From:									     www.sheepdrove.com

Why We Need To Cull Ben Gill!

During the last few weeks there has been a great deal of misunderstanding about the role vaccination can play in bringing the Foot and Mouth epidemic under control. A sorry cocktail of fiction has begun to overpower the facts.

An example is the interview given by Ben Gill, the President of the National Farmers Union, on BBC Business Breakfast on 27/03/01. Below we use Ben Gill's words taken from a transcript of the programme to separate fiction from fact.

FICTION

According to Ben Gill ".there's a kind of feeling that vaccination's a soft option, you just go and you do a few injections, you've cracked it, you've no more problems, that's not the reality."

FACT

True. Vaccination is not a soft option. But it is an effective tool we can use alongside slaughter to bring the disease under control. Whilst we turn our backs on the use of vaccination we are simply not doing all we can to bring this disease under control.

FICTION

Ben Gill believes that: " First of all you need multiple injections, you have a primary injection, a booster after one month and then every six months;"

FACT

This is a travesty. In an optimal and ongoing immunisation regime a booster injection about a month after the primary injection would be recommended. But this is not the situation here. In the UK, we are arguing for an emergency, high potency vaccine used alongside slaughtering. In Algeria in 1999 the outbreak was brought under control before the time came to give the booster and the vast majority of cattle only received the initial injection.

The intention is to eradicate FMD and as long as infection is stamped out within 6 months, effective screening of animals is completed and the disease has not spread into wildlife there is unlikely to be a need for booster vaccination. But the longer vaccination is delayed the more difficult the task will be.

FICTION

According to Ben Gill: vaccination is "not effective for at least 15 days and it could be even longer,"

FACT

This is very misleading. With high payload emergency vaccines protection can occur between 2 and 4 days of the primary injection, against airborne challenge. Experimental studies indicate clinical protection and reduction in virus shedding occurs quickly. The longer the period that elapses between vaccination and disease challenge, the higher the protection.

It is true that we should assume that between 7 and 14 days post immunisation in cattle needs to elapse before we can assume a high proportion of animals will have sufficient immunity that little virus will be transmitted by them after disease challenge. But we know that in both pigs and cattle immunisation dramatically reduces the titre and duration of virus excretion.

FICTION

Ben Gill asserts that: "it's not 100 per cent effective, if you take parts of the world such as Saudi Arabia that've relied on vaccination they've had breakdowns, big breakdowns with foot-and-mouth in the last few weeks with this same strain of virus."

FACT

Of course, vaccination by itself is not the total answer. Appropriate slaughter is essential, as are movement controls and traceability. But quoting Saudi Arabia is a quote too far.

British conditions are different from Saudi Arabia, where there are some huge, irrigated cattle farms with up to 15,000 animals per unit, in close contact. The situation is really an extreme case of animal husbandry and under such conditions of close contact, vaccination is often not sufficient by itself if eradication is the aim. A wide variety of vaccines have been used, and some have dubious standards of quality assurance and come from a range of countries and require to protect against a range of virus types. We are NOT proposing living with the disease, and we are dealing with one virus type.

FICTION

The farmer's President Ben Gill goes on to state that vaccination: ". isn't the solution it's made out to be and at the end of the day the animals have to be slaughtered because they're indistinguishable from those that have foot-and-mouth when you do blood tests."

FACT

Scientifically validated tests exist in Europe, South America and the US. These can distinguish between antibodies acquired from vaccination from those occurring as a result of infection. Indeed a company Intervet announced that they were commercially launching such a test on the day Mr Gill made his remarks.

FICTION

Ben Gill states that: "at the moment I do not see the case for vaccination as a solution to this problem, we need to rid ourselves of this disease, not push it back into the wilds of the countryside where it will harbour in wild animals and be a continual irritant and. and depressant to our farm population."

FACT

Those arguing for vaccination are not proposing that we live with FMD. We are proposing additional measures to reduce the oxygen supply to the fire -so that it can be stamped out before sparks fly off to affect wild animals. Intensive screening will be needed in any event to find the last pocket of infection. Non-vaccination is more likely to see wildlife getting infected; the more the virus can multiply in any animal, the higher the risk to near and far.

FICTION

Ben Gill finishes: ".what we're about is trying to get ahead of this disease, ahead to stop it, stop it spreading ever outwards."

FACT

We all agree with that. But the fact is that while we refuse to use vaccination, for whatever reason we are not doing all we can to get ahead of this disease and bring it under control. 

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