Livestock trading and foot-and-mouth disease risk

摘要

While the movement of people, equipment and animal products such as meat and milk pose a real risk of transferring foot-and-mouth disease (FMD), movement of live animals poses probably the greatest risk. In the greater Mekong area, cattle move over large distances in short periods, with few stops or health checks between departure and destination. Further, checking to see if an animal has FMD will only detect those with active or recent infection. It will not detect those incubating the disease, nor will it detect those carrying the virus post-infection. As part of an ACIAR project, we have interviewed traders and observed them trading livestock across borders. Information collected in this study has been used to examine the impacts of prevalence, inspection effectiveness and potential for infection in transit on moving FMD across international borders.