This is what the vets in Europe are saying, and a letter from a group of British Vets.

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Here are email addresses of veterinary associations. please write to them.

British Vetinary Association
bvahq@bva.co.uk

Sheep Vetinary Society
secretariat@sheepvetsoc.org.uk

The British Cattle Veterinary Association
office@cattlevet.co.uk

The Federation of Veterinarians in Europe (FVE) and more specifically its section the Union Europienne des Praticiens Vétérinaires (UEVP) is the professional organisation of veterinary surgeons in all European countries, representing over 100.000 veterinarians. The FVE/UEVP is deeply worried about the present situation in Europe with regard to the food and mouth disease (FMD). The Board of FVE/UEVP addresses the PVC of the European Commission and all European governments to reconsider the existing non-vaccination policy of the EU.

Today's non-vaccination policy has been in existence since ten years. The reasons for this policy have been mainly economical (costs of vaccination vs. costs of stamping out + loss of possibilities for export to third countries). In the 1980s economical calculations have shown a non-vaccination policy to be less expensive than a vaccination policy. Today's experiences, however, show otherwise. European citizens and farmers alike show disgust at the destruction of hundreds of thousands of mainly healthy animals which is the consequence of the non-vaccination policy. Nowadays the welfare of animals is a far more important issue than it has been 15 years ago. The dangers of infection with FMD have been growing due to the increasing mobility of people all over the world. Economic losses due to recreational restrictions have a huge impact on the economical calculations. The EU ambition to get rid of the FMD virus by a non-vaccination policy combined with a stand still and the stamping out of great numbers of animals infuriates virtually every European citizen.

The veterinary practitioners of the FVE/UEVP have been questioning the non-vaccination policy many times with the European authorities. They have feared today's situation in the UK, France, the Netherlands and Ireland, and have warned their governments. Without turning a blind eye to the economic consequences they have pleaded reconsideration of the non-vaccination policy. Today the veterinarians of the FVE/UEVP declare that for reasons of animal welfare, animal health and food supply, today's non-vaccination policy with regard to FMD must be abolished immediately. This is a matter of civilisation and not of economics only.

An open letter from Willem Schaftenaar DVM, Rotterdam Zoo and Chairman of the Committee of Zoo Veterinarians of the Royal Dutch Veterinary Association.

Rotterdam, March 21, 2001

1. To earn more money in the animal production sector through exports of meat and milk products to the United States, Japan and Canada. Conditions: a non-vaccination policy

or

2. Continue the old policy of annual vaccination without the attractive export bonus.

From a financial perspective it was argued the animal production sector and its associated sectors, would earn a nice amount of money even if there were a FMD outbreak once every 10 years. The politicians at that time chose for a non-vaccination policy and were supported by several agricultural sectors. This policy became European law and is now irrevocable, isn’t it? This is how present policy is explained to consumers of livestock products.

By not vaccinating our livestock since 1991, we now have a livestock population that has become naïve. There is not a single animal in the European Union that has antibodies against FMD. This is the result of the conditions imposed by United States, Japan and Canada in return for allowing us to export meat and milk products to these countries!

In the recent months we have seen the fruits of this policy: hundreds of thousands animals have been destroyed in the UK which has always been a great advocate of the non-vaccination policy. Only a small percentage of these animals were actually suffering from FMD. Now that the virus has appeared in the Netherlands, there is panic. Transportation of animals has been banned and then lifted for animal welfare reasons only to be banned again when the threat becomes more urgent. The air is full of political wrangling. Political parties try to use the chaotic situation for their own interests. The Minister of Agriculture tries to place the vaccination policy on the European agenda and is despised when his colleagues do not want to listen to him.

This is a virus. It is one of the most contagious viruses. This virus can maintain itself in apparently healthy carriers for a long time. In an animal population that has never been in contact with it or the vaccine-virus it can spread rapidly. In general the damage is restricted. For the animals FMD is –generally speaking – less serious than a salmonella infection. It is harmless for humans. The few cases that affected humans were mild.

A few hours (or days) before the animal starts showing symptoms (some animals never show clinical signs at all!), the virus has already been excreted massively. This means that every ban on transport always comes too late. It also means, that killing all animals on a farm always comes too late. Both measures will help to slow down the FMD epidemic, but they are not sufficient. Furthermore, there is a real chance that wild animals such as deer and swine are also affected. The virus can easily evade the stamping out policy used in the animal production industry and survive for an indeterminate period of time in wild animals and natural carriers. Even the most draconian methods cannot prevent this.

A vaccine exists. In the past, cattle were vaccinated every year. This provided reasonable protection. Repeating the vaccination after 6 months was a better option, but once a year helped to prevent mass outbreaks. If an outbreak occurred quick ring-vaccination and the destruction of a few herds was sufficient to control the outbreak.

Times have changed. More and more animals are being transported all over the world. The risk of spreading FMD has increased. The solution seems so simple: vaccination of all FMD-susceptible animals as the Office International des Epizooties (OIE) has advised. This means vaccination twice a year will help stop the virus spreading. Infection trials have shown that vaccinated animals do not transmit the virus to non-vaccinated, susceptible animals. This simple solution is every epidemiologist’s dream. USA, Japan and Canada will close their borders? Sorry, but was not our intention to reduce agricultural production in Western Europe? “Small-scale farming and a reduction in the number of farms”, politicians have repeatedly told us.

