Word: livestock
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...Since the discovery of the first foot-and-mouth cases at the Essex slaughterhouse, the E.U. banned all imports of British livestock and meat products. But Britain's ban on transporting animals meant there weren't any to export. Indeed, across England, once-bustling market villages turned into ghost towns as commerce slowed, farm families stayed home and people from the cities stopped venturing into the countryside...
...crisis-accelerated. As far south as Spain, 540 pigs imported from the U.K. early last month were killed, though they showed no signs of infection. By week's end more than 25,000 pigs, sheep and cattle had been burned in Britain. The French, in particular, took no chances. "Livestock ranchers who went through earlier epidemics are now saying they'll never make it through another one if it spreads to France," says Marc-Henri Cassagne, director general of the National Federation of Sanitary Protection Groups. "Foot-and-mouth is an old enemy we know only too well...
...Given Europe's familiarity with the disease, why didn't governments vaccinate their livestock against it? The answer is that they did, and were successful in keeping the disease in check-until 1990, when the E.U. decided to adopt the British approach to prevention: immediate slaughter of animals thought to be infected. Why? British vets say vaccines can actually make testing for disease more difficult, since it is impossible to tell whether an animal's antibodies come from the vaccine or the virus. And even vaccinated animals can harbor the live virus for up to two years. Says David Tyson...
...danger of large-scale epidemics. Health rules put in place to prevent outbreaks like bse have reduced the number of abattoirs in Britain from 1,000 to 387 since the mid-'80s, which means animals now travel longer distances before they are slaughtered. The E.U. also mandates that transported livestock be let out during their journeys to rest and stretch their legs; but that can increase the risk of infection for animals on nearby farms...
...Market pressures have contributed to the dilemmas of disease prevention. The large supermarket chains that now control much of retail food distribution have driven down consumer prices partly by centralizing production, cramming livestock into large holding markets and slaughterhouses that are virtual hothouses for disease. "Supermarkets have a big role to play for that because they insist on having all their meat taken to one abattoir to be slaughtered," British Prime Minister Tony Blair said. Add to that the expansion of global trade in livestock and meat products-the market has grown by an average of 9% a year...