Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD)

New outbreaks as a result of careless disposal of meat waste from imported food, e.g. by airline caterers, might be expected. However, this latest outbreak has brought a surprise. Last night, Chief Veterinary Officer Debby Reynolds announced that the strain has been identified as one not recently found in animals but as one that is virtually identical with the strain kept and researched at the nearby Pirbright laboratories, a site shared by the Institute of Animal Health and Merial Animal Health Ltd. The obvious assumption is that a bio-security failure has permitted virus to escape the facility. No doubt blame will pass between like a yo-yo.

A lapse in bio-security would not be new; research on pathogenic viruses is a risky business.

Rabbit Calicivirus escape from Wardang Island, off Australia in 1995 was one such. No one knows whence came the devastating Canine Parvovirus, in 1978. FMD virus will not be the only pathogenic infectious agent held at that facility and it may be a good idea for the public to know what other viruses are held in such laboratories.

Policy discussions will again include the vaccination debate. Vaccination was rejected in 2001, on the grounds that the strain may have been ineffective and that it might have affected the country's meat and livestock export trade, as a result of vaccine-induced antibodies. Vaccination has already been mentioned on news bulletins, this time around.

There is another possibility - the homeopathic approach to treatment and prevention. This was offered (by me) in 2001 but ignored by the then MAFF, despite the fact that a clinical research project was formulated that would not have cost MAFF a penny (I was going to fund it) and would have settled the efficacy question in days.

The offer to provide self-funded clinical research, that will bring results in days, should the outbreak start to spread rapidly, is again offered to DEFRA. If the results turn out to be negative, there is no cost and if they turn out to be positive, it will establish homeopathy as a worthy medical contender.

Homeopathy has been researched before, as results will testify: www.alternativevet.org/research.htm. However, funding is limited (no £billions can be made), so trials are necessarily small-scale. Homeopathic methods circumvent the virus strain issue. Furthermore, it cannot induce antibodies. It is to be hoped that DEFRA will grasp this opportunity and perhaps save another disastrous situation, at the same time perhaps ushering in a new medical model for the prevention of infectious diseases.

Of course, this outbreak is now history.

It turns out that it was the result of poor biosecurity at virus laboratories in Surrey.

It came as no surprise that my clinical research offer (to be at my own expense) was yet again ignored by DEFRA. It would be more than the powers-that-be could stand, to find out finally that homeopathy really does work!

It appears that lessons have not been learned from successive outbreaks. Cattle and farmers are pawns in a game, ostensibly all for a puny meat export trade.

The author is independent of commercial interest or sponsorship and cannot endorse any products or advertising material attached to this lens.

For more information, visit AVMC's information website (over 600 pages).

Chris Day - holistic vet - runs the Alternative Veterinary Medicine Centre in Oxfordshire (AVMC) in Oxfordshire, UK.

What should we do if there's another outbreak of Foot and Mouth Disease in the UK?

My own wish would be that we should give homeopathy a chance, to see if the spread of the disease can be limited and if symptoms/signs can be controlled. I suspect that they can but we have not been allowed to put this to the test in the field (the only valid test), despite oft-repeated requests during the last two outbreaks.

Come on DEFRA, what's to lose?