F&MD Test Cuts Time to Minutes

March 28, 2001

USDA has developed a new diagnostic test for foot and mouth disease and has made a major breakthrough on a vaccination as well. Agricultural Research Service Administrator Floyd P. Horn told the Senate Agriculture Committee that ARS has developed and is testing in Britain this week a new diagnostic procedure that can determine the presence of food and mouth disease (F&MD) in 40 minutes rather than the current 40 hours. Quick detection is critical to preventing spread of the disease. It took three weeks to identify the recent outbreak in the United Kingdom and six weeks in Taiwan.

Horn said USDA also has made a major breakthrough in vaccinations. In the past vaccinations confused the diagnostic effort and also could potentially spread the disease rather than prevent it. A new vaccine candidate forestalls these problems.

"The effect of (the 1996 farm law) and the 1998 research title was to heighten the importance of agriculture research as one form of a safety net beneath producers and ranchers. To help ensure a strong safety net, the two bills updated and expanded the purposes of agricultural research and lifted the bar higher than ever before regarding priority setting and validation of our research programs," Horn said.

He also explained that the United States effectively has prevented F&MD, bovine spongiform encephalitis or other transmissible spongiform encephalopathies outbreaks here. The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) has focused on the point of entry to the United States to seize contraband, livestock or livestock products, and interviewing people about possible farm visits in other countries and taking appropriate action to disinfect if there has been a visit.

Lugar said that last December he visited labs in Russia where Soviet-era research was conducted on 14 different strains of foot and mouth disease. "They had 14 vials of materials there, that were the crown jewels of the lab, that could be used to building anti-terrorist vaccinations or weapons of mass destruction," Lugar said.

He said the Russians were concerned that the United States might try to spread F&MD in their cattle and wanted to develop vaccinations. He noted that through the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, USDA scientists are now working with the Russians in the labs to determine if there are any breakthroughs that can be used in vaccination development.

At the agriculture committee hearing, Animal Ag Coalition Chair Jay Lemmerman said, "The total economic impact of the current F&MD outbreak in Europe is yet to be known but will likely amount to billions of dollars with many hundreds of thousands of animals being destroyed. The total economic impact in the U.K. still is mounting but currently totals $8 billion."

He said an outbreak of classical swine fever in the Netherlands in 1997 left $2.3 billion in economic damages with 8 million hogs destroyed. Also in 1997, an outbreak of F&MD spread rapidly in Taiwan causing some 8 million hogs to be destroyed and $8 billion in economic losses.