Turkey Danger from foot-and-mouth disease

Worry about foot-and-mouth disease in Turkey

04/27/2014

In Turkey, 32 new cases of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) have occurred since the beginning of the year. Travelers should therefore bring no animal food from the country. For humans, the disease is largely harmless.

Do not bring any animal foods from Turkey
In Turkey, 32 new cases of dangerous foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) have been recorded since the beginning of the year. The plague had been detected in the country on the Bosporus in 2013 with 1,117 cloven-hoofed animals. The President of the Federal Chamber of Veterinary Medicine, Professor Theo Mantel explained: „We take the situation very seriously and are monitoring the animal disease cards, because the events in Turkey can be the trigger of epidemics in the EU at any time.“ Travelers should therefore not bring any animal or animal products from Turkey, such as horns and furs, to Germany.

Strict hygiene measures are extremely important
Veterinarian Mantel also explained: „The primary mode of transmission is the movement of people, that is people who come into contact with the animals. Strict hygiene measures are of utmost importance here: clothes must be changed and disinfected accordingly, unauthorized persons must not have access to the barns. Equally important are the transport vehicles from Turkey: they must be thoroughly cleaned and disinfected after each transport.“

Introduction to Europe would be a disaster
As vaccination against the FMD virus is not an issue and a new outbreak in Europe would be a catastrophe equal. The viral disease is extremely infectious for agricultural cloven-hoofed animals such as cattle, pigs, sheep, goats but also for wild animals. The disease causes severe pain in the animals and often leads to death. In the United Kingdom, around 6 million animals were killed in 2001 in an outbreak of the animal disease that had to be reported. In Germany, the epidemic occurred for the last time in 1988. „All large and small farms with hoofed animals but also hobbyists in Germany need to protect their livestock from infection with this virus in the best possible way“, so coat.

People are very rarely affected
People are rarely affected by foot-and-mouth disease and, if so, there is a favorable prognosis. An infection could be done by direct and close contact with diseased animals, or the excreted viruses. With hygienic conditions common in Germany, consumers generally do not have any risk of infection when consuming milk, dairy products and meat. In rare human cases, patients suffer from fever, nausea, headache and body aches. In addition, painful aphthae may occur in the oral mucosa, but preferably on the skin of hands and feet as well as in the genital area. As a rule, these heal completely within a few days. (Ad)