ABSTRACT
Foot-and-mouth disease disease is a serious obstacle to exportation of animals and animal by-products to many importing countries. Certain products are freed of infective virus by industrial processing. However, products that once were accepted by countries free of the disease have since been banned because of new findings that indicate risk in their importation. Swine vesicular disease (SVD) is clinically indistinguishable from foot-and-mouth disease, vesicular stomatitis, vesicular exanthema of swine, and infection by San Miguel sea-lion virus. Investigations of outbreaks indicate that a major source of infection is the feeding of garbage contaminated with SVD virus-infected meat scraps. Hog cholera is found in most countries where swine are raised with the exception of countries (Canada, US, Great Britain, Australia, Denmark, and New Zealand) where it has been eradicated. African swine fever is an important disease of swine in many parts of the world; its clinical similarity to hog cholera makes laboratory diagnosis critical.
