Brussels, 19/07/2002 (Agence Europe) - At a public hearing of the European Parliament's temporary committee on Foot and Mouth disease, the Dutch Minister of Agriculture, Laurens Jan Brinkhorst stated that in the event of a new crisis, the authorities would probably be obliged to resort to emergency vaccination and let the animals live instead of adopting a policy of massive destruction. Mr Brinkhorst indicated that he had informed the European Commission that current EU non-vaccination policy was too high a price for society to pay.
The Minister indicated that new marker tests being developed by the Swedish-New Zealand group, Akzo Nobel, would by officially be presented to the Commission in September. According to Mr Brinkhorst, these tests would enable the authorities to determine which animals were infected and which had been vaccinated, so that restrictions could be lifted sooner. The committee's rapporteur Wolfgang Kreissl-Dörfler (SPD) doubted whether the US and Japan would still allow vaccinated EU meat to be imported to their markets. The Minister replied that even if meat from vaccinated animals were considered as "inferior", there would still be a market for it inside and outside the EU, particularly in African countries.