Herd immunityIn 2001, there were good reasons to hesitate on vaccination, but today it could eliminate the risk of a foot and mouth epidemic at a stroke.
This new outbreak of foot and mouth disease (two new cases now confirmed) is already a drama, but it need not become the crisis as long as the infection is not allowed to escalate into an epidemic. Everything is in place to prevent it, but every day a decision is deferred, the risk increases that the disease will spread to other farmed animals or, worse still, to the deer that roam over large areas of Surrey.
In the origins of this outbreak at the Pirbright research site lie the obvious solution: vaccinate. I agree with Simon Jenkins at least on that much, although I am less convinced that a vaccination programme could be agreed on a cooperative basis between farmers with enough speed and efficiency - while only someone whose soul belongs to the 18th century could so casually dismiss the government’s role in negotiating with the rest of Europe in order to minimise the damage to agricultural exports.
In 2001, the outbreak was an epidemic before it was even spotted. This time, it has been, it seems, quickly picked up. Curiously, the failure of culling of infected and neighbouring sheep and cattle to contain the outbreak encourages some to speculate about killing more animals. No one, though, imagines the wholesale slaughter of Surrey’s cloven-footed animal population (only cloven-footed animals succumb) is possible. That leaves strategic vaccination.
If all the vulnerable animals in the 10km protection zone were quickly vaccinated, and thus immune within about four days, they would act as a firebreak against the spread of the disease. Six years ago, such a scheme was rejected. The test to distinguish between vaccinated and infected animals was unreliable.
That is one reason why the Netherlands in 2001, having had the misfortune to import foot and mouth from the UK, yet having contained it through a mass vaccination programme of 100,000 animals in three days, subsequently slaughtered them. But now, the farming ministry’s website says there are no technical barriers to vaccination. Their hardest call is a judgment about the cost of a six-month ban on meat exports from vaccinated animals against three months for infected ones. But it is a lot easier to make that call when culling has been tried and has failed.
Defra has the vaccine (since its manufacture led to the outbreak). The experience of 2001 means it can muster the people to administer it. The farming lobbyists at the NFU say they are agnostic. If ever there was a moment to turn a challenge into an opportunity, surely this is it.
