FMD - Improvement of Australia’s foot-and-mouth disease preparedness and response capability

Summary

Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) continues to be a serious threat to the meat and livestock industries in Australia.  It was of high importance to perform research and build capacity both here and in neighbouring countries to improve diagnostic capability and increase our understanding of the epidemiology and pathogenesis of FMD virus (FMDV) strains in the region.  It was also essential that vaccine efficacy studies in relevant animal species were performed to verify that the currently available vaccines protect against newly emerging strains of this continually evolving virus.  
These actions, as implemented in the first phase of this project, were paramount to ensure a high level of preparedness and an effective response in the face of an incursion. This report provides a brief overview of the work performed for Phase 1 of the FMD Risk Management project.  The project focused largely on testing vaccine efficacy using vaccine strains held in the Australian vaccine bank against viruses currently circulating in South East Asia (SEA).  A number of experiments were performed involving cattle, sheep and pigs to ascertain not only whether the vaccines will protect animals against clinical disease, but to also determine the course of disease through viraemia (blood) and the amount of virus excreted in secretions such as saliva, nasal fluids, and faeces.  In addition, the immune response to the vaccines was measured.  Due to the restrictions on importing live FMDV into Australia, several overseas institutes with animal facilities where experiments and laboratory assays involving FMDV can be performed were engaged as collaborators for this work.