The Real Cause of Hoof and Mouth Disease

April 12, 2001

There is growing evidence that foot and mouth is not viral in nature.

Albert , an Honorary Fellow of the Imperial College of Science, was

formerly the Director of the Institute of Plant Industry and Agricultural

Adviser to States in Central India and Rajputana. His many years farming

experience and research into cattle disease and health led him to believe quite

firmly that FMD is an opportunistic disease arising as a result of poor diet

combined with intensive and therefore unhealthy farming methods.

's battle to establish these facts were at first thwarted by his

superiors. We discover that vested interests were alive and well in the early

part of the 20th century, just as they are today. Please read the following

concise and very illuminating section. Links to the relevant unabridged

chapters can be found at the bottom of this page.

This article was written in 1945

Farming And Gardening For Health Or Disease

by Sir Albert C.I.E., M.A.

Honorary Fellow of the Imperial College of Science,

Formerly Director of the Institute of Plant Industry,

Indore, and Agricultural Adviser to States

in Central India and Rajputana

Preface

The earth's green carpet is the sole source of the food consumed by livestock

and mankind. It also furnishes many of the raw materials needed by our

factories. The consequence of abusing one of our greatest possessions is

disease. This is the punishment meted out by Mother Earth for adopting methods

of agriculture, which are not in accordance with Nature's law of return.

About the year 1910, after five years' firsthand experience of crop production

under Indian conditions, I became convinced that the birthright of every crop

is health and that the correct method of dealing with disease at an experiment

station is not to destroy the parasite, but to make use of it for tuning up

agricultural practice.

Foot-and-mouth Disease

If this holds for plants, why should it not apply to animals? I therefore put

forward a request to have my own work cattle, so that my small farm of

seventy-five acres could be a self-contained unit. I was anxious to select my

own animals, to design their accommodation, and to arrange for their feeding,

hygiene, and management.

Then it would be possible to see:

1. What the effect of properly grown food would be on the well fed working

animal.

2. How such livestock would react to infectious diseases.

This request was refused several times on the ground that a research institute

like Pusa should set an example of cooperative work rather than of

individualistic effort.

I retorted that agricultural advances had always been made by individuals

rather than by groups and that the history of science proved conclusively that

no progress had ever taken place without freedom. I did not get my oxen. But

when I placed the matter before the Member of the Viceroy's Council in charge

of agriculture (the late Sir Carlyle, K.C.S.I.), I immediately secured

his powerful support and was allowed to have charge of six pairs of oxen.

I had little to learn in this matter, as I belong to an old agricultural family

and was brought up on a farm which had made for itself a local reputation for

the management of cattle. My animals were most carefully selected for the work

they had to do and for the local climate. Everything was done to provide them

with suitable housing and with fresh green fodder, silage, and grain, all

produced from fertile soil.

They soon got into good fettle and began to be in demand at the neighboring

agricultural shows, not as competitors for prizes, but as examples of what an

Indian ox should look like. The stage was then set for the project I had in

view, namely, to watch the reaction of these well chosen and well fed oxen to

diseases like rinderpest, septicemia, and foot-and-mouth disease, which

frequently devastated the countryside and sometimes attacked the large herds of

cattle maintained on the Pusa Estate.

I always felt that the real cause of such epidemics was either starvation, due

to the intense pressure of the bovine population on the limited food supply,

or, when food was adequate, to mistakes in feeding and management.

The working ox must always have not only good fodder and forage, but also ample

time for chewing the cud, for rest, and for digestion. The grain ration is also

important, as well as a little fresh green food--all produced by intensive

methods of farming. Access to clean fresh water must also be provided. The coat

of the working animal must also be kept clean and free from dung.

The next step was to discourage the official veterinary surgeons who often

visited Pusa from inoculating these animals with various vaccines and sera to

ward off the common diseases. I achieved this by firmly refusing to have

anything to do with such measures, at the same time asking these specialists to

inspect my animals and to suggest measures to improve their feeding,

management, and housing, so that my experiment could have the best possible

chance of success. This carried the day. The veterinarians retired from the

unequal contest and took no steps to compel me to adopt their remedies.

My animals then had to be brought in contact with diseased stock.

This was done by allowing them: (1) to use the common pastures at Pusa, on

which diseased cattle sometimes grazed, and (2) to come in direct contact with

foot-and-mouth disease.

This latter was easy, as my small farmyard was only separated from one of the

large cattle sheds of the Pusa Estate by a low hedge over which the animals

could rub noses. I have often seen this occur between my oxen and

foot-and-mouth cases. Nothing happened.

The healthy, well-fed animals reacted to this disease exactly as suitable

varieties of crops, when properly grown, did to insect and fungus pests--no

infection took place. Neither did any infection occur as the result of my oxen

using the common pastures.

This experiment was repeated year after year between 1910 and 1923, when I left

Pusa for Indore. A somewhat similar experience was repeated at Quetta between

the years 1910 and 1918, but here I had only three pairs of oxen. As at Pusa,

the animals were carefully selected and great pains were taken to provide them

with suitable housing, with protection from the intense cold of winter, and

with the best possible food. Again no precautions were taken against

disease and

no infection took place.

