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Possible new FMD vaccine createdBy Michael Fisher Golden Plains Area Livestock Extension Agent The United States has not experienced an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease since 1929. Yet, we have watched as the disease has wreaked havoc in other countries. Many of these have been places that we conduct regular trade with and have symbiotic travel agreements with. Saudi Arabia, Argentina, the Netherlands, Kuwait, Uruguay, Malaysia, and Kazakhstan are but a few of the countries that have experience FMD cases in the past ten years. The outbreak that has probably left the largest impression upon current American livestock producers in recent years was probably the 2001 epidemic in Great Britain. Global media services brought that outbreak into our living rooms via television, newspapers, and the Internet. Who among us does not recall mournfully watching the nightly news as the British livestock industry was cremated in fields and pastures throughout the United Kingdom? Nearly 4 million animals (597,000 cattle, 3,219,000 sheep, 142,000 pigs, 2,000 goats, 1,000 deer, and 1,000 other animals) were euthanized and incinerated in an effort to halt the spread of the disease. In the fight against the spread of diseases this is known as the "stamping out" technique. In addition to these losses impacting the livestock industry, the UK's overall economy was hampered due to trade and travel restrictions, as well as a massive cleanup and sanitation effort. It is estimated that the crisis cost $16 billion. As mentioned already, the U.S. has not had a FMD outbreak in almost 80 years. Even back in those days the disease was considered to be a terrible economic blow. The 1914 U.S. outbreak, which began in Michigan and moved to 3,500 farms, across 22 states, via the Chicago stockyards, was estimated to cost $4.5 million. Many fear that it is only a matter of time until we experience the disease first hand once again. Some experts quote our trade policies with infected countries as a possible source for a future outbreak. Others fear that terrorists may attempt to sneak the disease into the U.S. and use it as a weapon to damage our economy and the American spirit. In either case, it would be vital during an outbreak that we isolate the disease, stop its spread, and ensure the safety of livestock outside of the contaminated regions as soon as possible. Many people, agencies, and companies have been examining this over the past few years. The February 2008 edition of Agricultural Research is reporting that a joint research project has developed a new vaccine for protecting cattle, deer, sheep, and swine from FMD. The partnership between USDA-ARS, the Department of Homeland Security, and a biopharmaceutical company (GenVec, Inc.) has yielded a product that is carried in a non-replicating adenovirus. The new vaccine is made without the use of infectious FMD and can be made in current vaccine labs. This new medicine, which is both the first U.S. produced and the first molecular-based FMD vaccine, is currently effective against two of the seven serotypes of the disease. Scientists are hoping to expand its effectiveness to more of the serotypes. Researchers say the new vaccine is fast acting and treated cattle are protected within seven days following treatment. Current studies have shown that cattle maintain this protection at least 21 days, but scientists believe that further research will show treated animals to be safe for a period of six months following a vaccination. If this new vaccine can be made effective to more serotypes and economically produced on a commercial basis, it may be possible to use it as a "ring vaccination" in a future outbreak to prevent wide spread livestock eradication and the economic crisis that follows FMD around the globe. A ring vaccination is the procedure of vaccinating those animals in a surrounding radius of the contamination zone. These vaccinated animals hopefully create a buffer, beyond which the disease cannot spread. Hopefully, discoveries such as this one can one day make foot-and-mouth disease a thing of the past and protect both our livestock and our economy from such disasters. 2/18/08 Date: 2/14/08
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