage limitation we could apply with cheap vaccination. The reason for slaughtering is commercial as some exporting countries will not accept vaccined cattle. This whole point is not made lear enough in the "Ethical" section. Will somebody please make this clear? If this doesn;t happen within a couple of weeks I will.

--81.170.116.178 12:45, 8 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The article says that the animals being raised for milk production could recover from the disease and live "normal lives," but anyone familiar with the lives of dairy cows would confirm that their lives are anything but normal. Perhaps this wording could be revised to be a little more objective. 151.191.175.230 18:37, 8 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Normal - normal for a dairy cow, don't see the problem (its better than the word used a couple of days ago which said fulfilled!). If you are suggesting that dairy cows in the UK typically lead cruel and unusual factory farming lives, then I don't think that view is supported. Your average British cow wanders round a field, wanders up to the milking parlour and gets milked and wanders off again. Sits down, stands up, stares at passing walker, destroys ozone layer with flatulance. Eventually gets too old, gets slaughtered. The slaughtered herd in this case were for beef, would not live passed 30 months due to the BSE rules. Spenny 18:53, 8 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Globalize tag

Gnevin has put a {{Globalize/UK}} tag on the article. Apart from references to the UK outbreaks there is nothing that strikes me in the article as being UK only. The UK outbreaks appear to be the only notable and significant outbreaks of foot and mouth, so it would be appropriate that they are mentioned. Does anyone else feel the article shows an inappropriate imbalance toward the UK? SilkTork 13:52, 15 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think the outbreak section is unbalanced, though I would have said that the outbreaks are to a certain extent globally notable: they are definitely notable in the EU due to trade restrictions. My understanding is that F&M is endemic in some areas, therefore it is unbalanced to highlight UK issues, but again the response is notable. It is hard to tell from a UK perspective if any other countries have had problems to the extent of the UK, and if not what is it about the UK (size, style of agriculture etc.) that makes these events esp. 1967 and 2001, so notable? So probably could be fixed, but not sure it is worth a tag - you could tag most of Wikipedia. Spenny 15:15, 15 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

PS Can't google anything up to help Spenny 15:21, 15 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

International des Epizooties (the WHO equivalent for non-human animals) monitors world wide outbreaks. [2] I'm too tired to do any anything with the link right now. The info on it may help to expanded the article beyond the UK.--Aspro 21:18, 15 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There is recent information (2005 till present). There is a link here that gives a good overview: [3]. However, this is primary source stuff, and aside from the confirmation that there are incidents worldwide, probably need a better general discussion on the worldwide spread of the disease. Thinks, DEFRA may have something. Spenny 21:57, 15 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Now the hard work of finding such a source has been done, all the article is waiting for now, is for Gnevin to come back 'globalize' it to his satisfaction. As nobody else it taking any notice of the tag I might as well take it off, since it is an eyesore, which servers no purpose, other than to clutter up WP. --Aspro 13:20, 14 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Re adding , it not for you to remove it because you feel its an eyesore i dont have enough knowledge to globalize this article but it still need to be done Gnevin 15:48, 5 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]