The non-vaccination policy leads to mass destruction of healthy livestock and animals that suffer from a self-curable disease. This policy has transgressed the border of civilization. In this world, overproduction of dung, meat, milk and butter is being subsidized and the whole is based on a policy of ‘Russian roulette’. FMD is a permit to kill animals once every 10 years pushing farmers into an abyss of misery. More than 560 farms have been ‘cleaned’. Each mass culling harbours a personal drama. Suicide is not an exception. Politicians rightfully support the culling of cattle to prevent people from getting Creutzfeldt Jakobs Disease – millions have been spent on this operation – but at the same time, these politicians are responsible for the tragedy that comes to farmers when their animals are suspected of FMD. Or is suicide from despair less serious than dying from Creutzfeldt Jakobs Disease?

Ministers of Agriculture are advised by their agricultural economists and veterinarians. Those who have been trained in veterinary science know how the FMD virus behaves. They are supposed to know the epidemiology of FMD. They are supposed to know that a non-vaccinated herd is a ready prey for the virus. These people are trained to guarantee the welfare of animals. Their duty is not to the economists with their chilly paper calculations showing that an increase in profit for a limited number of farmers over a 10-year-period can justify the extent of the drama now taking place. These experts, schooled in medicine, should give their ministers advice based on knowledge. FMD cannot be banned with the tools we are using now. At this moment, the UK has more natural carriers of FMD than it has had for 40 years.

Willem Schaftenaar DVM, Rotterdam Zoo and Chairman of the Committee of Zoo Veterinarians of the Royal Dutch Veterinary Association.

Letter to the Editor of The Times newspaper.

3rd April

To the Editor of the Times

Dear Sir

I am a retired clinical virologist living on a small organic farm in the Brecon Beacons National Park. I would very much like to see accurate information in the public domain on the use of vaccination to control and eliminate FMD. The only options publicly raised are laughter and ring vaccination with culling of vaccinated animals.

I think Prof Fred Brown, erstwhile of Pirbright and now Professor at Yale and at the US Dept of Agriculture at Plum Island New York and Prof Roy Anderson at Imperial College could make a well-informed scientific assessment of vaccination. Prof Roy Anderson put forward his model on Newsnight for the slaughter only strategy. Pointedly, Jeremy Paxman did not ask him, nor I presume did the government, to present his analysis on vaccination.

It is not too late to vaccinate. I would say that it was about time we did vaccinate- without further delay. There is no intrinsic necessity to cull vaccinated animals. The vaccine is a dose of protein (a killed virus) and a vaccinated animal would be safe to eat. We eat them all the time.

A systematic vaccination policy could be devised, regionally or country wide, to control and eradicate this widespread outbreak of FMD.

There is no evidence that MAFF or the NFU have considered a widespread outbreak of FMD in this country. The most modern tools for controlling and eliminating this virus have not been brought to bear. Nor have they been factually presented and discussed. In fact they seem to be suppressed and misinformation on vaccine circulates widely. We might as well be back in 1967, or much earlier, as we have applied this primitive strategy of slaughter and burning less effectively now than then.

Epidemiological modeling has not been done. The programme from NZ was not installed before we were well into this outbreak. Though Pirbright have sequenced this outbreak virus (a routine procedure now with molecular biology advances in the last 33 years) and it is shown to be so similar to the vaccine stock strain that the vaccine could be expected to work efficiently, we have not yet allowed the use of a single dose of vaccine in this country.

Modern antibody tests and virus detection tests are available if needed. The antibody response to vaccine can be distinguished from that to the 'wild' virus infection. Tiny amounts of specific viral RNA can be detected by the polymerase chain reaction to identify carrier animals.

There is extensive experience in human infections of using vaccines to control virus infections. Vaccines are never perfect but can be good enough.

Roy Anderson is an expert in modeling such vaccine strategies. If humans are the only infected species vaccination can eliminate the virus from countries, continents or even the world as in the case of smallpox. Examples are poliovirus (killed or live vaccines) measles, mumps, rubella (all live vaccines), and hepatitis B (a recombinant protein, essentially no different from a killed vaccine). Other vaccines such as influenza, Japanese B encephalitis and rabies (all killed vaccines) are used to protect humans even though the virus cannot be eliminated from the animal or bird population. Animal viruses, rinderpest, rabies (a live vaccine for foxes in Europe) and FMD are examples where control and elimination using vaccination strategies have been successful in regions, or in the case of rinderpest as part of a worldwide campaign!

Neither the infection status of an animal nor the persistence for a while of virus in the environment and in carrier animals, as happens with poliovirus for example, need deflect a systematic vaccination strategy.

The reasons why vaccination against FMD has not been openly and fully evaluated are economic and historic. Can we not move forward in the 21st century to vaccination against FMD instead of funeral pyres?

Yours sincerely

Ruth Watkins