Report of the Departmental Committee on Foot-and-Mouth Disease, 1952-1954.

  • Great Britain. Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries. Committee on Foot and Mouth Disease.
Date:
[1954]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of the Departmental Committee on Foot-and-Mouth Disease, 1952-1954. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    93. Individual witnesses (farmers and scientists) were of the same opinion almost unanimously. One farmer who had been a strong opponent of Slaughter told us that he had been converted to the policy after seeing the agony suffered by his own animals when they were attacked by the disease. Lord Iveagh, who had the misfortune to lose herds of pedigree cattle in both 1926 and 1952, said: “The slaughter policy involves, of course, very grievous loss to the pedigree breeder which cannot be compensated for since he loses years of work in breeding and much of his future hopes, and in losing his best females and proven bulls his work is largely undone. Nevertheless, I do not suggest that this policy can be abandoned in the present state of our knowledge. What I hope for is that with increased knowledge of vaccines, serums and their application, our most valuable pedigree stock might be protected as well as cattle belonging to our Artificial Insemination Centres and Research Institutes.” Finally, Sir Thomas Dalling, Chief Veterinary Consultant to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, who has world-wide ex- perience of foot-and-mouth disease: “Tt is perfectly clear to me that, where practicable, the ‘ stamping-out ’ or slaughter policy is to be preferred to the others [1.e. vaccination alone or slaughter with ring vaccination]. By such a policy, carried out as in Great Britain, it can be accepted that, following the removal of all restric- tions, the country is entirely free for the time being of foot-and-mouth disease infection. This is a state to be aimed at, for I am very doubtful that, with any other policy, it is possible to ensure complete freedom from the infection at any time. In further support of this view, I may quote from the remarks made to me by Veterinary Directors in several European countries, who state freely that the only sure method of eradi- cating (not controlling) the infection is by a rigorous slaughter policy .. . When foot-and-mouth disease gains a foothold in a country to such an extent that it becomes uneconomical to slaughter, a vaccination policy has to be considered. Further, in countries which are exposed to the infection crossing their frontiers at many points at about the same time, vaccination becomes almost an essential policy.” 94. Our evidence from British witnesses about the need to continue stamping-out in present circumstances was therefore in substance unanimous. But it differed in emphasis: it ranged from those who called stamping-out an “ideal” policy, and would have nothing to do with vaccination, to those who regarded it as a deplorable necessity and urged that the practicability of controlling the disease in some other way should be continuously and energetically explored. One or two witnesses went further, and contended that it might have already been possible. to dispense with stamping-out if the Ministry had been more active in examining the possibilities of vaccina- tion or had been willing to test the claims made on behalf of certain other preventives or “cures”. We return to this subject in paragraph 131. 95. During our visits abroad we took the opportunity of obtaining from foreign experts not only information about the working of the vaccination policy in their countries but also opinions about what was the proper policy for Britain. We found that in countries where the disease is endemic, and vaccination alone is practised, vaccination is ordinarily not regarded as a possible means of eradicating the disease or as a preferable alternative to stamping-out ; its purpose is rather to reduce the incidence of the disease to a point where stamping-out becomes possible. In Argentina for instance the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock said that this was their aim. At 39
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