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Foreign Animal Diseases (FAD) pose a significant threat to the United States. For example, Foot-and-Mouth Disease (FMD) has threatened livestock since the sixteenth century. The last outbreak in the United States was in 1929, but outbreaks in Canada and Mexico in 1952 and 1954, spurred the United States to establish the Plum Island Animal Disease Center in 1954. According to the World Organisation for Animal Health, 77% of the world’s livestock population in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and part of South America carry the disease (2023).
FMD is a highly contagious virus that affects domestic and wild cloven-hoofed animals including cattle, swine, sheep, goats, deer and bison. While it can’t be passed to humans, the threat lies in the severe adverse effects on animal production and productivity that would have a massive impact on the US economy. Markets for livestock, meat, milk and other animal products contribute more than $1.5 trillion annually to the US economy and represent one sixth of our gross national product (DHS, 2023).
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Countries must be considered Foot-and-Mouth Disease free to export agricultural products and conduct foreign trade. The DHS has estimated that an outbreak could cost the US $20-60 billion (2023).
There was an outbreak of Foot-and-Mouth in the United Kingdom in 2001. It lasted 221 days and resulted in 6.5 million animals being culled and cost “society” an estimated $12-18 billion (2017, US dollars, adjusted for inflation)(USDA, 2020). It devastated the British agriculture and tourism industries. Farmers, vets, communities and government officials worked tirelessly to eradicate it. It was later determined to have been brought in from the Far East through infected animal products.
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