The latest outbreak is worse than the 1967 one and different in nature. The one Britain (and the world) is facing now is more widespread (making containment next to impossible) and it is carried more by sheep than cows.

Argentina reports 55 confirmed cases of the disease with 36 suspected cases being looked at. Today Germany, also, is eyeing a farm suspiciously.

Many farmers in Canada are calling for the Calgary Stampede to be called off because of the international visitors that may carry foot and mouth to their animals. Farmers have vowed to refuse having their animals take part in the event.

Sometimes I wonder if some of the "slaughter all of the livestock" instructions that Israel got weren't all that draconian compared to what's happening now.

Perhaps the earth will become one big bar-B-Q. The fire's already been kindled!

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Be glad for all God is planning for you. Be patient in trouble, and always be prayerful. Rom. 12:12 NLT

My fear is that when foot and mouth enters the US, the independent-minded Americans will have showdown after showdown with government officials over "my stuff" versus what might be for the common good.

This, indeed, is an end-time issue if it causes churches to close their doors!

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Be glad for all God is planning for you. Be patient in trouble, and always be prayerful. Rom. 12:12 NLT

If this hits here, it will destroy the meat and dairy industry in the state of Michigan.

The end is nearer than we think.

Wendy
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Maranatha!!!

Business as usual on planet earth...

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Be glad for all God is planning for you. Be patient in trouble, and always be prayerful. Rom. 12:12 NLT

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For I know that my redeemer liveth,
and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth.
_________________________

Linda

Vaccines don't stop spread of farm virus, says report
On day the Blair says UK must return to normal, Army sends in its top general to oversee foot-and-mouth cull
By Steve Connor and Ben Russell
29 March 2001
Internal links

Vaccines don't stop spread of farm virus, says report

National Pig Association
An emergency vaccination campaign against foot-and-mouth disease would make no difference to the spread of the disease and may even make matters worse, according to a suppressed government report.

The previously unpublished report, carried out five years after the 1967 foot-and-mouth crisis, found that vaccines would have failed to halt the spread of the virus in four-out-of-five outbreaks and may even have made the situation worse. In the fifth case, the evidence was equivocal about the effectiveness of using emergency "ring" vaccination to stem the spread around an infected area ­ similar to the scheme proposed on Tuesday by the Government and authorised yesterday by the European Commission.

Professor Martin Hugh-Jones, who carried out the study as a researcher at the Ministry of Agriculture's Central Veterinary Laboratory at Weybridge in Surrey, said: "Essentially we picked five outbreaks at random and we found in four cases it made no difference to the number of cases and would have just added to the problems."

Details of the report, which was suppressed under the Official Secrets Act, emerged as European veterinary experts authorised Britain to carry out emergency vaccination of 180,000 cattle in Cumbria and Devon in an attempt to halt the spread of the disease.

Other scientists are also unsure about the usefulness of a vaccination campaign, arguing that vaccinated animals can still incubate the virus, and that all inoculated livestock would in any case have to be culled eventually to keep Britain's "disease free" status.

Embarrassment for the Government intensified yesterday as Mr Blair revealed the vast scale of sheep movements that helped to spread the disease. He told MPs that 1.35 million sheep were moved or exported last month and admitted that previous estimates of the trade had been "an understatement".

He said: "If this disease was incubating then, clearly it has been far more widespread than hitherto thought."

The revelation raised fresh questions over the performance and long-term future of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. Nick Brown, the Agriculture Minister, has admitted that the department had little idea of the scale of the national trade in sheep before the outbreak took hold.

Mr Blair's official spokesman admitted the problem was "beyond the expectations that existed at the outset". But he said the Prime Minister believed the right decisions were made based on the advice given at any one time.

The total number of cases rose by 37 yesterday to 728.

William Hague intensified his attack on the Government's handling of the situation yesterday, raising the case of a qualified vet who offered his services but received no response, despite the Ministry's international appeal for veterinary expertise.

Mr Blair launched a major hearts and minds campaign yesterday to persuade tourists that Britain was not closed for business. But his hopes were dashed last night as it emerged that the German Ministry for Cultural Affairs had advised schools to "stop all trips to England within the near future".

The Government is asking embassies and senior business figures to "bang the drum" for Britain at every opportunity amid fears that investment is under threat.

Professor Hugh-Jones, now professor of epidemiology at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, said that his findings were an embarrassment to the then Conservative government because it had already decided to establish a vaccine bank, which today's Government is now preparing to use.

"The minister of the day decided that he would lay up a store of vaccine. We proved you didn't need to. Like all official secrets, they are not to defend the country, they are to defend the minister," Professor Hugh-Jones told The Independent.

