This statement assumes that vaccines are either "fully effective" or "not at all effective". In practice, the 1967 O type vaccine, produced at Merial in July, has been used and is still being used in Turkey to vaccinate against the newest strain of type 'O' The vaccine may not be a perfect match but it offers a degree of protection.
The EU now has an FMD vaccine bank with vaccines offering at least some protection against all FMD type and is regularly updated, thanks to intelligence coming in from countries around the world.
In this FMD outbreak, the vaccine of the appropriate strain (ironically) was available just down the road.

For cattle, two shots are needed when the animal has no immunity at all, as in the UK. In the past, when vaccination was allowed in Europe, cattle older than 6 months were vaccinated only once a year. This did the job.
All the same, this point is irrelevant to a successful use of emergency ring vaccination used to stop the cycle of infection in the UK.
We only need to vaccinate in response to an FMD outbreak. Therefore vaccine is needed only to the one infecting strain of virus, the one serotype. Vaccine works well, the high potency killed vaccine inducing a good immunity within 10 days of vaccination, thus preventing onward spread of the virus because there are no new susceptible animals to infect. It is unlikely the whole country would need to be covered by vaccination, but a zone round each infected premise (or in the Pirbright outbreak, round Pirbright and the 2 infected farms would be all that is required). The more infection spreads and proceeds - perhaps unremarked in the case of sheep flocks for instance - the greater the likelihood of further spread into domesitc and wild animals.

If they run into infection with the very first days after vaccination it is possible for cattle, sheep and goats to become sub-clinically infected. (Pigs have never been found to become carriers once vaccinated) In such cases, where infection was caught in the first hours following vaccination and before it could take effect, cattle may remain sub-clinically infected "carriers" for some years. Sheep and goats for 3-9 months. The vital point is that after DECADES OF EXTENSIVE SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH, CARRIERS HAVE NEVER BEEN FOUND TO BE ABLE TO SPREAD FMD.

With any sort of vaccination, if any host is successfully vaccinated , they may boost their antibody and white cell immunity by exposure to wild type virus but they will not become "carriers" in the sense implied by the argument above. Nor will they excrete virus in to the environment. The whole basis of vaccination is to reduce virus within the environment and therefore host to host infection.

This is the crux of the matter for big producers - the cutting off of its European and other markets. The current EU trade rules are based on the assumption above - that "Carriers are a Danger" - and this is a misconception that must be examined and put right. In any case, discriminatory tests have been developed, described by the OIE, and successfully used in practice by countries such as Uruguay to demonstrate freedom from infection.

That the legislation is still arranged to make vaccination the poor relation in disease control - and for such erroneous reasons - is surely an indication that the industry needs to lobby to change this, rather than fight vaccination itself.
Legislation must take account of the natural history and science behind infection and vaccine induced immunity . Vaccinated meat is perfectly safe. (The UK was always said 'to run its army on Brazilian and Argentinian meat'. Are we to assume that the army is fed substandard produce?)
At present in the UK, no one is arguing for the use of prophylactic vaccination, but pointing out that since emergency vaccination to live is now part of EU and UK policy the public need to be given some good reasons not to use it. No good scientific or veterinary reasons have been given.

It is difficult to comment on these figures. All British cattle ever might have been used for this calculation - but one would need to start with the cost of one vaccination shot and the cost of the person administering it. But the cost of not vaccinating in 2001- the cost of that outbreak still exceeds 12 BILLION EUROS. The risks of new outbreaks are increasing because of globalisation, open borders and the increased mobility of people, animals and the products.

While even the 2001 outbreak of FMD cost more than the 5 billion suggested above, the human costs and trauma involved are - as this website aims to show - beyond financial calculation

Annual vaccination comes with an annual update of the vaccine - just like that for influenza - based on analysis of samples coming in from around the world.

The arrangements that the observation addresses are not clear. Vaccine should be used as a ring outside an infected area to limit virus replication and should be used in conjunction with restriction on animal movements and, if necessary, limited culling. No one is advocating random vaccination with no other containment measures. The idea is to preserve stocks, limit infection and use all the recourses mentioned to contain disease.

It is possible that wild mammals are infected, the odd deer for instance. However deer are extensive and the infection probably keeps coming to a dead end; that is one infected animals does not infect another. In extensively grazing sheep the infection will peter out (as it was left to do in sheep in 1967).
This is in contrast to on-farm stock when a flock or herd is penned into a field or enclosed in a shed.

