View articles by date | ON SCIENCE Home Page | View articles by
topic  Foot-and-Mouth Disease is more about money than public
health  A grisly story came out of Britain last week. A
slaughterman in Cumbria, northern England was moving the
decomposing carcass of a cow killed because it was infected with
hoof-and-mouth disease, when the carcass exploded, sending fluid
into the man’s mouth. Yuch!  Stark images of dead cows come to
mind, thousands of carcasses burning atop huge pyres in British
fields. A staggering 3,352 farms have been reported infected,
and 1.1 million livestock destroyed. Over a six week period in
March and April alone, some 500,000 British cows have been
burned, the smoke blackening the countryside.  Tests this past
week revealed that the lucky man was not in fact infected with
this dread disease.  Dread disease? Not really. The symptoms of
a full-blown human infection resemble those of mild flu. Nor are
the symptoms much more serious in an adult cow. Although highly
contagious, foot-and-mout