| This event took place Wednesday 2nd May 2001 |
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Newsround
Vetinarian Carl Padgett answered your questions
about the Foot and Mouth crisis for Newsround.
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Question from cc: What is foot and mouth?
Carl Padgett: Hello cc. Foot and mouth disease affects the common farmed animals with cloven hooves such as cows, sheep, pigs mainly but deer, hedgehogs and elephants can also be affected. It is a virus disease and was actually one of the first viruses ever discovered by man. It causes sores on the feet and in the mouths and lips of those animals, causes a great deal of pain and because of the sight of the sores it's called Foot and Mouth Disease.
Question from Luke Williams: How did the foot and mouth start?
Carl Padgett: The virus was brought into the country in infected meat or meat products somewhere abroad where the infection was already active.
Question from Luke: Which animals have foot and mouth?
Carl Padgett: Hi Luke. It's all the farm animals mainly - cattle sheep and pigs so they're the commonest. Besides them deer can be affected, various forms of gazelle and antelope, elephants and hedgehogs are commonly affected all around the world.
Question from Jenny: Why is it only in cloven hooved animals?
Carl Padgett: Viruses, Jenny, are small particles with particular proteins on the surface which allows them only to attach to a particular animal or species. All the farmed animals, if we go back in history in the development of the species, are actually distant cousins and so to the virus, it can affect all of them. Where as man isn't a cousin and so is rarely affected.
Question from Jude patterson: Can it be carried by humans?
Carl Padgett: Hi Jude. The disease is spread by animals breathing on each other of touching each other. Humans can either touch an infected animal and wipe it on another animal or humans can breathe it in through the air which lives in the back of the throat for a few days and breathe it back out into the atmosphere.
Question from Emma: What is the affect of foot and mouth on humans?
Carl Padgett: Hello Emma. The affect of humans is that they carry the virus - it doesn't affect them in any way. It's just like carrying an invisible particle in your throat. But sometimes very rarely humans can pick up sores from the virus, particularly if they're working very closely with affected animals. In this outbreak, this has not happened so far. Each of the possible cases have proved negative. But a farm worker got the disease in 1967 and he had mild cold sores and flu-type signs.
Question from Cuscus Cool: What will happen to people if they eat meat that has foot and mouth?
Carl Padgett: It's nothing really to worry about in humans. Humans merely act as a transporter of the virus between animals. It doesn't affect them and in the very rare instances that it does affect humans, which hasn't happened in this outbreak, it causes a very mild cold-like syndrome and so is not serious and would not be a cause of death in itself. Those people that do get affected are working in places where there is a lot of virus around them.
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