Originally from: Farmtalking
                        
Thursday 12 June 2003
 
Vaccination is Vital in all Future Foot and Mouth Emergency Plans
 
Plans agreed in Europe today should reduce suffering to farm animals in the event of any future foot and mouth disease (FMD) outbreak and put vaccination at the forefront of an emergency response.
 
The decision, welcomed by the RSPCA, means the new vaccination programme forming the basis of the EU Directive would ensure vaccination was one of the main methods of disease control and would be introduced at the earliest opportunity. But while the RSPCA believes the directive is a step in the right direction more must be done to ensure the horrific 2001 epidemic is not repeated when hundreds of thousands of animals were slaughtered with a number suffering agonising deaths.
 
David McDowell, RSPCA senior veterinary officer, said: "Vaccination would be vital in any future fight to control this potentially devastating disease and reduce suffering to farm animals. Under the new vaccination-led plan fewer farm animals would need to be killed and those that are should be slaughtered to much higher welfare standards than during the 2001 outbreak when numerous alleged incidents of improper slaughter were reported to us."
 
The RSPCA has today urged DEFRA to implement the EU directive following the agreement and warns the government must be prepared at all times for another FMD outbreak.
 
The Society was hit hard during the outbreak with a quarter of its 328 inspectors allocated to assisting suffering animals and well over £1 million of charity funds designated to the crisis.
 
In its response to the National Audit Office last year about the spiralling costs of the FMD outbreak, the Society said that delays in movement licences and welfare disposal schemes, inadequate slaughter supervision and reward for speedy slaughter all led to gross animal suffering during the worst of the FMD crisis. The RSPCA believes that better contingency planning and improved communication could have prevented some of the worst suffering.
 
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