A correspondent adds:

On the issue of distinguishing vaccinated, healthy animals from vaccinated carrier animals, I would like to make a few points. The debate about the so-called discriminatory tests has been going on since 2001 and as it shows, there are still many scientists who believe:

• vaccinated carrier animals are a potential problem
• available discriminatory tests are not reliable enough

Now, if we just concentrate for a while on the second argument, there are a number of discriminatory tests in use. I believe Uruguay used one of them (the Panaftosa test) to demonstrate freedom of FMD infection with vaccination which was internationally accepted in 2001, helping Uruguay to start exporting beef (from vaccinated cattle) to the EU again. I mentioned this fact in an article which was published by the OIE in 2001 (page 12 of the enclosed article 'LTO OIE contribution 2002').

The OIE refers to this test in its manual of diagnostics:

"Nonstructural protein antibody tests

Antibody to expressed recombinant FMD virus NSPs (e.g. 3A, 3B, 2B, 2C, 3ABC) can be measured by different ELISA formats or immunoblotting. These ELISAs either use purified antigens absorbed directly to microplates or use polyclonal or monoclonal antibodies to trap specific antigens from semi-purified preparations (14, 20, 41, 58). The index screening method used in Panaftosa is described in detail below. Other indirect and competitive ELISAs detecting bovine antibodies to 3ABC have been shown to have equivalent diagnostic performance characteristics (17). This same study corroborates preliminary data from Panaftosa that suggests that the diagnostic performance characteristics of these tests are similar in cattle, sheep and pigs."

This shows there is scientific evidence that these discrimatory tests do work and can serve to prove freedom of infection in vaccinated livestock.

Of course, none of these tests give 100% guarantee. The EU has funded research into improvement of these tests and results were satisfactory for herd testing. That is why herd testing is often carried out, allowing for the use of statistics.

The Netherlands, certainly, would after an emergency vaccination, probably test all vaccinated animals. There might be a number of false positives and, in the very unlikely case of virus circulation, there would be a number of false negatives. Because this is what statistics command.

But of course, vaccinating all susceptible animals in an area means that the virus will stop circulating in that area. Yes, some vaccinated animals might catch the virus during the days immediately after vaccination and these animals might become silent carriers (remark: in the case of pigs, carriers have never been found!). The point we have been trying to make over and over again is that, in many trials, these animals have never been shown to spread virus.

This is supported by the fact that the Netherlands got rid of FMD in the 1960s thanks to annual vaccination of only cattle over 6 months. Pigs, sheep and goats were not annually vaccinated as far as we are aware. Some cattle carriers must have been around in the Netherlands (and elsewhere in Europe) but these animals have never caused outbreaks. When Europe ceased annual vaccination in 1991, there must still have been some carrier cattle around for some years. These animals never caused outbreaks, although the live stock cattle population gradually lost its immunity.

And another expert adds:

I think it is about time that veterinarians had higher specialist training in infection and became practising experts. They should continue to keep up to date with their infection knowledge on an international stage.

There is no equivalent in veterinary medicine to the expertise in human medicine - and it shows. The only qualification for vets at the Royal College of Pathologists is one in General Pathology. In human medicine this was superseded 40 years ago with specialist qualifications in the different subjects - ever growing as understanding and refinement of diagnosis and management takes place.

Virology has more recently split from microbiology. We do not wheel research scientists out from their labs when there is an outbreak of infection in humans. Their knowledge and development of diagnosis and vaccines may be essential in the control by a team of medical infection experts - and these are peer reviewed and up to date with their knowledge. They have a clearly explained policy on the international stage. Experts in human medicine moreover are also not hidebound by rules - usually out of date and made by large groups of civil servants.

There has not been an "objective truthfulness" in veterinary medicine. That is improving perhaps since at least, in this outbreak, a farm is not being called an Infected Premise unless the laboratory confirms this - based on the diagnostic specimens sent to them.

In 2001 the laboratory results were disregarded. In fact in 2001 there were about 1029 farms with confirmed infection and some 1000 so-called IPs were not infected; the laboratory diagnosis was negative.

Again, the outbreak in 2001 was very different. There was no focus of infection and it was later learned that FMD had been present in sheep flocks in Northumbria before it was recognised on the pig farm.

Even if movements had been stopped the day the first outbreak was recognised there would still have been some considerable spread already.

The 2 infected farms in this outbreak have not had movements off the farm (nor within the incubation period of the disease observed on the farms onto the farm, I believe.) The imposition of the severe movement restrictions still in place over the whole of England and to some extent is still present in Wales and Scotland.
This is looking disproportionately harsh, with animals suffering and farmers losing money and being pursued for minor infringements.

Farming outside the South East and the favoured arable areas is often hard. Farmers are struggling to survive at all.

Apart from that given to farmers in the designated zone in Surrey and those whose animals have been culled, there will be no compensation.

In 2001 there was no compensation except for farms that were culled.

Rural tourism and business could also be less severely affected if vaccination within a designated zone was carried out. After 10 days there is no reason for footpaths to remain closed.