OCR Text |
Show Foot and Mouth Disease Fear that the Mexican foot and mouth disease virus may invade United States herds is prompting livestock owners to keep a sharp eye for signs of this infection in their animals. But there are obstacles ob-stacles to accurate detection of the disease, because several other infections in-fections closely resemble it. Examples Ex-amples are vesicular exanthema, which has been reported from time to time in California swine herds; foot rot of cattle and sheep; and ulcerative stomatitis of cattle, also called contagious exanthema or X disease, which has been reported from several states. Veterinarians have investigated numerous "suspected" "sus-pected" cases in various states during recent months, but thus far none of these has proved to be foot and mouth disease. Livestock health officials say that the time spent in investigating these suspicious suspi-cious cases is time well spent, because be-cause the vrus might leap the border bor-der at any time. As long as one infected in-fected animal remains in Mexico, there will be constant danger that the disease will spread to the United Unit-ed States. |