Selfsufficientish.com

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/6930684.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/6930684.stm

I don't pretend to know how or why these diseases keep emerging...foot and mouth, bse, bird flu....

but I feel certain that while animals are reared intensively and transported live across whole continents, dead across the whole world.....things can only get worse

bum

I've always been told by farmers that F&M and other common deseases in livestock is already in the soil and you won't get rid of it . It needs the right conditions and tempertures though for an outbreak. that's why you dip and inject livestock. You'll also find it's been in the soil for hundreds of years.

Dear oh dear. And apparently all birds in France have to be kept inside again due to bird flu - not that I will because they'd die from the heat, and I've got ducks now so that is just impossible.

Needless to say, SEERAD has nothing on its website. (Defra and Northern Ireland are much quicker off the mark.)

I'm assuming Turriff show will go ahead without livestock (much to our disappointment as it's one of our few major outings each year), but their website hasn't been updated yet either.

As for us, there's not much to do except add extra footbaths and signage, get a few extra supplies in (a precaution in case more serious movement restrictions come in) and then wait and see.

oh dear, thats really bad news, I hope they manage to contain it!!

Gidday

Well Magenta Flame says it's already in the soil, and I wouldnt be surprised if that were the case. Like TB is a bad disease and when you look into the history of it, you can see that it is actually a deficiency disease, but nobody will admit to that. Well fed animals that have good levels of all the right trace elliments almost never get TB, and that goes for humans also as it has mainly been a disease of the poor.

I've never heard that it could be in the soil... Check up on these sites:

http://svs.mri.sari.ac.uk/NewsFM.htm

http://www.defra.gov.uk/footandmouth/about/index.htm

Of course you are right that healthy animals can resist infections better than animals that suffer from some deficiency or other. However, in the context of TB, I have heard the argument that liming acid soils would prevent TB (as acid soils are deficient in the necessary minerals that make cattle resistant to TB). Funny enough, we have hardly any TB up here in Scotland, where the soils are predominantly acid, whereas there's plenty of TB in the south of the country, with on average less acid soils. So it doesn't seem to be as easy as that...

As already said by someone else... bum.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that they contain it. Please please please don't let it spread to any of the ishers' animals.

Zoe

How du know that about the birds having to be kept in again M3?

Gidday

Hey I have just heard on our news that the strain of F&M on that farm is identicle to the strain in a research station just down the road from it.


That would indicate a majopr stuff up, Eh!