A vaccination campaign to stop foot-and-mouth disease breaking out in continental Europe is unlikely, because of the impact on Europe's meat exports, according to European agriculture experts.
This is because there is a possibility that vaccinated animals, although free of symptoms, can carry the virus and pass it on to other animals, and therefore countries considered free of the disease refuse to import them.
"A return in Europe to systematic preventive vaccination is almost ruled out, essentially for commercial reasons," said Mr Yves Leforban, a Food and Agriculture Organisation expert on the disease.
"It would amount to putting Europe in a position where it couldn't export (any animals)," Mr Leforban said.
It is possible to export vaccinated animals to countries where foot-and-mouth disease is present, or where food safety controls are less stringent, but not to key markets such as the United States.
Another argument against vaccination is that blood tests to distinguish animals which have received vaccines from animals which have contracted the disease are not recognised internationally. Furthermore, vaccinated animals would have to be destroyed and could not enter the food chain.
Vaccinating against foot-and-mouth was abandoned in Europe in 1992, when the continent was considered free of the disease.
"Resorting to emergency vaccination, limited in time and in space, would be considered only if sanitary measures (destruction of animals, quarantine, restricted movement) proved insufficient to control and end the epidemic, within a reasonable time scale, in areas with a high concentration of breeding farms," according to Mr Leforban.
Available stocks of vaccines are, nevertheless, being counted across Europe.
The EU has at its disposal three emergency stocks of frozen antigens that can be used to make vaccines against foot-and-mouth disease: in Pirbright, Britain, in Lyons, France, and in Brescia, Italy.
Follow up-to-the-minute news of the foot-and-mouth outbreak as it happens on the Irish Times website ireland.com at: www.ireland.com/special/foot-and-mouth
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