Summer is fast approaching, and for many Americans, summer means vacation. If you will be traveling overseas, you need to remember a few travel tips.

These tips are not geared to improving a traveler's vacation, but to ensuring the health of American livestock.

Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) outbreaks are ongoing around the world, but most notably in England and other parts of Europe. To prevent the spread of this highly contagious livestock disease into the United States, travelers returning from FMD-infected areas should take the following precautions.

• Avoid farms, sale barns, stockyards, animal laboratories, packing houses, zoos, fairs or other animal facilities for five days prior to travel.
• Before returning to the United States, launder or dry-clean all clothing and outerwear. All dirt and soil should be removed from shoes by thorough cleaning prior to wiping with a cloth dampened with a bleach solution (5 tablespoons of household bleach in 1 gallon of water). Luggage and personal items (including watches, cameras, laptops, CD players and cell phones), if soiled, should be wiped with a cloth dampened with a bleach solution.
• Avoid contact with livestock or wildlife for five days after arrival in the United States.
• Extra precautionary measures should be taken by people traveling from farms in infected locales to visit or work on farms in the United States. It is advisable that employers or sponsors provide arriving travelers with a clean set of clothing that can be worn after the visitor showers and shampoos thoroughly. Visitor's traveling clothes should be laundered or dry-cleaned immediately. Off-farm activities should be scheduled for the visitor's first five days in the country, and contact with livestock or wildlife should be strictly avoided.

Also, you should remember you are prohibited from carrying into the United States any agricultural products, particularly animal products that could spread the disease.

Passengers are required to identify any farm contact to Customs and USDA officials. All baggage is subject to inspection. Violations could result in penalties of up to $1,000.

When you return to the United States from an FMD-infected area, you may find yourself under more scrutiny from U.S. Department of Agriculture inspectors than you might have seen in the past. Additional USDA inspectors and dog teams have joined the regular inspection force to check incoming flights and passengers.

The dog teams working at a number of the nation's international airports are part of the USDA Beagle Brigade. The Beagle Brigade is a special unit of passively trained detector dogs in bright green jackets. The beagles sniff out prohibited fruit and meat in the luggage of passengers arriving from overseas.

Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) is not considered a human health risk, but humans can carry the virus on their clothing, shoes, body (particularly the throat and nasal passages) and personal items. The disease is an extremely contagious and economically devastating disease. It spreads easily among cloven-hoofed animals such as cattle, sheep, pigs, goats and deer.

The United States has been free of FMD since 1929.

SOURCE: USDA, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service