A Modern Plague

On his stock farm in the rolling country of Shropshire in western England, Farmer Richard Ellis noticed one day that two of his pigs were limping. He called in the local veterinarian, and received a dreaded diagnosis. His pigs had somehow become infected with one of the most contagious and toll-taking of all animal maladies: foot-and-mouth disease. That was in October, and the authorities immediately slaughtered all of Ellis' livestock, buried them and took other preventive measures to confine the disease to one area. But the malady, which spreads with the silence and virulence of the bubonic plague of the Middle Ages, marched inexorably across the English countryside. Last week, despite frantic efforts to halt it, the worst animal epidemic in British history raged through a 17,640-sq.-mi. area from the county of Gloucester in the south to Westmorland in the north.

No Crossing Roads. A massive slaughter campaign to halt the spread of the disease, which affects almost all hooved animals, has turned Britain's prize stock farms into scenes of tragic carnage. Squads of soldiers, equipped with captive-bolt pistols and high-power rifles, have been killing cattle in infected areas as fast as they can shoot. More than 280,000 cows, bulls, sheep and pigs have already been slaughtered. Tractors pull the piles of carcasses to massive graves, and the pyres of burning animals nightly throw their smoke into the Shropshire sky. Soldiers and airmen have sprayed thousands of gallons of disinfectant on farms not yet hit by the plague, and at the border between infected and "clean" areas police prevent animals from crossing roads and carefully spray the tires of all passing vehicles in hopes of containing the epidemic. Horse racing and livestock shows have been canceled throughout the country. Many Britons will have a treeless Christmas because the government has closed down four major tree-producing areas.

Ireland is so fearful that the disease may spread to its shores that travelers from Britain are required to walk through clouds of pungent disinfectant at Irish airports, and the Irish government placed ads in British papers appealing to Irish workers in Britain not to come home for the holidays. France, Germany, Belgium and Holland have banned meat imports from the United Kingdom. Australia has ruled that emigrants from Britain can enter the country only by ship, not by air, in order to diminish the likelihood of the virus' living long enough to infect Australian herds with the disease.

International Illness. British stock raisers suspect that the culprit virus came into Britain in meat from Argentina that was eaten as garbage by pigs on farms near that of Farmer Ellis. Because the incubation period is as long as ten days, a sick animal may infect thousands of others before showing signs of illness--thus the need for preventive slaughters.

The U.S., which wiped out foot-and-mouth disease in the 1920s by a massive extermination program, has stayed clean since then by prohibiting imports of meat and livestock from all diseased areas. Only 14 other countries, including Australia, New Zealand, Canada and a few islands, are also free of the infection. The Soviet Union is now also undergoing a plague of foot-and-mouth disease, which Eastern Europeans fear may spread to their flocks. Some other countries, notably France and Germany, have kept the disease within bearable limits by vaccination.

The British refuse to vaccinate their herds on the grounds that the vaccine is not 100% effective and in rare instances causes mild cases of the disease. They feel that regular vaccination would scare off U.S. and Commonwealth cattle buyers, who spend millions annually to buy pedigreed British stock. The current epidemic makes the argument seem outdated. The government already owes British farmers $35 million--only a fraction of the real value--for the slaughtered herds.

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