MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
Foot-and-Mouth Disease Came from Asia
Suspicion has switched from Argentina to Asia as the original source of Britain's foot- and- mouth outbreak, causing wide-scale slaughter of farm animals.
While concern has been expressed over continued imports of meat from infected countries including Argentina, experts now say the latest foot-and-mouth virus originated in Northern India in 1990.
An analysis published in the magazine Veterinary Record by researchers from the United Kingdom Pirbright Laboratory of the Institute for Animal Health says it spread to Saudi Arabia probably through the trade in live sheep and goats, then to other Middle East countries, Southern Africa and into Turkey, Greece and Bulgaria.
The report says this Pan-Asia strain of the virus is more virulent and persistent than other strains it has displaced.
The same strain caused outbreaks in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Israel and Lebanon. It has also appeared in Nepal, Taiwan, China, and several other Asian countries. Japan has suffered its first outbreak for nearly 100 years, since 1908, and Korea its first since 1934.
The United States has remained free of the disease since 1929. It is endemic in much of Latin America, but not this particular pan-Asian strain.
There has been some objection to continued imports of meat from four countries, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Namibia, all said to have had recent outbreaks. But these imports are not illegal. Responsibility for approving the countries from which it is safe to import meat lies with the European Union.
Extra meat is being imported to the United Kingdom to make up for scarcer British supplies as more and more pigs, sheep and cattle are slaughtered and their carcasses burned and buried, and tight restrictions curb the movement of livestock.
Harold Briley
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