Current surveillance programs for foot-and-mouth disease in the US may be flawed due to reliance on clinical recognition by first-line observers.
Questions reliability of US FMD surveillance based on clinical recognition; leaves open whether enhanced diagnostics improve detection.
Programs to detect and prevent FMD in those coun-tries prior to the outbreaks were extremely similar tothe program currently in place for the United States,which essentially relies on recognition and reporting ofclinical signs by a producer, animal caretaker, meatinspector, or veterinarian. Inherent in the program is apotentially erroneous assumption that these first-lineobservers will be able to recognize FMD and differenti-ate between FMD and other clinically indistinguish-able indigenous diseases, such as
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Bates et al. (2003) studied this question.