[Occurrence of foot and mouth disease--a historical survey]

FMD--the most economically significant animal disease in the world during the last two centuries--has caused the last great panzootic from 1965 to 1967 in Europe. Since then it has become possible to eradicate centres of the epidemic still being present on the continent, mainly by means of the annual mass vaccination of cattle combined with rigid antiepizootic measures which include culling of infected animals. During the years after however there has been sporadic outbreaks again and again. They were mainly caused by virus that escaped from FMD laboratories and by the application of vaccines with residual infectiousity but also to an increasing extent they resulted from virus brought in from endemic regions of the world. The now as before high incidence of FMD in Asia and in wide parts of Africa and South America--after all 71 countries in these regions have been affected by outbreaks of FMD, the classic carrier disease, from 1998 to 2000--resulted in the spread of virus over far distances due to the globalization of world trade and the increasing traveling favoured by modern traffic facilities. Since 1980 in Europe particularly virus strains from the Middle East but also from other parts of Northern Africa and Asia have dominated the epidemiological situation such as the current epizootic in the United Kingdom and the outbreaks resulting from in three other member states of the European Union. In accordance with the EU guidelines the control of occurring outbreaks is exclusively carried out by stamping out. The limits of this procedure have become clearly obvious during the current epizootic in Britain. The use of emergency vaccination in the Netherlands shows a practicable alternative to the excessive mass culling of both infected animals and those being suspected of. The plurality and variability of the causative agent require a permanent observation of the epidemiological situation and of the virus strains involved in order to prevent the disease and to ensure the diagnosis and the topicality of the vaccines being available in the vaccine banks. Long-term success in the global combat against FMD can only be achieved on the basis of close international co-operation intended to restrain the disease significantly in the still endemically infected regions.