Bluetongue Vaccination in Europe

Far more revealing than anything seen on the DEFRA website is this bluetongue map - (pdf slow link but works eventually) available on line as a pdf file from the Bvet. admin site in Switzerland, showing the relentless march of bluetongue across Europe. (As the pdf file opens the red dots appear with a rapidity that mirrors the cases themselves.) Switzerland is anxiously awaiting its first case and sees the whole picture - including the new cases in Essex and outside London that reveal the scale of the impending disaster.
Meanwhile there are unconfirmed reports that the UK Bluetongue Protection Zone has been expanded (34 cases now).

Alistair Driver writes in the Farmers Guardian



"If confirmed by Defra today, it will be the first clear indication that the disease has spread beyond the local area near Ipswich where it was first discovered. While this is a worrying development, particularly for those now drawn into the zone, it will reportedly bring two more abattoirs into the Protection Zone."


Of course there is a desperate shortage of slaughter houses throughout Britain let alone in the Bluetongue Protection Zone - as per the legacy of a succession of lunatic policies involving spurious health and safety concerns for "EU export standards". In reality the enthusiasm of MAFF vets to increase their power and influence in the 1980s was gleefully supported by the big slaughterhouses who were delighted to see - as a result of the one-size-fits-all "harmonisation" of regulation 91/497/EEC - the medium sized and the small family abattoirs go to the wall.

" If it indeed it is a true case of infection in situ in England, I would fully expect the epidemic to take off next year."
Professor N. James MacLachlan, of the School of Veterinary Medicine University of California Davis, says that the virus proved between 2006 and 2007 that it could overwinter in northern Europe, "so I don’t think the English winter will exterminate it." (See egghead Blog at UC Davis)

MacLachlan says that the btv-8 strain is unusually virulent in cattle and goats and also


"appears to have found a new insect partner to transmit itself....The sobering reality is that this might just be a portent of things to come regarding climate change and the spread of vector borne diseases, especially other Culicoides transmitted viruses like African horse sickness...."


Meanwhile, another sobering reality - the mass killing of light lambs and the price crash for lamb both at the abattoir and the sale of breeding ewes and ewe lambs is a portent of miseries to come.
The media are steering well clear of reporting distressing scenes and so the general public have simply no idea of the desperate seriousness of the present situation for all livestock farmers - not only those completely stalled in the various zones.

Will the lambs simply be left there?


Ruth Watkins sums it up






"...went to our white faced ewe sale yesterday to sell a pen of 10 ewe lambs.
They were as good as I can produce... I got £19 a head for my ewe lambs, I was last and decided I had to sell them otherwise I could not sell my heifers next week in the annual sale of pedigree Welsh Black cattle at Llandovery. 2 buyers bid against each other so that £17 went up to £19.




Would I have had any buyers at all if others had sold their ewe lambs? Most did not sell and were not even bid £20 for a ewe lamb - and most farmers would not contemplate selling below £30 or even £25. They might get £29 now at the abattoir (mine were not quite ready for the abattoir but I do hope mine will be used for breeding. I know they will make lovely ewes, my shearling ewes this year are my best ever and I am keeping them all). The farmers were shell shocked.




If they take them back what will they do with them? Some farmers had gone by the time their ewes came into the pen. Will the lambs simply be left there? The auctioneers were selling them at any price subject to approval by the farmer, and if the farmer couldn't be contacted then they were sold for the auctioneer Christmas fund...."

(Cartoon "after Peter Brookes" with apologies to him but enormous thanks to Sabine)

Although the UK may still only be waking up gradually to the potential nightmare of Bluetongue and the necessity of vaccinating against it, our close neighbours are very much further along in their thinking; the question now is simply whether to go for full eradication or for voluntary or ring vaccination.
It would appear that France favours eradication and - since Spain is now watching the southwards advance of BTv-8 with increasing alarm - at least ring vaccinate in order to try to protect the South as soon as possible.
Belgium and Luxembourg are both anxious to get vaccination moving.
As for the costs of the vaccines and the process, according to the Working Document on "Harmonised and enhanced response to Bluetongue outbreaks in the EU" (Feb 07), we read that Council Decision 90/424/EEC on expenditure in the veterinary field provides for the Member State

"......to obtain a Community contribution for the eradication of the disease up to
100% of the costs of the vaccine doses and 50% of vaccination."

Of course, this all presupposes a supply of vaccine and since Merial was far ahead of the field on this we can only hope, yet again, that the hold-up is quickly resolved.

October 8th ~ "living with these restrictions not as bad as watching animals go down with BT"

DEFRA announced that “under strict conditions” an abattoir in West Sussex and another in Lincoln will take animals for slaughter from within the Bluetongue protection zone due to the immense strain on abattoirs inside the zone.
Farmers Guardian "The decision to grant a general licence to move animals to these abattoirs has come after a veterinary risk assessment concluded that the move would not risk a spread of disease. "
As for the desperate pleas from those in the Zone for it to be extended to the whole of the UK, Sabine Ventis remains deeply sympathetic but adamant in her advice:


"I can understand exactly that something must be done, otherwise farmers will go out of business in droves but they really shouldn't extend the zone but rather give permission for all movements directly to slaughter. This will only have to be for a couple of weeks at least: once the vector activity ceases animals for breeding can be moved after blood tests giving a negative result for the virus.
We have been living with these restrictions for 14 months now -
and they are not as bad as watching animals go down with BT in large numbers"

. The closure of so many small local slaughterhouses for spurious "health and safety" reasons is now reaping its miserable reward -