French and Dutch to vaccinate but Defra still not in favour

The French and Dutch have been given the go-ahead to begin vaccinating poultry against avian influenza.

The decision was reached this week at a meeting of the EU’s Standing Committee on the Food Chain and Animal Health (SCoFCAH) and the Netherlands proposes to immediately vaccinate all backyard flocks and free range laying hens over seven weeks old (up to 8 million birds).

The Dutch consider their country is at particularly high risk of infection from avian influenza due to having a very concentrated poultry population, extensive aquatic area and being a cross roads for several main migratory routes for wild birds, along with the impracticality of housing outdoor flocks.

Meanwhile, as of next month, France will begin vaccinating just geese and ducks over 3-4 weeks old (around 900,000 birds) in three Departments on the Atlantic coast.

But in the UK the government is still not in favour of vaccination and following the SCoFCAH meeting deputy chief veterinary officer Fred Landeg said the priority was to ensure that Defra was able to eradicate avian influenza as swiftly and effectively as possible.

“Early detection and slaughter of infected birds and dangerous contacts, and the imposition of movement controls around the infected premises, provide the most effective method of achieving this,” said Mr Landeg. “We have eradicated previous outbreaks of high pathogenic avian influenza successfully in domestic birds using this method.

“Vaccination offers potential benefits but currently available vaccines are too limited to provide a general solution,” he went on. “Crucially, though these vaccines protect against disease, they will not prevent birds from becoming infected and shedding virus. Because the symptoms of disease would be masked, the hidden presence of disease would pose a serious problem.

“The vaccines also have severe practical limitations in that they need to be delivered by individually injecting each bird. It can take up to three weeks for the birds to develop optimum protective immunity and some poultry require two doses.”

Defra does say, however, that it will keep its policy under review as vaccine manufacturers continue to develop their range of products.