U.K. foot-and-mouth experience helpful

Press, 27 February 1981, Page 14

U.K. foot-and-mouth experience helpful

A veterinarian who was in Britain during the most serious outbreak of foot and mouth disease in that country in recent times had to make the decision on the Dennis farm near Temuka. this month that a serious infectious disease might be involved in pigs on the property.

This led to a widespread ban on movement of animals and animal products in South Canterbury aind the slaughter and burning of more than 800 pigs on the property. • The South Canterbury crisis has naturally revived memories for the man concerned, Mr J. B. Hutton, a veterinary investigation officer at the Animal Health Laboratory of the Ministry of Agriculture at Lincoln, of his British experience with foot and mouth disease. He was one of two field veterinarians who the Ministry was proposing in 1967 to, send to India to get experi-"

ence of foot and mouth disease. They were diverted to Britain after the outbreak at Oswestry_in Shropshire on October 25 when "the British’ authorities expressed their willingness to have another two" veterinarians to help them in their troubles. At the time Mr Hutton was stationed in Dunedin.

Mr Hutton says that the producer boards in New Zealand also made it possible for another five or seven veterinarians to go to Britain to also gain experience and veterinarians from Canada, Australia and the United States were also in Britain at the time. Like the Temuka outbreak of a disease that has not yet been identified, Mr Hutton said that the outbreak at Oswestry was on a farm where pigs were at least partly fed on garbage. On the day that the disease was identified he said that cattle from the property were at a local market and i by the time it was known i that the outbreak of the disease had occurred on the farm about half of the cattle had left the market for their various destinations. Consequently Mr Hutton said that British Ministry people had been faced with a massive job tracing: where all these cattle had gone. Rather luckily the cattle from-the farm had apparently not been infected and no spread of the disease was attributed to these cattle. How did the disease reach the pig farm which is not far from the border of England and Wales? Mr Hutton said ttiat the circumstantial evidence pointed to it being associated with meat from South America. The strain .type of foot and mouth was 01, which was in South America. • At the time there was a dock strike in London and ships carrying the meat were diverted to Liverpool. This ?• resulted in some of the meat $ getting out into fanning.? areas. It was thought that some of the meat could have ■ reached the farm in question ■ from a butchery in nearby Wrexham.

For two days after the initial outbreak no further farms were affected but the disease showed up again on October 28 and 29 and by the time Mr Hutton • reached Britain .on November 17 the country was.in the thick of a major outbreak — one of the worst for as far back as .about 1922 - with toward the end of November up to 80. new cases being reported a day.

Mr Hutton has a map

taken from a Shropshire newspaper of November 27 of that year showing a host of black dots in the area between Wrexham and Crewe and Oswestry and Market Drayton, indicating the extent and intensity of the epidemic. In all 2364 cases were reported during the outbreak with the bulk — some 2228 —- being in the counties of Shropshire, Cheshire and Staffordshire. In all a mammoth 433,987 animals were slaughtered, including 211,825 cattle, 113,766 pigs, 108,345 sheep and 51 goats. Compensation amounted to more than ?50M in. New Zealand currency terms. Mr Hutton started out on patrol with a British Ministry veterinarian looking for signs of disease on properties close to those where there had been outbreaks and looking into reports of suspected disease, and within two days he saw foot and mouth on a dairy and pig farm with about 100 cows and 40 to 50 pigs not far from Oswestry. About 70 cows were being ’milked at the time all being housed and he remembers that the disease showed up in about seven of these, which showed lesions on the feet and in the mouth, and also blisters on the teats. The blisters on the teats were those first observed by the fanner.

The, lesions were all very young so that- the seven animals had probably al! been affected at the same time.

The infection, he thinks, would have been spread in the air in the shed. He remembers that on the day the disease was diagnosed the milk had already left the property and he says it was probably infected at least 12 to 14 hours beforehand. Once on the farm and regarded as “infected” himself, he said that he had to remain there being responsible for supervising the valuation of the stock, their slaughter and disposal. Because the water table was high a fire had to be built up as had been done at Temuka.

A sad aspect of the occasion, he remembers, was that the animals were “beautiful Friesians in perfect condition.”

In all Mr Hutton worked on two or three infected farms and he said that it took about a week to perform all the duties necessary, including cleaning up. Thereafter he had an opportunity to visit other properties where there had been outbreaks of the disease and

to see affected sheep and pigs aS well as cattle. Later when the outbreak settled down somewhat he wenFthrough exhaustive decontamination ’ procedures with all clothes being disinfected and dry cleaned and returned to patrol duties looking for signs of the disease before farmers noticed it and keeping farmers informed about the situation. He was also employed on licensing the movement of stock out of the infected area to market or slaughter with cheeks having to be made in all such cases and also on decontaminating and cleaning up affected properties. While by the end of January and into February most of the cases had occurred, Mr Hutton said that odd ones went on cropping up through April, May and June. At . the time, he said, the weather was mainly overcast with drizzle and a southwesterly wind, and from the situation of the outbreaks it seemed that the wind was probably responsible for the spread of the virus that was being produced on farms where outbreaks occurred to other farms. The wind was also probably a factor in the spread of the infection from milk tankers carrying infected milk. These tankers operated on a suction system to collect the milk and to create a vacuum air was pumped out of the tanks and this was believed to be spreading the virus into the atmosphere. Mr Hutton said that these tankers were either withdrawn from service or fitted with filters to prevent the spread of infection.

Mr Hutton was in Britain for three months and says that it was most invaluable to actually see the diseased animals and the sort of lesions that they had to look for in the case of a suspected outbreak of a similar disease here. Apart from New Zealand veterinarians who had had that opportunity in 1967.68, he said that some veterinarians who had taken part in the exercise in that period had since come to New Zealand and one of these, Mr M. Evans, was now with the Ministry in Christchurch. In Britain then Mr Hutton said that many private veterinarians had been used and if there was an outbreak of disease here where a number of properties were affected the sarnie would have to bedone here also to supplement Ministry staff. But it was not a pleasant experience, he said as the veterinarian’s job was in general to save animals and

to prevent disease. Thus to have to make decisions to destroy good producing animals was not pleasant, but the disease was so highly infectious that if both infected and associated healthy animals were not destroyed it would get out of hand and the British outbreak of 196768 demonstrated the rapidity with which the virus could spread. ■ • While the 1967-68 outbreak was one of the biggest in British history, Mr Hutton said that if action was taken quickly enough it could be stopped before it spread and this had been done many times in Britain. Since 1967-68 he said that there had been outbreaks but they had been contained in much quicker time without spreading. Where outbreaks had oc-; curred in East Anglia he said it had been presumed that the virus might have been brought from Europe by birds. Vermin like cats and rabbits could be responsible for spreading the disease.