28 April 2010, Rome - FAO today urged heightened international
surveillance against foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) following
three recent incursions in Japan and South Korea. “We are
worried because the rigorous biosecurity measures in place in
the two countries were overwhelmed, pointing to a recent, large-
scale weight of infection in source areas, very probably in the
Far East,” said FAO’s Chief Veterinary Officer Juan Lubroth. “In
the past nine years, incursions into officially FMD-free
countries, as were Japan and the Republic of Korea, have been
extremely rare so to have three such events in four months is a
serious cause for concern,” he noted. “We also have to ask
ourselves if we aren’t facing a possible replay of the
disastrous 2001 FMD transcontinental epidemic which spread to
South Africa, the United Kingdom and Europe after earlier
incursions in Japan and South Korea,” Lubroth added. The 2001
FMD outbreak caused eight billion pounds (more than $12 billion)
of losses to agriculture, livestock trade an