Monday, January 17, 2011

Foot-and-mouth disease scare recalls memories of Merced County outbreaks

Everyone was stopped in 1924 and dipped their feet into disinfectant to make sure the disease of foot and mouth wasn't transmitted.

They dug deep ditches and hauled barrels filled with lime to the trenches. The cowboys rounded up the cattle that had fattened during the winter in the foothills and drove the animals into those trenches. Then they shot every one of them and covered the carcasses with lime. This was the reality of an outbreak of foot and mouth disease in 1924 in Merced County. The majority of the animals, which included 18,000 cattle and 14,000 sheep, goats and hogs, ended up in long trenches at the Bellevue Ranch, on what was then called G Grade. Animals were also killed and buried in the Amsterdam and Buhach areas and Snelling. Art imitated life in the 1963 film "Hud," when the disease forced a family of Texas ranchers to shoot their livestock in a cattle pit. The United States hasn't had an outbreak of foot and mouth since 1929, when there was another outbreak in California. But as South Korea scrambles to control its worst outbreak of the disease and it appears in other countries, including Bulgaria, California animal authorities are asking the state's ranchers and veterinarians to be vigilant. Whiteford said foot and mouth disease is highly contagious, and although humans don't get it, the damage to livestock is horrific...more

1 comment:

dr john said...

When the US gets Foot and Mouth disease the Ag industry will be stopped in its tracks. The real outcome will be devastation thru out the country because everything will be at a standstill. Armed personnel will be on the roads, on your farms and ranchers prepared to shoot not only you but your livestock as well. The real disaster about this disease is that the government refuses to recognize that there is a killed, adjuvanted vaccine with a marker that has and is still being used in Europe to stop this disease in it's tracks. Intervet is the company that has the vaccine. If you don't think the methods to attempt to control this disease is horrendous I suggest you go to the Homelands security web page and look it up.