FMD research shows ‘window of opportunity’
Scientists have engaged in an academic discussion on the degree of infectiousness of Foot-and-Mouth Disease (FMD) in cattle. Their findings question the aggressive stamping out approach usually applied to deal with an FMD outbreak in non-vaccination zones.
An article was published May 2011 in the scientific journal Science, stating that the infectious period in FMD is shorter (mean 1.7 days) than currently realised, and cows are not infectious until, on average, 0.5 days after clinical signs appear.
With this comes a so-called ‘window of opportunity’ between the point when a cow becomes infected with the FMD virus and the time when she is able to transmit the virus to another animal. The scientists said that this discovery, combined with the realisation that cattle are only infectious for about a two-day period, means it should be possible to identify infected animals and eliminate them from a herd before they can pass on the infection.
The study was conducted by researchers at the Pirbright Laboratory in Woking, UK, part of the UK Institute for Animal Health. They examined a smaller, localised outbreak of FMD in 2007 on a nearby farm to study how the virus is transmitted.
If tests for detecting the virus can be made that are cheap enough and fast enough to be used by farmers in the field, epidemics could be controlled without having to cull huge numbers of uninfected cattle, as happens now.
