Seven Diseases That Threaten the Farm

The stakes

Two kinds of disaster

The seven diseases below fall into two groups, and the difference decides what “early detection” buys you. The first four — foot-and-mouth, African swine fever, peste des petits ruminants, lumpy skin disease — are transboundary, notifiable diseases. They have no treatment; control means culling affected herds, restriction zones and trade suspensions. For these, early recognition is not about saving the sick animal — it is about whether one farm is lost or a whole county, and reporting a suspicion is a legal obligation, not a courtesy.

The other three — BVD, IBR and PRRS — are endemic production diseases. They rarely make headlines and rarely stop trade. Instead they sit quietly in a herd for years, taxing fertility, growth and milk with losses the farmer often attributes to weather, feed or bad luck. For these, early recognition is money: the studies that priced them found losses that dwarf what surveillance and testing cost.

Cattle, sheep, goats, pigs

Foot-and-mouth disease: the year Europe remembered

Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) is described by WOAH as one of the most contagious animal diseases known, affecting all cloven-hoofed species. The reference estimate by Knight-Jones and Rushton puts its cost at 6.5 to 21 billion US dollars every year in endemic regions, plus over 1.5 billion a year from outbreaks in officially free countries — which is what 2025 delivered: Germany in January (first outbreak since 1988), Hungary in March (first since 1973), then Slovakia, with mass culls, closed borders and months of suspended trade before free status was restored later that year. Hungary borders Romania; the 2025 outbreaks were, from a Romanian farm’s perspective, next door.

The early signs WOAH describes: fever, followed by blisters (vesicles) on the tongue, gums, muzzle, teats and between the claws — with drooling, smacking of the lips, lameness and a sudden drop in milk as the practical tells. Because the virus spreads on air, vehicles, boots and milk tankers before the blisters are obvious, the control frameworks are built around one behaviour: at first suspicion, the animals stay put and the veterinarian and DSVSA are called the same day.

Pigs

African swine fever: the disaster that is already here

For Romanian pig farmers, African swine fever (ASF) needs no introduction — but the numbers still stagger. Between 2017 and 2025 Romania recorded over 7,000 outbreaks in domestic pigs, the most of any country in Europe, and the EFSA epidemiological analysis found EU outbreaks rising from 333 in 2024 to 585 in 2025 — with Romania accounting for 81% of them. WOAH describes no treatment, and no vaccine is authorised in the EU: an infected holding is culled.

The early signs the sources describe: high fever, loss of appetite, weakness and huddling, red-to-purple discoloration of the skin (ears, flanks, abdomen), sometimes vomiting or bloody diarrhoea — and, in the acute form, sudden deaths across a pen within days. The transmission routes are as important as the signs: contaminated swill, vehicles, equipment, visitors, and contact with wild boar. Every unexplained death in a backyard or commercial herd is, under Romanian rules, a reason to call the veterinarian — not to bury quietly and hope.

Sheep and goats

Peste des petits ruminants: the lesson of 2024

Until the summer of 2024, peste des petits ruminants (PPR) — “goat plague” — was a disease Romanian farmers read about. Then, on 19 July 2024, Romania confirmed its first cases ever, in Tulcea county. Within weeks there were 56 outbreaks across Tulcea, Constanța and Timiș, and by the end of August 236,082 sheep and goats had been killed under the control measures — entire flocks, including tens of thousands of healthy animals, because that is what stamping out a virus with up to 70% mortality and no treatment requires.

WOAH describes the early signs as fever, depression and loss of appetite, followed by discharge from the eyes and nose, erosions and sores in the mouth, foul-smelling diarrhoea and pneumonia. In its early days it is easy to mistake for pasteurellosis or a heavy parasite burden — which is exactly how it buys itself time to spread. The 2024 epidemic is the argument for the opposite reflex: unusual fever plus mouth lesions plus diarrhoea in sheep or goats is a same-day call to the veterinarian.

Cattle

Lumpy skin disease: the new arrival from the west

Lumpy skin disease (LSD) burned through the Balkans in 2016 and was beaten back with vaccination. In the summer of 2025 it returned to Europe from an unexpected direction: Italy notified an outbreak in Sardinia on 23 June 2025, France confirmed its first cases in history days later — growing to over a hundred outbreaks across eleven departments — and Spain followed. LSD is spread by biting insects, which makes the warm months the risk season and makes it indifferent to fences and paperwork.

The signs WOAH describes: firm skin nodules of one to five centimetres — typically on the head, neck, udder and legs — with fever, swollen lymph nodes, tearing eyes and a marked drop in milk. Mortality is usually low; the economic damage — lost milk, damaged hides, abortions, months of trade restrictions — is not. It is a notifiable disease: nodules plus fever in cattle is a call, not a wait.

Cattle

BVD: the disease you do not see

Bovine viral diarrhoea (BVD) is the least dramatic name on this list and one of the most expensive. The Merck Veterinary Manual notes that the most common form of infection is inapparent — no visible signs at all — while the virus taxes the herd through returns to service, abortions, weak or malformed calves, and immunosuppression that opens the door to every other pathogen in the barn. Economic studies have measured direct losses ranging from under a dollar to several hundred US dollars per animal depending on the herd and country.

