WASHINGTON, Feb. 17, 2016 - The United States is in dire
need of a robust vaccination bank if it wants to protect the nation’s
multibillion dollar livestock industry from the ravages of a highly contagious
and difficult-to-control virus: Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD). At least that’s
what livestock association representatives and vaccine specialists told a House Agriculture
subcommittee last week.
Lawmakers on the Livestock and Foreign Agriculture panel
largely agreed that a FMD bank was needed, however, they – and the hearing
witnesses – weren’t saying who would pay for the $750 million project.
The National
Veterinary Stockpile – the entity the witnesses propose will house the FMD
vaccine bank – currently holds zero FMD vaccines, and is notoriously
underfunded. Rep. Vicky Hartzler, R-Mo., suggested checkoff funding, a
processing fee, or a private-public partnership between USDA and the livestock
industry could pay for the bank’s construction.
But Howard Hill, representing the National Pork Producers
Council at the hearing, said from his group’s perspective, “it’s hard to agree”
to pitching in when it’s uncertain how much each livestock sector would be
impacted by an outbreak.
David Sjeklocha, on behalf of the National Cattleman’s Beef
Association, questioned whether there might be infighting between pork and beef
producers over who gets the vaccine first. “I think overall, some industry
involvement would be acceptable (in funding the bank), but that is one of the
problems I think we’d have to face.”
Cynthia Wolf, a professor of veterinary medicine at the
University of Minnesota and a representative of the American Sheep Industry
Association, said FMD “isn’t just a livestock industry problem; this is an all-of-agriculture
problem.” FMD could disrupt grain movement to livestock producers and might
even prohibit the movement of fuel to farms, she suggested. “I think the public
stands to lose so much that I think the industry groups would step forward, but
that they would have a difficult time shouldering the majority of the costs
because their losses would be huge.”
FMD spreads quickly through contact in animals with divided
hooves, such as cows, pigs and sheep, as well as wild animals, like deer and
feral hogs – of which there are about 30 million and 5 million nationwide,
respectively. The virus doesn’t usually kill animals it infects – nor does it
pose a threat to humans; instead, it diminishes animals’ capacity to produce
milk and meat.
The most current research out of Iowa State University –
directed by Jim Roth, also a witness at the hearing – suggests the revenue
losses to just the U.S. pork and beef industries from an outbreak would be
$12.9 billion every year over a 10-year period. Over the same timeframe, the
corn industry would lose an estimated $44 billion and the soybean industry, $24.9
billion.
The last case of FMD in the U.S. was in 1929 (the U.S. has
only had nine outbreaks in total), but 96 other countries in Africa, Asia,
South America and the Middle East struggle to prevent and manage the disease. The disease sporadically makes appearances in
non-endemic countries, too, like Japan, South Korea, the United Kingdom and the
Netherlands, which all experienced outbreaks within the last 16 years.
Just this past summer, the USDA’s Animal and Plant
Inspection Service cleared
some regions in Brazil and Argentina to export beef to the U.S., despite
those countries’ history with FMD. Some farm groups, such as NCBA and the
National Farmers Union, have voiced concerns about allowing the products into
the U.S.
If it were detected
within the U.S., Roth’s research suggests the disease would spread very
quickly based on the number of animals routinely moved within the country and
abroad. To give some context, an estimated 1 million pigs and 400,000 cattle
are moved daily in the U.S., some over long distances. And approximately 11
percent of U.S. beef and 22 percent of U.S. pork is exported annually.
Countries that import U.S. beef, pork and milk – worth $20 billion annually –
would likely cease or severely restrict those imports.
Any infected animal would have to be euthanized and disposed
of properly – something the witnesses said would be nearly impossible given the
sheer number of cattle housed in large feedlots, sometimes upwards of 100,000
head.
Because FMD has wide strain variability, managing and ultimately
eradicating the virus requires strain-specific vaccines, which are very
expensive, Hill testified.
U.S. law prohibits live samples of the FMD virus to be
brought within the country’s borders; so American producers would be totally
reliant on foreign vaccines in the case of an outbreak. Non-living, recombinant
DNA vaccines for FMD aren’t likely to be commercialized in the U.S. for at
least five years, Hill said.
Roth says that the U.S. livestock industry would need 10
million vaccine doses for the first two weeks of an outbreak. But based on the
contracts APHIS has in place with foreign vaccine producers, the U.S. would
only have access to 2.5 million doses every three weeks.
Steve Parker, director of Merial Veterinary Public Health, a
company that maintains and manages antigen banks worldwide, testified it would
take only four days to convert an antigen – that is, the substance that prompts
an immune system to produce antibodies – into 2.5 million doses of vaccine if
the correct antigen were available domestically. Going from scratch to a
vaccine would take several weeks at least, he said.
The vaccine bank that the witnesses asked for would stock as
many antigens as possible, but they’re shooting for at least the 23 most common
strains. Currently, the U.S. has access to the North American FMD Vaccine Bank
– located off the coast of Long Island – which holds 14 antigens. However, Roth
said this bank does not have a large enough capacity to protect the expansive U.S.
livestock industry on its own.
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