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Mouth and hoof disease: An animal plague takes its revenge

Countries that vaccinate their animals against foot-and-mouth disease are "unclean." Since they are vaccinated, they must also have the disease, is the logic. This means that they cannot export to "pure" markets. In 1990, the EU decided that they would belong to the "pure" countries. The way they did it was to ban all vaccination of animals. And the result? The export of meat went straight to heaven, and so did the profits.




(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)

It was not the farmers who wanted to stop the vaccination of cloven animals in the EU. Nor was the decision due to a belief that foot-and-mouth disease was eradicated for good. Everyone knew that Europe would at one time or another get a new deal with the plague. Everyone also agreed that it was just a long-standing tradition of vaccinating animals that had helped to weed out the disease in the first place.

- We will stand on the barricades to remove the mandatory vaccination. The moment Europe is defined as a "clean zone", a huge barrier will be overcome. Then we will have access to large markets in the Far East, said the head of one of the meat industry's giants, French Socopa, in May 1990.

One month later, this industry's requirements were turned into current EU law. It happened while the World Health Organization WHO stood on the sidelines and applauded.

A false security

First, the EU eradicated foot-and-mouth disease with vaccine. Then they eradicated the vaccine and got foot-and-mouth disease back. Today, bonfires are burning all over Europe and the smoke is close to the landscape. But the EU still stands on the principle that vaccination should not at least be reintroduced.

In doing so, they have received support from the World Health Organization. The WHO believes that vaccination is not effective. – In a herd of vaccinated animals, there will be cows, sheep or pigs that, even if they look healthy, can be carriers of the infection. Our task is to ensure that animals do not develop antibodies that prevent them from getting the disease while constantly infecting others, it is said from that edge.

Vaccination prevents visible foot-and-mouth disease. But that doesn't stop it from being there. In practice, vaccination means that you can no longer see the difference between healthy and sick animals. In addition, healthy animals receiving the vaccine may develop symptoms that make them look sick.

And in addition to that, the kind of foot-and-mouth disease that is now riding Europe is far more aggressive than previous variants.

Vaccinating the animal will only provide false security, the EU claims. The animal will not develop symptoms of foot-and-mouth disease, but the source of infection will still be there. There are arguments we have heard in the domestic debate as well, and that are debunked by the experts in the field; veterinarians.

- The tragic consequence of vaccination is that the countries that start with it will be banned from international markets. And that for a whole three years.

For the EU, it was the consideration of free trade in meat and animals that led them to give up the vaccine eleven years ago. And it is still the profit motive that makes them in the current situation do not want to reintroduce it. The 1990 decision states that "if new cases of foot-and-mouth disease are confirmed in Europe, and this outbreak proves to be a threat… then comprehensive emergency vaccination can be initiated."

But that was before the "clean area" profit was counted.

Right to heaven

In 1992, EU exports of beef to third countries (countries outside the Union) amounted to 1,3 million tonnes. That was 40 per cent above the 1990 figures. But then came the bullpen, and in 1996 the numbers returned to the old ones.

But pork exports have stayed. In 1999 it was 1.5 million tonnes, and it was three times higher than in 1990.

In the same period, France eight-fold – mad cow-free as it was – doubled its national meat exports to countries outside the EU. This made the country the world's second largest food exporter.

205.000 tonnes of meat to the Japanese market exclusively from this one country.

The effect of stopping vaccination was thus formidable. Countries that had refused to import meat from vaccinated animals opened up, and so did the internal market. The various vaccine regimes before 1990 – Britain, Ireland, Denmark and Greece did not vaccinate then either – had also placed restrictions on intra-EU trade, but from the early 90s the British exported mutton to the entire European Union. It was meat Britain had imported from New Zealand, since neither the British, the French nor anyone else in the EU has any surplus of sheep to export.

In short; food and wildlife crossed continents, and for the first time, Europe was a real part of it. Most of the "new" exports went to Russia, Eastern Europe and the Far East, while live animals went the other way; that is, from the Eastern European countries. In 1993, the EU veterinary authorities began to fear new outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease from the east, and a somewhat awkward attempt at an embargo was launched. But Eastern Europe threatened with countermeasures, and the whole embargo idea was abandoned.

Others must vaccinate

It is part of this story that countries outside Europe have never managed to get rid of the disease. At the time of writing, 30 countries are affected by the virus, and in areas in Africa, Latin America, Asia and the Middle East, the disease is almost endemic, it said.

