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Vaccine workshop leads veterinarians in foot-and-mouth disease planning.
June 17, 2021
The Institute for Infectious Animal Diseases (IIAD), a unit of Texas A&M AgriLife, and Texas A&M University’s College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences (CVMBS), recently hosted a virtual foot-and-mouth disease, FMD, vaccine tabletop exercise.
The event helped animal health experts from top beef, dairy and swine states collaborate on vaccine plans for their respective states in the case of an FMD outbreak.
If FMD were to impact the U.S., it would be an economically devastating livestock disease. FMD does not affect human health nor food safety. However, it does hit the economy hard, costing billions of dollars in lost trade.
The U.S. has not had an outbreak of FMD since 1929. U.S. government agencies like the U.S. Department of Agriculture, USDA; Customs and Border Protection, CBP; and the Department of Homeland Security, DHS, as well as various Texas A&M University and Texas A&M AgriLife groups work every day to make sure it does not get back into the country.
If FMD does return to the U.S., events like IIAD and CVMBS’ vaccine exercise serve as “fire drills.” They help prepare key stakeholders like state and accredited veterinarians to stop the outbreak quickly and efficiently.
“Preparedness just makes you better able to respond when an event does happen,” said Susan Culp, DVM, Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service veterinarian in the Department of Animal Science within the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and one of the event’s facilitators. She described veterinarians as the “first responders of animal health.”
“We’re like fire and EMTs; we have to do exercises and planning to be prepared in case we actually get into the real thing,” Culp said.
FMD and why it matters
FMD is a viral disease that infects livestock like cattle, pigs, sheep and goats. It also infects wildlife like deer, elk, bison and feral swine. It causes fever and painful sores in the mouths and on the tongues, feet and teats of infected animals, but it is usually non-lethal in adult animals.
The FMD virus does not infect humans. Despite the similarity in the name, FMD is not the same as the human viral disease called “hand, foot and mouth disease” that is common among young children.
FMD significantly reduces livestock’s productivity, making it an important economic threat. Compounding the economic threat of the disease, countries that are FMD-free go to extreme lengths to keep it out. This includes cutting off the trade of beef, dairy, pork and other livestock products with those countries that have it.
Glennon Mays, DVM, CVMBS clinical professor and one of the event’s facilitators, said it is important to raise public awareness of the disease. If an FMD outbreak were to occur in the U.S., there would be immediate trade repercussions.
“We expect we would be restricted from moving our livestock products into those channels of trade that we currently enjoy, as we have in previous situations refused to accept product from countries where foot-and-mouth disease has been diagnosed,” he said.
According to the U.S. Meat Export Federation and the U.S. Dairy Export Council, the U.S. exported $15.4 billion worth of beef, pork and lamb and $6.6 billion worth of dairy products in 2020 alone. This is only part of the value of exports from a single year that could be at risk if the U.S. were to have an FMD outbreak. Trade limitations due to the presence of FMD in a country can last years, if not decades.
The work to keep FMD out
The U.S. is listed by the World Organization for Animal Health as FMD free without vaccination. This is the highest level of safety relative to FMD. Many groups work to keep it that way.