Foot-and-mouth disease: Prevention and control

摘要

Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD), also called hoof-and-mouth disease, is the most feared of all the world's livestock diseases and a major constraint in the international marketing of animals and livestock by-products. The economic importance of FMD liesnot so much in its power to kill but rather in the morbidity losses -- loss of meat and milk, incapability of draft animals to do work, and the long period in which infected animals are not productive. Usually the percentage of morbidity within a herd may reach to 100 per cent.