Recently, the virus broke out in Argentina, which is now at risk of losing an export market worth close to $ 500 million annually. Last year it broke out in Japan, for the first time since 1908.

The United States, which has not had the disease since 1929, has now closed its limits on meat from both Argentina and the EU. The EU, for its part, has closed the limits on meat from the affected areas of France, as well as the United Kingdom, of course.

The EU attaches great importance to the union continuing to have a "disease-free" stamp on its goods – when this round of viruses has been defeated, mind you. Therefore, they will not start a new round of vaccination. But because Western Europe is terrified of infection from other countries, they have long pressured Eastern European countries and countries in North Africa to vaccinate their animals.

Why not vaccine?

Most countries prefer not to vaccinate their animals against foot-and-mouth disease. The main reason for this is that the countries then lose their status as "clean territory." Thus, they also lose export markets.

Like influenza, foot-and-mouth disease comes in seven main variants with many subgroups. Each type requires its vaccine. If an animal is vaccinated against one type, it is not necessarily resistant to another type. The virus that now ravages Europe is a particularly aggressive virus that is likely to come from Asia, experts say.

Vaccinated animals are apparently healthy. But they can still be carriers of the virus. It allows them to infect other animals. The advantage of not vaccinating is that the disease is detected when it first strikes.

Sick animals usually recover. But they lose weight and produce less milk for a long time afterwards. In addition, they abort more often, can become sterile, in some cases paralyzed and can also be infected with infections, the expert claims.

However, the same expertise says nothing about how often this occurs.

Foot-and-mouth disease is extremely contagious. If herds are first affected in one place, there will be a great danger that the disease will spread. The virus can "travel" 60 kilometers over land, and 300 kilometers over sea.

The virus can survive several weeks in animal urine and waste. It can be spread through people who travel by attaching themselves to shoes and clothes. It can survive in frozen meat products and in milk.

Foot and mouth disease affects young animals most severely. Mortality rates can range from 5 to 50 percent.

Foot and mouth disease affects cows, sheep, pigs and goats. But the disease can also spread to hedgehogs, rats and deer. It can also hit animals in the zoo, such as elephants, giraffes and camels. Horses, on the other hand, are immune to the disease. (In extremely rare cases, people may also be affected, but it is not serious and is comparable to a very common flu.)

All this means that most countries will choose to slaughter sick animals and burn them. The argument is that this is the only way to eradicate the disease once it is there. At the same time, everyone seems to agree that it was extensive vaccination of animals that made Europeans able to get rid of the disease for a decade.

It seems clear that preventive vaccine is not one hundred percent effective. But very little is said about the extent to which vaccination actually reduces the risk of infection…

First detected in 1546

Foot-and-mouth disease was first detected in 1546. But until the mid-1900s, the very contagious nature of this disease was ignored. The virus was first isolated and identified in 1897 by two German biologists. A quarter of a century later, two French veterinarians found two variants of the disease, named A and O, after the initial letter in the districts they had been observed.

In 1925, vaccination of animals against the disease began for the first time. It had an immediate preventive effect, although "immunity can sometimes be limited," as it was called. It had long been known that animals that had contracted the virus had to be isolated from other animals and kept away from uninfected areas. Britain was the first to come up with a practical set of rules for isolating animals – this happened as early as the end of the 1800th century – and there was never any talk of mass slaughter to keep the disease at bay.

The last outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in the North American continent was in 1954. After that, it was necessary to eradicate the virus by means of a vaccine. Until the mid-80s, vaccination was a reasonably safe way of keeping the disease at bay.

In 1985, the debate started on whether vaccination was effective. The experts disagreed. But the trade argument weighed heavily, and in 1990 the EU decided to ban all vaccinations (see separate case).

In 1995, the Uruguay Round led to free trade taking precedence over the countries' right to protect themselves against infectious diseases. After this round, it became necessary for all countries to "legitimize why they want to circumvent the rules of a free market." In practice, this meant that countries could no longer close their borders for fear of infection.

For Europe, the vaccination ban caused the disease to reappear in old and new areas. Italy was hit in 1993 by a virus that had spread from Yugoslavia. In 1996, Greece was hit by a virus from Albania. Four years later, last year, the country was hit again, this time by a virus from Turkey.

At the same time, a new virus was emerging from Asia. It hit Japan and Korea in April 2000, went on to Mongolia, Bhutan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Georgia, and ended in Russia. In November last year, the UN Food Program warned the FAO that the infection would end in Europe. On February 19, 2001, the virus came to the UK…

Le Monde, March 9, 2001

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