Clinical and laboratory investigations of the outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease in southern England in 2007

A case of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) on a cattle farm in Normandy, Surrey, was confirmed on Friday August 3, 2007, the first case in the UK since 2001. The infection was detected nearby on a second farm on August 6. On September 12, FMD was confirmed on a farm approximately 20 km from Normandy in Egham, and this was followed by cases on five more farms in that area in the next three weeks. The majority of the infected farms consisted of multiple beef cattle holdings in semi-urban areas. In total, 1578 animals were culled on the infected farms, and FMD virus infection was confirmed in 278 of them by the detection of viral antigen, genome or antibodies to the virus, or by clinical signs. This paper describes the findings from animal inspections on the infected farms, including the estimated ages of the FMD lesions and the numbers of animals infected. it also summarises the test results from samples taken for investigation, including the detection of preclinically viraemic animals by using real-time reverse transcriptase-PCR.