Chinese processor accused of using sick pigs

Chinese authorities are looking into allegations that one of the country's most famous sausage makers used sick pigs in its products.
News of the situation broke on the night of March 18, when state broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) reported that Xincheng Jinluo Group in Linyi City of the eastern Shandong Province, allegedly allowed a supplier to transport unquarantined pigs to its factory in Dezhou City.
The factory then allegedly purchased sick pigs and pigs that had suffered foot-and-mouth disease (FMD), even though the animals' ear tags and quarantine papers were printed by the sales agents themselves, according to a report from Xinhua News Agency.
In a statement released two days later, Shandong's provincial bureau of animal husbandry and veterinary medicine said that it will conduct a thorough investigation into the case, and will punish anyone implicated in accordance with law.
Xincheng Jinluo Group said on its website that it has halted all production at its Dezhou factory and sealed up all the products there, and that it will cooperate with investigators.
Founded in 1994, Xincheng Jinluo Group is one of China's leading meat product makers. It has an annual manufacturing capacity of three million metric tons, according to its website.

Effort to control foot-and-mouth disease in the Balkans

The European Union and United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) have stepped up efforts to assist countries, including the Balkans, to prepare for any possible outbreaks of devastating foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) in hogs and other livestock.
The European Commission for the control of Foot-and-Mouth Disease (EuFMD), the Secretariat of which is based at FAO, operates a broad program to strengthen the capacity of veterinary services in Europe, given that even a single outbreak of FMD has massive economic implications for the countries and for Europe as a whole.
While not dangerous to human health, the disease causes serious production losses and is a major constraint for international trade. It can also have an impact on rural activities such as tourism. A FMD outbreak in the UK in 2001 cost the country $16 billion and resulted in 10 million sheep and cattle being culled in order to halt further spread of the virus.
In recent years EuFMD has trained around 500 veterinarians across Europe in immediate response capabilities, has established an emergency training course for vets for crisis situations, has established a network for its member states for contingency planning and a knowledge bank to share experience for improved simulation exercises.


Where the disease lurks
FMD is a viral disease of cloven-hoofed animals, such as cattle, buffaloes, pigs, sheep, goats and deer. While EU member states are virus free, the virus currently circulates in parts of in the European neighbourhood and in around 100 countries in Africa, the Middle East, large parts of the Eurasian landmass and some areas in South America.
Most years, over 40 countries declare eFMD epidemics and some dramatic jumps of virus strains between continents have recently occurred, affecting the Middle East and North Africa.


Front line
One region given special attention by the commission is the Balkans, which comprises both EU and non-EU member countries, and is closer to infected countries further south and east.
The EuFMD helps countries develop and test contingency plans for rapid response to disease outbreaks before the virus can spread to neighboring herds or further afield when livestock are transported to market. In any effort to stop the disease spreading, cooperation between neighboring countries is crucial.
Such plans were tested recently in Bulgaria, Serbia and FYR of Macedonia, where government veterinary services took part in the first-ever desktop simulation of a simultaneous outbreak of FMD in herds in the three countries. Other Balkan countries and Greece took part as observers.
The simulation exercise was funded by the EU, coordinated by EuFMD, and assisted by Danish government animal health experts, who acted as evaluators in each country.


How a simulation exercise works
"The exercise met its target of testing the management response to a complex and evolving FMD outbreak, including testing capacity to communicate within and between the countries and with international organizations, and the ability to prioritize tasks at national and local level,” said Keith Sumption, executive secretary of the Commission, after the exercise. “The observers were impressed by the response.”
“Simulation exercises are an effective way to identify weaknesses that could result in catastrophic consequences in a real crisis, and to bring attention to the need for investment in preparedness.
“The simulation exercise in the Balkans is important to the countries involved as it presents an opportunity to run a first test of their state of preparedness since the last major crisis in the region in 2011, when Bulgaria had to control outbreaks in wildlife and domestic animals,” he said.
 A second multi-country simulation exercise is being planned in the Balkans in July. It will incorporate lessons learned from the recent exercise and include field activities.