The engine of the disease is the persistently infected (PI) animal: a calf infected in the womb that looks normal, sheds virus its whole life, and reinfects everything around it. That is why much of Europe — Scandinavia first, from the 1990s — has run eradication programmes built on testing and removing PI animals rather than treating the sick. Romania has no mandatory national programme, which leaves the testing decision where the sources put it: in a conversation between the farmer and the veterinarian, triggered by the fertility-and-weak-calves pattern, not by a dramatic outbreak that never comes.

Cattle

IBR: the virus that stays for life

Infectious bovine rhinotracheitis (IBR) is caused by bovine herpesvirus 1, and the herpesvirus part is the point: as the reference manuals describe, an infected animal carries the virus latently for life and can start shedding again under stress — transport, calving, mixing groups. The visible episodes are fever, nasal discharge, a red “pink-eye” conjunctivitis, coughing and, in pregnant cows, abortions.

The quiet cost is commercial as much as clinical. Several European countries and regions have eradicated IBR or run official control programmes, and they impose conditions on live cattle from countries that have not — a list that includes Romania. For an exporting or breeding herd, the sources describe the practical toolkit as testing, culling or vaccination with marker vaccines that let vaccinated animals be told apart from infected ones — another testing-strategy conversation with the veterinarian, before the borders make it urgent.

Pigs

PRRS: the billion-dollar syndrome

Porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS) is what its name says: reproductive failure in sows — late abortions, premature farrowings, litters of stillborn and mummified piglets — and pneumonia and slow growth in the piglets that survive. The Iowa State University analysis published in 2024 put its cost to the US industry alone at 1.2 billion US dollars per year for 2016–2020 — an 80% increase over the previous decade, in the world’s most biosecure production systems. The virus is endemic across Europe, Romania included.

The Merck Veterinary Manual describes no effective treatment and only partial protection from vaccines — which moves the weight onto recognising the pattern early: a cluster of late abortions, a rise in stillbirths, nursery pigs that cough and lag. Each event alone looks like ordinary farm trouble; the sources describe the pattern across weeks as the signal worth investigating with laboratory diagnostics rather than absorbing as normal losses.

The tool

What the farmer can do — and where Lares fits

Across all seven diseases, the sources converge on three habits. Know the early signs for the species you keep — the paragraphs above are the short version; the WOAH disease cards and the reference manuals are the long one. Take biosecurity seriously — the routes EFSA and WOAH document are unglamorous: swill, boots, vehicles, new animals mixed without quarantine, wild boar contact. And report suspicion the same day — for the four notifiable diseases the law requires it, and for the other three the pattern you report to your veterinarian is what turns “bad luck” into a diagnosis (the clinic directory is the fastest route to one).

Lares Pecoris is built for the conversation that follows. It is a veterinary reference that answers in Romanian with the source attached — guidelines, WOAH and EU regulatory documents, product monographs — and says plainly when no source in its corpus supports an answer. It does not replace the veterinarian, and it does not replace the DSVSA; it makes the “what do the guidelines actually say?” step fast, citable and available at the barn door. The dose calculator answers with published, cited dosing when a treatment does exist and has been prescribed.

Questions farmers ask

Frequently asked questions

What should I do if I suspect foot-and-mouth or African swine fever? These are notifiable diseases: the law requires immediate notification of the veterinarian and the county DSVSA at first suspicion, and the control frameworks describe stopping all movements on and off the holding until they arrive. Early reporting is what keeps one farm from becoming a county.

Is there a treatment for African swine fever? No — WOAH describes no treatment, and no vaccine is authorised in the EU at the time of writing. Control is culling, restrictions and biosecurity, which is why prevention and reporting carry the entire weight.

Can people catch these diseases? The sources describe ASF, PPR and LSD as not infecting humans, and FMD as not a public health threat. The danger is to animals, farms and trade — one confirmed case suspends export status across large areas.

How do I tell BVD, IBR or PRRS from ordinary problems? By eye, usually not at all. The manuals describe laboratory testing as the way these viruses are confirmed and the recurring pattern — returns to service, abortions, weak newborns, recurring pneumonia — as the reason to test, together with your veterinarian.

The takeaway

In short

Hungary’s 2025 foot-and-mouth outbreak began, like every epidemic on this list, with a first animal on a first day on a single farm. The difference between a contained outbreak and a national catastrophe is measured in days, and the first of those days belongs to whoever walks the barn every morning. The sources cannot walk it for you — but they can tell you, precisely and checkably, what deserves a phone call.

That is the standard this reference holds every answer to: the claim, with the document it came from — and a plain “I don’t know” when no document supports one. Your veterinarian is one search away in the clinic directory; the seven diseases above are the reason to have that number saved before the morning you need it.

larespecoris.vet — sourced, or silent.