The Independent
16 April 2001
TIME TO VACCINATE
LETTER from A Veterinary Surgeon
In Cumbria

Sir,

I am a large-animal veterinary surgeon who feels a need to question the approach to foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) currently being pursued.

The disease here in Cumbria is still spreading quickly and is now being seen on the outlying fells of the Lake District. Cases are being reported from previously uninfected areas around the country, all of which indicates we are far from controlling the disease, whatever the government announcements. At the moment the disease is being spread via sheep, as these are the animals out at grass and are difficult to spot the signs in. Within the next few weeks farmers will be forced, through lack of fodder, to turn their cattle out. I believe this will precipitate a huge increase in cases. This could be prevented if we vaccinate now. And I mean vaccinate the whole country.

The income gained from agricultural exports is approximately equal to that spent on imports (or even less in some accounts). There does not seem to be an argument for maintaining FMD-free status. Add into this the environmental cost of shipping animals and meat around the world and the figures are even more convincing.

FMD does not produce a high mortality and farmers could learn to live with the occasional case that developed where there was vaccine breakdown. I worked in Nepal for a number of years and treated several cases of FMD. Yes, there is some loss of production and some animals undoubtedly suffer for some time but that is also the case for many other diseases encountered on farms. If all animals were vaccinated, these looses would be sporadic.

We have good recording and tracing mechanisms already in place thanks to BSE, so implementing and monitoring vaccination should be possible.

If this policy were followed we would still have to maintain controls (ban on swill feeding, strict controls on meat imports) to keep out other strains of FMD and ensure our vaccine was effective.

The reality is that FMD is now virtually endemic. Vaccination should not be seen as a failure but a reasonable response to reality. It is also an opportunity for us to begin to develop a more sustainable, locally based agricultural economy.

HELEN GOULD
Appleby, Cumbria

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