The report was prepared in response to the official inquiry into the major outbreak of foot-and-mouth in 1967-68, which led to the recommendation that the Government should establish a bank of emergency vaccines against the disease.

Professor Hugh-Jones emigrated to the United States in 1978 and is now a co-ordinator on animal diseases at the World Health Organisation. He took part in the inquiry into the outbreak of anthrax at Yekaterinburg in the former Soviet Union, which was later shown to be the result of an accident at a secret biological weapons factory.

Although he emphasised that the outbreaks in his study were smaller than the present outbreak, he would still not recommend vaccination.

"No. I wouldn't in the normal course of events. If you go about the job properly, you can stop these things in their tracks. There should not have been any delays on slaughter," he said.

Professor Chris Bostock, director of the Institute for Animal Health, which runs the Pirbright Laboratory in Surrey where the emergency foot-and-mouth vaccines are stored, said: "Generally speaking the problem with vaccines is that they don't protect completely against infection. They protect against clinical signs so you won't know that an animal has been infected. It can be replicating the virus and acting as a source of infection for animals that haven't been infected," Professor Bostock said.

"The cost-benefit analysis [of vaccination] would have to take into account the fact that you would be diverting people away from culling," he added. "There is an awful lot of misinformation being put out about vaccination being the answer."

(Same jittery fingers, eek.)

[This message has been edited by WendyForsyth (edited March 29, 2001).]

[This message has been edited by WendyForsyth (edited March 29, 2001).]

All grown, healthy cattle (90% of the herd) recover from foot and mouth, but the illness is enough to make the animals less productive. This also affects all of the animals around it.

That is why farmers have to shoot their wounded.

It's kind of like sin in the camp. (If you want to bring in a certain book that is full of agricultural metaphors...)

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Be glad for all God is planning for you. Be patient in trouble, and always be prayerful. Rom. 12:12 NLT

[This message has been edited by Andrew Marttinen (edited March 30, 2001).]

There was a scare in the US of foot and mouth in a South Carolina farm that proved to be false, but as soon as the Chicago market exchange heard about it, prices crashed--only to recover later on when the animals were found to be "clean" (even though they were pigs.

This just goes to prove how jittery people are these days...

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Be glad for all God is planning for you. Be patient in trouble, and always be prayerful. Rom. 12:12 NLT

__________________________
In His Love, Mercy & Grace

Daryl

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Be glad for all God is planning for you. Be patient in trouble, and always be prayerful. Rom. 12:12 NLT

We were wrong.
God was/is right.
Pigs are unclean.

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Be glad for all God is planning for you. Be patient in trouble, and always be prayerful. Rom. 12:12 NLT

Although, not being a cannibal, I have not tried to eat one, and I suspect that they are not "clean meat". So perhaps the kids come by the fact that they love mud puddles as Biblically as do the pigs.

The Canadian government is making all travellers from Great Britian to walk on a disinfectant pan when they disembark. This is supposed to get rid of "foot and mouth" from shoes that may carry it if they have gone for a walk in the British countryside.

Our farmers are laughing at this idea because they say that a normal person puts boots on while walking on a country trail (especially during a wet early spring). The person would, naturally, place the boots in their luggage while they wear more formal shoes for the plane ride and in the airport--duh!

Now the worry is when they decide to walk in the muddy Canadian countryside this spring with their walkin' boots.

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Be glad for all God is planning for you. Be patient in trouble, and always be prayerful. Rom. 12:12 NLT

You may have something there DrD, we need to look into it, maybe.

Wonder how you could keep 'em in the pan to cook 'em anyway?

I will have to add my carbon black snowball episode later tonight to the testimony forum.

P.S. pigs like to bite humans, grow up on a non SDA farm & shovel out the pens.

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Edward F Sutton

Seriously, though, it looks as though we may be in the beginning of that which we have waited for these last 150 years.

I wrote an update about the foot-and-mouth where I implied a sneaky spin in the way the British government has been sending out word about the crisis. They say that the foot and mouth disease is under control and they only report numbers the morning after totals come in, rather than twice a day.

When I submitted my reply, I got the "web site not found" message.

I hope this gets through.

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Be glad for all God is planning for you. Be patient in trouble, and always be prayerful. Rom. 12:12 NLT

Unpublished official figures show foot-and-mouth pyres are creating more deadly pollutants than all the country's biggest factories combined.

The emissions are of dioxins - carcinogens 1,000 times more deadly than arsenic.

But Defence Minister Geoff Hoon says the newspaper reports are "over-dramatic".

The Independent on Sunday says the study for the Environment Department estimates that by 5pm on April 6, when 500,000 animals had been destroyed, 63 grammes of dioxins had been emitted.

