Contagious animal diseases in Europe and the rest of the world, July 2005
18 July 2005, A cry for helpPeople 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 all kinds of diseases, especially those that can cause an epidemic. And with success. The plague and smallpox and various kinds of influenza have been rooted out by worldwide vaccination.
For years livestock was vaccinated for 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 than to vaccinate all livestock year after year. The latest outbreaks however made very clear that the costs of an outbreak are not limited to the costs of killing thousands of animals and replacing them after the outbreak. All side-trade like transport, livestock farms in not-infected areas, slaughter, tourism and many more linked lines of business were greatly duped by the drastic measures necessary to control the disease outbreak.
In the past years many regulations were issued according to the non-vaccination programme. For instance, in the years before, products from vaccinated animals were never considered to be a problem to public health and they still are not. Yet many countries had their borders closed to vaccinated meat and other such products, in order to protect their own status of disease free country.
And now, though the OIE has stated that vaccinated products are absolutely safe, export- and import-regulations make it ‘impossible’ to reinstate the vaccination programme, because economics are stronger than logic and animal welfare.
But the pressure from the public will never again allow governments to issue draconic measures like they did before. It is time that all smallholders, hobby-holders and breeders associations in all of Europe join forces to break the embargo on vaccinated products and demand a vaccination programme once more.
Smallholders will not stand for losing their animals again when there is an alternative. Vaccination!!