here is a song about it, from the early years of the last century.

There've even been talk of wiping out hedgehogs, because they walk around and don't wipe theirr paws when they stray onto another farm. Meanwhile the wind carries the spores around anyway, but they can't do much about it.

The problem as I understand it is that while it's not in itself a desperately serious disease - animals don't die of normally - they've worked out that slaughtering is cheaper than looking after them, and not having a slaughter policy would bugger up the process of exporting and importing meat and cattle. Which may make economic sense, but it's crazy - the English export beef to France, and the French export it to England and so forth. If we all ate the food produced on the farm up the road, this whole thing wouldn't happen, and we wouldn't be wasting all that energy.