KEY POINTS:
Should herds get shots to guard against potentially devastating outbreaks?
Why are we asking this question now?
Foot-and-mouth disease has come back to Britain, just six years after the last outbreak laid waste to the rural economy, costing the country an estimated £8.5 billion ($22.6 billion) in lost exports and the impact on tourism. Its return has revived the argument over how best to combat a disease that is harmless to humans, but hugely infectious among cattle and pigs.
If the disease spreads beyond the Surrey farm where it was identified on Friday the Government's preferred strategy would be to attempt to control the spread through mass slaughter of animals. But there are large numbers of critics who favour inoculation as a more reliable way of ensuring the disease is eradicated from the country.
The National Farmers Union, traditionally hostile to vaccination, has acknowledged that it might have to play a part in tackling the disease this time.
What lessons were learned from the 2001 epidemic?
The Ministry of Agriculture banned animal movements, imposed restrictions on public access to the countryside and ordered the cull of 2.4 million cows, pigs and sheep, but was against vaccination.
The Anderson inquiry into the crisis said emergency vaccination should be "an option available" in future, although it ruled out emergency vaccination of healthy animals.
The Northumberland report into the 1967 outbreak had reached the same conclusion, backing the future use of "ring-vaccination" (inoculating all livestock in the area around infected animals).
Do they vaccinate in other countries?
Culling remains the preferred option across the EU for containing FMD, although member states are allowed to vaccinate livestock in the event of an outbreak of the disease.
In 2001, when some cases of the disease appeared to spread from Britain to the Netherlands, the Dutch Government gave the go-ahead to the vaccination of some 100,000 animals.
Supporters of immunisation also point to comprehensive vaccination in the mid-1990s in Argentina and Uruguay. After the programmes ended, foot and mouth returned to both countries.
Why the reluctance to vaccinate?
Perhaps because Britain is an island nation, it has instinctively preferred to slaughter out the disease, with the NFU leading voices against vaccination. They maintain that vaccination is expensive and time-consuming as it needs to be repeated every six months and is required for each new generation of animals. They also say there are doubts that vaccination is effective. In addition, the export of British beef would be banned for six months. The industry worries that resorting to vaccination would have sent out a damaging deterrent message to would-be importers of British meat.
The World Organisation for Animal Health places countries into three groups: those where FMD is present, those free of the disease through vaccination and those free of it without immunisation. Britain is in the final category and therefore has access to the most lucrative export markets. The Meat and Livestock Commission calculated that the export ban prompted by the outbreak will cost the red meat industry around £10 million per week.
Does vaccination have problems?
It has had since the early days of vaccination, when scientists inadvertently caused outbreaks by using dead samples of foot and mouth to inoculate livestock.
There can be a delay to correctly distinguish between the variations of the disease: the 01 BFS67 strain discovered in Surrey is different from the form that swept across Britain six years ago.
A vaccinated animal cannot be moved for a time because it can still be a carrier of the infection. Farmers might not be able to afford the vaccine.
What do supporters of vaccination say?
They counter that biotechnology is fast advancing and animals are routinely vaccinated against other diseases.
They say meat and dairy products from vaccinated livestock is eaten and that culling millions of healthy animals is a waste. The Food Standards Agency has confirmed that eating animals that have been vaccinated is safe.
Moreover, the difficulties of vaccination would be far outweighed by a repeat of the devastating images of funeral pyres of dead animals being flashed around the world for the second time in six years.
Where do vaccines come from?
Ironically from the Pirbright research laboratory that has been blamed for the outbreak on Woolfords Farm, Elstead 6.5km away.
Merial, the American-based pharmaceuticals company which runs the site and denies being responsible for the crisis, had been producing vaccines for export to South America and Turkey. Merial is the supplier of the UK vaccine bank.
- Independent
