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State officials are taking steps to make sure foot-and-mouth disease doesn't make its way from Europe to Virginia.
They are concerned not only about horses, cattle and other farm animals, but also about the state's deer, since their large population would make an outbreak of the disease almost impossible to contain.
State agriculture officials said yesterday that deer traveling from farm to farm could conceivably spread any foot-and-mouth outbreak all over the state--and much of the country.
"If foot-and-mouth disease gets into the deer population, it would be uncontrollable," Culpeper County Extension Agent Carl Stafford said.
Acting in accordance with U.S. Department of Agriculture policies, the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services last week banned the entry of all horses and other equines coming from any country where there are known cases of the disease. Restrictions have also been placed on the entry of herding and hunting dogs.
Officials also are worried that humans might inadvertently bring the disease into the country through soil or organic material on shoes. The virus can also be carried in human nasal passages, where it can survive for at least a week.
State Commissioner of Agriculture Carlton Courter III said the USDA is recommending that anyone who has traveled in a country where foot-and-mouth disease has been found wait at least five days before visiting a farm.
"I advise them to extend that period of time even longer," Courter said.
The commissioner also recommends that state farmers not allow anyone on their property who has recently come from an infected country and that farmers take disinfectant foot baths as a precautionary daily routine.
Many agricultural areas in England are now off-limits to tourists and some British farms are even cordoned off with police tape.
Courter likens any possible outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in the United States to the Asian aviary influenza epidemic that struck the poultry industry in the mid-1980s and resulted in some $60 million in damages.
"Some of the things that were learned during that epidemic are helping us now," he said.
Foot-and-mouth disease is marked by blisters on the mouth, tongue, nose or snout, teats and feet. Other symptoms in stricken animals include drooling and a reluctance to bear weight on their feet.
Diseased animals run fevers, lose their appetites, stop producing milk and become lame.
The disease can be fatal to animals, especially newborns. It does not affect humans and fully cooked meat from infected animals is safe to eat.
Because there are several strains and many sub-types of the highly contagious virus, vaccines are not considered an effective remedy.
Deer are just as susceptible to foot-and-mouth disease as farm animals. But deer herds are small in Europe and have not contributed to the spread of the disease there.
The last outbreak of the disease in the United States occurred in 1929. At that time, deer herds in Virginia were at an all-time low.
Effective game management has restored the population. Game and Inland Fisheries Commission officials estimate there are at least 1 million deer in Virginia--more, they say, than at the time of the Jamestown settlement in 1607.
While government officials could quarantine cloven-hoofed farm animals infected with the disease, they would have no way of controlling deer.
"The potential is there; there's no question about that," said Bob Duncan, director of the Wildlife Division of the Game and Inland Fisheries Commission. "But there is a protocol in place if foot-and-mouth disease does happen to get into this country."
That protocol could involve thinning deer herds in affected areas.
Meanwhile, Courter said his office is working with the Department of Defense, U.S. Customs and commissioners from the other 49 states to prevent the disease from reaching America.
"We are talking at the highest levels on a daily basis," he said.