Britain more Liable to Disease Threat as Foot and Mouth Laboratory Funding Disappears
Back in 2007, the decrepit Institute of Animal Health at Pirbright in Surrey was the cause of a major Foot and Mouth outbreak in southern England – an ironic event, given that the Institute was supposed to be part of the front-line defence against animal epidemics.
Defra, the environment department, vowed to redevelop the Institute, especially the leaky drainage system that allowed the disease to escape and infect local cattle, but now, with little money around for major projects, and no private investors interested in this area, they have said they cannot afford to fund the rebuilding which would have converted the IAH into a National Institute for Infectious Disease, bringing together animal disease control with human epidemics and diseases such as typhoid, cholera, malaria and Ebola virus. Virologists who do fieldwork in detecting, treating and containing human disease were supposed to join the IAH research team, creating a holistic service, able to predict and respond to outbreaks of disease in human and animal populations.
Defra says that this plan, which dates back to 2001, may no longer be the ‘best option’ and while it will provide £5 million of the estimated £10 million needed to provide even a temporary laboratory, and will remain a prominent ‘customer’ of the IAH’s services – it will not continue the combined development plan.
It’s a worryingly short-sighted approach. The UK has been hit by several animal disease outbreaks including the arrival of Bluetongue virus, which has previously not survived the British winters, but is increasingly likely to do so, as global warming makes winter less cold, longer, and wetter. The IAH, despite its disastrous foot and mouth leak, was instrumental in saving around £485 million and 10,000 jobs in the UK because its plans for spotting and containing Bluetongue allowed good preparation and immediate vaccination programmes.
Also on the disease horizon is African swine fever which has already reached the southern edges of Europe, being detected in Portugal in the 1990s and still persisting in Sardinia. It’s a version of Classic swine fever distinguished by three salient facts: it has a longer incubation period meaning that animals can be transported widely before the fever emerges, it can be transmitted by ticks which can survive mild British winters, and there is no vaccine to control African swine fever.
Turning our backs on complex problems doesn’t make them go away – it just makes them more likely to become insoluble. National boundaries have become more porous, climate change has allowed opportunistic plants, insects and animals the chance to find niches in novel ecosystems, and populations have become more closely housed – regardless of whether they are penned pigs or studio-dwelling urbanites.
All these factors increase the risks of diseases becoming epidemic, both nationally and internationally and it’s stupid beyond belief to ignore the risks when the IAH has already shown what it can do when given the chance, as in the Bluetongue outbreak, and what can go wrong when not given the necessary funding to keep its house in order.
Piglets courtesy of Olddanb at Flickr under a Creative Commons Licence
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