Foot and mouth.

Another outbreak. Many of us remember the horrific scenes back in 2001 of piles of cattle carcases and mass incineration, and could be forgiven for thinking that Foot and Mouth must be a terrible disease. So it comes as a bit of a shock to learn that it is no such thing. It poses no risk to humans, and is rarely fatal to cattle, who for the most part recover from it fairly quickly. Indeed, it has been likened to a bad dose of 'flu in a human - they're off hooks for a week or so, but then they're back on their feet again. So why the panic, the movement restrictions and the wholesale slaughter? Well, it's nothing to do with health, but everything to do with economics. The effect of the disease is to significantly reduce milk yield, and this reduction continues even after recovery. And it is this that is considered so serious as to require such radical measures. Of course, being economic, it is possible to make an economic assessment, and there are certainly those who know far more about this than me who maintain that the cost of dealing with the 2001 outbreak in the way we did was out of all proportion to the potential cost of the problem. It'll be interesting to see how it goes this time.