Public health worldwide must not be jeopardized by economic politics
27 July 2005, press releasePeople have battled against epidemics for centuries. Until vaccines were discovered, the battle was never won. During the past decades people and animals have been vaccinated against many diseases, especially those causing epidemics. There have been great successes with this approach, such as the world-wide eradication of smallpox. Similarly yearly influenza vaccination has saved many lives. For years livestock were vaccinated against various diseases like Avian Influenza and FMD and Swine Fever.
Then ‘Trade and Economy’ decided that it would be cheaper to have an outbreak every 10 years rather than to vaccinate all livestock year after year.
Recent outbreaks have, however, made it very clear that the costs of an outbreak are not only limited to the costs of killing hundreds of thousands of animals and replacing them after the outbreak. Associated trade like transport, livestock farms in unaffected areas, slaughterhouses, tourism as well as hobby-holdings are also greatly damaged by the drastic measures put in place to control these outbreaks.
In the past years many regulations were issued according to the non-vaccination programme. For instance prior to 1992, products from vaccinated animals were not considered to be a public health hazard (and they are not). Yet, after 1992, many countries closed their borders to meat from vaccinated animals and similar products, to protect, for solely commercial reasons, their status of “disease free country”.
Although the OIE has stated that vaccinated products are absolutely safe, export- and import-regulations make it difficult to reinstate the vaccination programme, because economic imperatives appear stronger than logic and animal welfare.
But, things have changed. Public pressure will not allow governments to enact these kinds of draconian measures.
By now we realise worldwide that without vaccination avian influenza cannot be controlled in Asia. It has become a serious threat to humans. Many people in Asia have already died from an infection of AI. It is only a matter of time before the virus mutates to cause a pandemic like Spanish Flu in the post First World War years, when millions of people died.
We know how to fight viruses. Vaccination! We have successfully done so before.
It is time for smallholders, hobby-holders and breeders associations in all Europe to join forces to break the embargo on vaccinated products and demand a vaccination programme to be reinstated again. If ‘Trade and Economy’ do not accept how serious the situation is, then we – smallholders - must set the example.
So let’s start in Europe and get organised to reinstate the vaccination programme for the health of people and animals.