This compares with 88 grammes released from the country's biggest and most hazardous factories in a year.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A foot-and-mouth pyre has been dismantled amid fears that its smoke may be poisoning the atmosphere with cancer-causing chemicals.

North Cumbria Health Authority has asked Maff to reconsider burning pyres until the health risks to locals have been confirmed.

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For I know that my redeemer liveth,
and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth.
_________________________

Linda

[This message has been edited by Linda Sutton (edited April 22, 2001).]

My brother-in-law is not an Adventist and was also saying that it probably won't be long before all meat is contaminated and people will begin losing it and killing anything that comes through their yard for food.

Scary stuff.

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Sarah Moss
*Prayer Changes Things!*

The impression this gives is that we can't trust the government when it comes to basics like food and drinking water (eg Walkerton). Now, when it comes to religion...

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Be glad for all God is planning for you. Be patient in trouble, and always be prayerful. Rom. 12:12 NLT

When I went to the CNN site there was a report of a 34-year-old man from Britain who was having preliminary test done. They think he's suffering from foot-and-mouth disease. The last case in a human was found in 1966. If this is true, a mutation in the disease may be taking place. Scientists are already concerned that more sheep and pigs get the disease compaired to the last British outbreak where it happened mostly in cows.

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Be glad for all God is planning for you. Be patient in trouble, and always be prayerful. Rom. 12:12 NLT

The antibiotics we have don't work because they have been overused, and appear to have mutated the disease meant to be controlled to the point where each one can accomodate itself to whatever we throw at it.

All I need to complete my transition to a vegetarian lifestyle is to get rid of poultry and dairy.
Pray I make it before it kills me.

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Examine me, O LORD, and prove me: try my reins and my heart. Ps.26:2

quote:

---

While appearing to the children of men as a great physician who can heal all their maladies, he will bring disease and disaster, until populous cities are reduced to ruin and desolation. Even now he is at work. In accidents and calamities by sea and by land, in great conflagrations, in fierce tornadoes and terrific hail-storms, in tempests, floods, cyclones, tidal waves, and earthquakes, in every place and in a thousand forms, Satan is exercising his power. He sweeps away the ripening harvest, and famine and distress follow. He imparts to the air a deadly taint, and thousands perish by the pestilence. These visitations are to become more and more frequent and disastrous. Destruction will be upon both man and beast. "The earth mourneth and fadeth away," "the haughty people . . . do languish. The earth also is defiled under the inhabitants thereof; because they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting covenant." [ISA. 24:4, 5.] {GC88 589.3}

And then the great deceiver will persuade men that those who serve God are causing these evils....

---

Are we ready??

[This message has been edited by Karen (edited April 24, 2001).]

I'll send you some links that should help you give up the dairy and poultry. Giving up the dairy will help with your health tremendously.

Solemn words Karen. Amen! Let's finish this quickly.

God bless,
Wendy

THE army was last night accused of being the source of the foot and mouth epidemic after it admitted supplying untreated waste food to the pig farm where the disease broke out.

In an astonishing development in the search for the epidemic's origin, The Telegraph has learnt that slops - including waste meat imported from countries where the disease is rife - were supplied to the farmers at the centre of the outbreak. The food was taken from the kitchens of Whitburn Training Camp, near Sunderland, and fed to pigs at Bobby and Ronnie Waugh's farm in Heddon-on-the-Wall, Northumberland. . . .

Bobby Waugh yesterday said that he last collected a lorryload of wet food slops from Whitburn camp in December. The disease was identified at the farm on February 22, but was thought by Maff vets to have been present among the 600 pigs for several weeks. Mr Waugh, who is licensed by Maff to process waste into swill, added: "I collected waste food from Whitburn around 10 times a year." He claimed that it was processed into swill at a neighbour's farm. . . .

The admission that imported Army meat went to the farm at Heddon-on-the-Wall is the first time that a potential path of infection has been identified, although the MoD claimed yesterday that its imported meat came from farms free of the disease. Last month, when Maff said that swill was believed to be the source, it did not disclose the existence of the contract between the Army and the Waugh brothers. Whitburn camp is a rifle range used by the Territoral Army and the cadet force for four months a year.

A FARMWORKER thought to have contracted foot and mouth disease when a bloated animal carcass exploded in his face was given the all-clear yesterday.
Paul Stamper, 33, was believed to have been the first human to contract the disease during the current outbreak after swallowing fluid from the infected cow while clearing slaughtered animals on a farm in Wigton, Cumbria, last month. . . .

At present there are 13 suspected cases of foot and mouth in humans, eight of which have tested negative. Tests are still being conducted on the remaining five. However, following Mr Stamper's negative test, the Public Health Laboratory Service said that it was "very unlikely" that any of the eight had had foot and mouth at any stage.