Brussels, 28/03/2002 (Agence Europe) - The European Parliament's Temporary Foot and Mouth Committee reached the conclusion at its meeting on Monday and Tuesday that the decision not to use vaccination to combat the spread of foot and mouth fever had essentially been taken for commercial reasons through fear that consumers would avoid mat from vaccinated animals. Nick Brown, the British agriculture minister at the time told MEPs that the food industry - and he cited Cadbury as an example - had refused to accept products that originated from vaccinated animals. Supermarket chains were also unwilling to stock them. As Commissioner David Byrne confirmed, vaccination without culling would also have lost the EU its "disease-free without vaccination" status for exports under IOE (International Organisation on Epizooties) rules since farmers would not have been granted certificates that their animals were free of the disease and therefore suitable for export. Messrs Byrne and Brown and Dr Scudamore, the UK's Chief Veterinary Officer, defended the policy of slaughtering and destroying the infected animals and contact animals as the only way of eradicating the disease, which is a requirement under EU law. The EP's rapporteur on Foot and Mouth Disease Wolfgang Kreissel-Dörfler (PES, Germany) wondered though if the EU could afford to maintain an eradication policy (which also covers health animals) in the event of future outbreaks.
Mr Byrne told the MEPs that the Commission has not followed a total non-vaccination policy since it had authorised conditions for allowing emergency vaccination to go ahead in specific farms for specific animals in the UK and the Netherlands. He said it would have been physically impossible to vaccinate the entire livestock herd. The Commission cannot, he said, force a Member State to vaccinate; its role is to ensure that countries that do decide to vaccinate do so properly and respect Community law. The Commissioner said that the "current approach towards vaccination in particular will be up for review".
Mr Byrne said that in the next two months the Commission would be presenting a new directive on the control of food and mouth disease which would provide the opportunity for a full debate on most of the key issues with the intention being "by mid 2003 at the latest, to have a new strategy in place which will learn from the lessons of last year." The new directive should strengthen the EU's defences against further outbreaks; provide improved identification and traceability and more restrictions on animal movements; provide improved surveillance and control measures to ensure that outbreaks are spotted quickly and that decisive action is taken to eradicate them before they can take hold; include revised contingency plans that take on board the lessons of the recent outbreak; use new tests to ensure that vaccination is a more effective tool in combating foot and mouth and that the unnecessary slaughter and destruction of healthy animals can be avoided; and set a more coherent international framework, working with the IOE in particular, to enable trade to take place while taking account of other legitimate concerns, including enlargement.
Mr Kreissel-Dörfler stressed the need to work with countries in Southern Africa where foot and mouth is an epidemic, and raised the issue of candidate countries. On the latter point, Mr Byrne said that foot and mouth had only been detected Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey. He said that the EU has authorised the import of 100,000 tonnes of meat from Brazil, where foot and mouth cases had been found, and also Argentina. Robert William Sturdy (British Conservative MEP) asked Mr Byrne whether he found it odd that imports from the UK had been blocked in one hour, while imports from Argentina were still authorised. The Commissioner replied that only de-boned Argentine meat from areas where there had not been any outbreaks could be exported to the EU and unlike the UK, Argentina had taken measures to stop the disease spreading. Mr Byrne told Dutch Liberal Jan Mulder that vaccination would be discussed by the IOE in May and the Commission would be co-ordinating the views of the Member States on the IOE.
Mr Mulder and Avril Doyle (EPP-ED, Ireland) asked about setting up an insurance fund to compensate farmers and others (like the tourism industry) for lost revenue. Mr Byrne put the overall cost to the Community budget of the epidemic at over EUR 420 mil in 2001. Mr Brown said that the foot and mouth epidemic had costs the UK Exchequer £2.7 bil. Many MEPs asked about the origins of the disease and Mr Byrne responded by saying that the outbreak could be traced to contaminated animal matter illegally imported into the EU and probably used illegally as swill.