Avian influenza prompts lockdown of South Korean farms

• 

  Andrea Gantz

  Fears of the spread of avian influenza and foot-and-mouth disease have prompted the South Korean government to lock down farms.

  From WATTAgNet:
  South Korea on January 15 announced a 36-hour lockdown over the weekend on poultry and livestock farms across the country to curb the spread of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) and avian influenza.
  The South Korean agriculture ministry said the movement of animals, people and vehicles at thousands of farms would be banned on the morning of January 17 for disinfection.
  A series of outbreaks of FMD in recent months have resulted in the slaughter of around 25,000 pigs, and concern has grown as cases have spread.
  The first FMD cases were detected in July, only two months after South Korea was declared free of the disease at a meeting of the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) in Paris.
  The agriculture ministry has since confirmed a case of foot-and-mouth in a cow, the first involving cattle in nearly four years.
  In 2011, a devastating foot-and-mouth outbreak hit the entire Korean peninsula and resulted in the culling of nearly 3.5 million cattle, pigs and other animals in South Korea alone.
  The battle to contain foot-and-mouth has coincided with outbreaks of avian influenza at poultry farms and a National Institute of Animal Science campus , which have resulted in the culling of more than 500,000 birds in recent months.

Foot-and-mouth disease hits South Korean hogs, Namibian cattle

• 

  Andrea Gantz

  Foot-and-mouth disease has struck a hog farm in South Korea, as well as a cattle farm in Namibia.

  From WATTAgNet:
  A new case of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) has been confirmed at a hog farm in South Korea, the country’s agriculture ministry stated on December 4. The outbreak occurred at a farm in Jincheon County, which is located about 50 miles southeast of the capital city of Seoul.
  According to a spokesman for the agriculture ministry, there were 15,844 hogs at the affected farm. About 30 hogs showed symptoms of FMD, and those animals will be slaughtered. Animals at the farm have been placed under quarantine.
  The recent FMD outbreak marks the first in South Korea since one occurred in late July. Before July, FMD had not struck in South Korea in more than three years.
  The South Korean outbreak is not the only FMD outbreak to be reported this week. The World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) also reported that FMD has been discovered in a herd of cattle in Namibia. Nine cattle showed oral and foot lesions suggestive of FMD, while an additional 461 cattle in the herd were susceptible.
  Control measures put in place for the outbreak in Namibia include quarantine, screening, zoning and movement control. The affected premises will be disinfected, according to the OIE.

ASF, FMD would devastate US pork industry

• From WATTAgNet:
  The U.S. pork industry has been struggling since Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea (PED) virus first struck in 2013. However, one industry expert says other diseases could prove to be much more damaging to the industry.
  African swine fever (ASF) has been plaguing countries like Latvia, Chad, Russia and Lithuania, while nations in Africa, Asia and Brazil have been battling foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) in both pigs and cattle. Should these diseases spread into North America, its impact would be particularly harmful as outbreaks could put a halt to exports of U.S. pork and beef.
  “If we get them, we will lose key export markets,” Dermot Hayes, agribusiness professor at Iowa State University, told Agriculture.com. “We would need to ask Americans to eat 25 percent as much pork and 10 percent more beef. Wholesale prices could fall 50 percent. That is a big problem.”
  Just because ASF and FMD are an ocean apart from the U.S., it doesn’t mean that they can’t spread to the U.S., said Hayes. “Nobody expected PED to cross the Pacific Ocean,” said Hayes, pictured below.
  One way to help prevent ASF and FMD from reaching North America is by improving biosecurity efforts. That would include having airport security crews checking to see that nobody brings meat products into the U.S. that could eventually be eaten by animals and start an outbreak.

