MILLIONS OF cattle may have been slaughtered needlessly during the 2001 foot-and-mouth disease outbreak in Britain, according to a new scientific study.
Scientists studying the disease have found that cattle with the virus are infectious for only a very short time, suggesting that mass culling previously used to reduce its spread may in future be avoided.
In research published in the journal Science on Thursday, scientists found that even if the disease virus is detected in a cow’s blood sample, it does not necessarily mean the cow is infectious at that time.
In fact, a cow with the disease is only infectious for about 1.7 days, said Mark Woolhouse of Edinburgh University, who worked on the study. He said the finding significantly altered scientists’ thinking about the disease and may have implications for other diseases, too.
The Department of Agriculture and Food said it would examine the findings.
“This study shows that what we thought we knew about foot-and-mouth disease is not entirely true,” said Mr Woolhouse.
“So what we think we know about human influenza and other infectious pathogens might not be completely accurate, either.”
Mr Woolhouse worked with Bryan Charleston and colleagues from Britain’s Pirbright Laboratory on new kinds of experiments in which they infected “source” cows with the virus and then studied how it was transmitted to other, uninfected cows.
They found that diagnosis of foot-and-mouth disease infection is possible during the period of approximately 24 hours before the animal becomes infectious.
This suggests that farmers may have time to remove the infected animals from a herd before they transmit the virus to others, potentially saving many animals from being culled.
In 2001, Britain suffered one of the largest foot-and-mouth epidemics to hit a developed country in several decades. Millions of animals were culled and their carcasses burned on huge pyres.