Not Again
The farmers in Britain are facing another crisis as foot-and-mouth disease has been discovered on a farm in southeast England. They have barely recovered from mad cow disease, and now the quarantines are going up over foot-and-mouth.
I was flying to Britain on a semi-regular basis on missions that either started or ended in Omaha, Nebraska in an earlier outbreak on the 1960s. The disinfectant baths that you had to walk through at both sites destroyed a lot of boots and socks. You had to walk through them as you got off the aircraft. Then they set off disinfectant bombs inside the aircraft, and you had to wait to unload your gear and clothing. People thought we worked in a hospital because we smelled of the bug spray for a week.
Unlike the US, most British farms are still family owned operations, and this can be devastating on top of the floods and other problems. For their sake, I hope they caught it early and it will be eliminated quickly.