Vaccine against foot-and-mouth disease developed in Spain

A vaccine against foot-and-mouth disease has been developed as a result of a collaborative project between Universiat Pompeu Fabra (UPF), the Spanish Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC), the Spanish National Institute for Agricultural and Food Research and Technology (INIA) and Genome España.
The vaccine, designed and produced on a pilot scale in the protein chemistry laboratory at UPF, is an innovative approach that combines multiple copies of the structural components, called epitopes, of the viruses that generate protective immunity in a single molecular platform.
The vaccine consists of peptides and is produced by chemical synthesis, which gives it several advantages compared to conventional vaccines. Although vaccination is the best preventive strategy against foot-and-mouth disease (and most infectious diseases), the conventional vaccines based on attenuated or inactivated viruses have many disadvantages. This is the reason for the interest in what are known as subunit vaccines, which include those based on peptides, such as the one described here.
Pompeu Fabra University, represented by Francesc Posas, the vice-rector for Science Policy, signed an exclusivity agreement on October 7 with Virbac, a French multinational company that is a leader in the animal health sector, to market a technology developed in the Department of Experimental and Health Sciences (CEXS). It is a veterinary vaccine for the prevention of foot-and-mouth disease, the most economically devastating animal disease worldwide.
In this context, the exclusivity agreement with Virbac includes the production, evaluation and eventual marketing of the vaccine in the People's Republic of China, where the market for these vaccines amounts to more than US$200 million a year for the pig sector alone.

UK scientists develop safer foot-and-mouth vaccine

British scientists have developed a new methodology to produce a vaccine for foot-and-mouth disease virus. Because the vaccine is all synthetic, made up of tiny protein shells designed to trigger optimum immune response, it doesn't rely on growing live infectious virus and is safer to produce. 
These empty shells have been engineered to be more stable; making the vaccine much easier to store and reducing the need for a cold chain. This is important research because it represents a big step forward in the global campaign to control foot-and-mouth disease virus in countries where the disease is endemic, and could significantly reduce the threat to countries currently free of the disease. Crucially, this new approach to making and stabilizing vaccine could also impact on how viruses from the same family are fought, including polio.
This collaborative research was led by Professor David Stuart, Life Science Director at Diamond Light Source and MRC Professor of Structural Biology at the Department of Medicine University of Oxford and Dr. Bryan Charleston, Head of Livestock Viral Diseases Program at The Pirbright Institute. 
Dr. Charleston, whose team at The Pirbright Institute has developed a detailed understanding of the immune response to foot-and-mouth disease virus in cattle and is leading the vaccination trials work, says, "The foot-and-mouth disease virus epidemic in the UK in 2001 was disastrous and cost the economy billions of pounds in control measures and compensation. As a result of the outbreak the Royal Society recommended new approaches should be developed to control the virus should it happen again. 
"This important work has been a direct result of the additional funding that was provided as a result of the 2001 outbreak to research this highly contagious disease. Using our detailed knowledge of the immune responses to foot-and-mouth disease virus in cattle we were able to define the characteristics that needed to be incorporated into the new vaccine platform to induce protection." 
Professor Stuart, explains, "What we have achieved here is close to the holy grail of foot-and-mouth vaccines. Unlike the traditional vaccines, there is no chance that the empty shell vaccine could revert to an infectious form. This work will have a broad and enduring impact on vaccine development, and the technology should be transferable to other viruses from the same family, such as poliovirus and hand foot and mouth disease, a human virus which is currently endemic in South-East Asia," 
Key results were published in the journal PLOS Pathogens on Wednesday 27 March 2013. The work is principally funded by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, UK (Defra) and the Wellcome Trust.
Clinical trials of the synthetic shell based vaccine on cattle carried out by Dr. Charleston and his team have shown it is as effective as current vaccines. A commercial product is still several years away the team hopes that the technology can be transferred as quickly as possible to make it available to a global market. 

Foot-and-mouth disease outbreaks in pigs, cattle confirmed in China

Chinese veterinary authorities have confirmed two outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease in a pig farm in the southern province of Guangdong and southwestern Tibet Autonomous Region, according to the World Health Organization.
The outbreak in Guangdong was confirmed at a pig farm with 948 animals.
Farmers at Deji Village, Qushui (Lasha, Tibet), reported 13 head of cattle displayed symptoms of foot-and-mouth disease.
In Guangdong, the pigs were infected with type A foot-and-mouth. However in Tibet the livestock were hit by the type O variety of the disease.

