foot and mouth

My French vocabulary word for the day: fièvre aphteuse - in english that's foot and mouth disease. This is in the news because, once again the UK has found animals with the disease. This last happened in 2001, and was quite hard not only on the agricultural sector, but also on tourism, as many sites were closed to prevent the spread of the disease. I was in the UK at the time of the last outbreak, and have several photos showing preventative measures taken, and closed tourist attractions. According to people I spoke to in the tourism industry, last time the response taken by the UK government did more economic damage than the disease itself did, because tourism was so badly hit by the disease. We'll see if the same holds true this time.

That's a shame. I was in England in 1996 in the middle of the Mad Cow disease scare. I can remember walking into certain places (tourist attractions) and having to walk through a pan of bleach water before you could go in. I hope that this doesn't affect them all too badly.