The most complete demonstration of the principle that soil fertility is the

basis of health in working animals took place at the Institute of Plant

Industry at Indore, where twenty pairs of oxen were maintained. Again, the

greatest care was taken to select sound animals to start with, to provide them

with a good water supply, a comfortable, well-ventilated shed, and plenty of

nutritious food, all raised on humus-filled soil.

One detail of cattle-shed management was the provision of a floor of beaten

earth, which is much more restful for the cloven hoof than a cement or brick

floor. This was changed every three months, the dry, powdered, urine-

impregnated soil afterwards being used as an activator in humus production, for

which it proved most suitable. In this way it was possible to bank the spare

urine under cover without loss by rain-wash or fermentation. The result of all

this was a complete absence of foot-and-mouth and other diseases for a period

of six years.

But this is not the whole of the foot-and-mouth story. When the 300 acres of

land at Indore were taken over in the autumn of 1924, the area carried no

fodder crops, so the feeding of forty oxen was at first very difficult. During

the hot weather of 1925 these difficulties became acute.

A great deal of heavy work was falling on the animals, whose food consisted of

wheat straw, dried grass, and millet stalks, with a small ration of crushed

cotton seed. Such a ration might do for maintenance, but it was quite

inadequate for heavy work. The animals soon lost condition and for the first

and last time in my twenty-five years' Indian experience I had to deal with a

few very mild cases of foot-and-mouth disease in the case of some dozen

animals.

The patients were rested for a fortnight and given better food, when the

trouble disappeared never to return. But this warning stimulated everybody

concerned to improve the hot-weather cattle ration and to secure a supply of

properly made silage for 1926, by which time the oxen had recovered condition.

From 1927 to 1931 these animals were often exhibited at agricultural shows as

type specimens of what the local breed should be. They were also in great

demand for the religious processions that took place in Indore city from time

to time, a compliment which gave intense pleasure to the labour staff of the

Institute.

This experience, covering a period of twenty-six years at three widely

separated centers--Pusa in Bihar and Orissa, Quetta on the Western Frontier,

and Indore in Central India--convinced me that foot-and-mouth disease is a

consequence of malnutrition pure and simple, and that the remedies which have

been devised in countries like Great Britain to deal with the trouble, namely,

the slaughter of the affected animals, are both superficial and also

inadmissible. Such attempts to control an outbreak should cease.

Cases of foot-and-mouth disease should be utilized to tune up practice and to

see to it that the animals are fed on the fresh produce of fertile soil.

The trouble will then pass and will not spread to the surrounding areas,

provided the animals there are also in good fettle.

Foot-and-mouth outbreaks are a sure sign of bad farming.

How can such preventive methods of dealing with diseases like foot-and- mouth

be set in motion? Only by a drastic reorganization of present-day veterinary

research. Instead of the elaborate and expensive laboratory investigations now

in progress on this disease, which are not leading to any practical result, a

simple preventive trial on the following lines should be started.

The animals should be carefully selected to suit the local conditions and

should first of all be got into first-class fettle by proper feeding and

management. Everything will then be ready for a simple experiment in disease

prevention. A few foot-and-mouth cases should be let loose among the herds, the

reaction of both healthy and diseased animals being carefully watched. The

diseased animals will soon recover. There will most likely be no infection of

the healthy stock. At the worst there will only be the mildest possible attack

which will disappear in a fortnight or so. "

Originally Published 1945

My name is Trevor Osborne. I was trained as an agricultural scientist and farm

advisor in the UK in the early 1950's. This was the time when the chemical

farming era just began. We were taught age old methods that worked with nature,

not against it as we now do. Pests and diseases were controlled naturally by

what was known as good husbandry... both crop husbandry and animal husbandry.

The premise was, if your soils are healthy, then your crops will be healthy.

If your crops are healthy then your animals will be healthy. Healthy crops and

animals have natural resistance to all disease.

If it were not the case those species would have died out eons ago. Nature does

not rely on drugs and mass slaughter to control diseases, it relies on the

species natural immunity and they survive because that's the way nature

works... when you let it!

It seems we have chosen to ignore the lessons we learned over many centuries.

How long is it going to take for humanity to wake up to this fact? What we need

to do is learn and practice " health creation " not " disease eradication " both in

agriculture and in human health. Then, and only then will be start to reverse

the disastrous situation we find ourselves in both sectors.

This brings me to the current Foot & Mouth Disease (FMD) situation. FMD is

not a

fatal disease under normal classification methods.

It is akin to flu in humans... yes, people can die from it but usually only the

weak, elderly and undernourished. In other words those people whose immune

systems are low. Simplistically, the same applies to FMD... those animals with

very weak immune systems may die. Those with weak immune systems will suffer

the symptoms and then recover. Those with strong immune systems will not even

exhibit the symptoms.

This being the case the obvious LONG TERM answer to the problem is, build the

immune system of the animals. And this is done by practicing good husbandry.

This doesn't mean we have to go back 50 or 100 years. No, it is about using

what we know of the old, and combining it with the new.

For example, it is well know in some circles that most agricultural soils have

been depleted of certain minerals and humus... both of which are necessary for

healthy and nutritious crops. There is a quick and economic answer to this. It

involves applying mineral-rich volcanic rock dust and organic carbon to the

soils.

Two companies I know of in Australia are involved in this, there are probably

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