Harrisvaccines awarded government contract to develop foot-and-mouth vaccine

Harrisvaccines has been awarded a $1.114 million contract from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate to develop an RNA Particle vaccine to potentially protect the U.S. from foot-and-mouth disease.
Harrisvaccines will use the contract for research and development over the next 34 months. The company’s RP platform technology allows for the vaccine to be manufactured without handling the infectious virus; only a gene sequence from the virus is needed to prepare the vaccine. This characteristic allows the RP-based vaccine to be produced in Harrisvaccines’ U.S. Department of Agriculture-licensed production facility in Ames, Iowa. Production of foot-and-mouth disease virus vaccines using traditional methods in the U.S. is not allowed due to the significant risk of releasing the virus into disease-free U.S. during production.
“We are very excited for the opportunity to use our RNA Particle vaccine technology in a project this significant to U.S. agriculture,” said Dr. Kurt Kamrud, vice president of research and chief scientific officer for Harrisvaccines. “Our rapid response technology allows us to produce large amounts of vaccine quickly. And, because only a portion of the FMDV genetic information is required to generate a vaccine, the RP-based approach will allow for the differentiation of infected from vaccinated animals when used with current and next generation FMD serology-based diagnostic assays, which is very important in the event of an outbreak.”

South Africa pork prices may drop 15% due to export ban

Pork prices in South Africa may drop up to 15% after the country's recent ban on exports of meat and live animals due to a foot-and-mouth disease outbreak, according to reports.
The South Africa Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries announced on Feb. 28, that it was halting exports of cattle, sheep and other cloven-hoof animals and their products for at least three months after roughly 300 animals tested positive for the virus. There are about 4,000 commercial pig farmers in South Africa, employing 10,000 people.
According to Jacobus Hoffman, general manager of Premier Pork Producers, while only 3% of local production is exported, the additional meat will drive down prices as local producers compete with imports from Canada and Germany.

South Korea estimating foot-and-mouth losses at $1.8 billion

South Korea's swine and cattle industries, which have been fighting an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease that has resulted in the culling of 3.15 million pigs and 150,000 cattle, may lose more than won2 trillion ($1.8 billion), according to the government.
Domestic pork prices in South Korea have skyrocketed, according to Korea Meat Import Association Secretary-General Bo-Hee Lue, combining with fears of safety to lead consumers to imported pork.
“It’s possible some consumers who bought domestic pork will try buying imported pork because of price-competitiveness,” said Lue.
The country's original pig and cattle herds numbered 10 million and 3 million, respectively. On Dec. 25, Seoul ordered the inoculation of all remaining animals to help contain the disease, a move which could cost the country won100 billion ($89 million) annually to maintain.

South Korea culls 3.6 million poultry, 2.1 million pigs, cattle over disease fears

South Korea has culled 3.6 million poultry, mostly chickens, and 1.2 million pigs and cattle due to the countrywide outbreaks of avian influenza and foot-and-mouth disease.
The numbers represent roughly 3% of the country's poultry population and 15% of its pig and cattle population. Nationwide vaccination is currently taking place to stop the spread of both diseases. "The government set a policy to minimize slaughter against foot-and-mouth, while utilizing vaccination to prevent the disease," said President Lee Myung-bak.
Foot-and-mouth outbreaks began at the end of November, while the first case of bird flu was reported on Dec. 31. So far, the agriculture ministry has confirmed 120 cases of food-and-mouth and 26 cases of bird flu.

Japan seeks to control foot-and-mouth outbreak

Japanese agriculture officials have ordered pigs and cattle destroyed to get a handle on the country’s largest outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in the past 10 years, according to Business Week. The government said about 0.7 percent of the nation’s pig stock, 73,653 animals, and some 6,600 beef cattle, 0.1 percent of stock, will be affected.
One of the most spreadable animal diseases, foot-and mouth can kill a large number of young animals. Japan imports the largest quantity of feed grain globally.