July 10, 2010

 

New Zealand's MAF Biosecurity renews FMD antigen contract

 

 

MAF Biosecurity New Zealand (MAFBNZ) has extended its contract with a French manufacturer of foot-and-mouth (FMD) disease antigen and vaccine.

 

MAFBNZ director post border Peter Thomson, said the contract renewed for a further five years an agreement MAFBNZ has had in place since 2005 to hold antigens in a UK-based facility from which a vaccine could be rapidly produced should FMD be detected in New Zealand.

 

The renewal of the contract reaffirms the long-standing policy within MAFBNZ that a FMD Vaccine Bank is a critical part of preparedness for an outbreak, Thomson said.

 

"Vaccination is one of a range of tools that could be used to control FMD and help ensure New Zealand could quickly contain an outbreak of FMD while reducing the impact of control efforts, such as slaughter and depopulation of animals, if an outbreak of the disease occurred here," he said.

 

FMD is a highly communicable disease found almost exclusively in cloven-footed, domesticated and wild animals, and all developed nations maintained vaccine banks to ensure they had the means to combat FMD occurring within their borders.

 

While New Zealand had never had an outbreak of FMD and remains free of the disease, it is endemic in a number of countries with numerous outbreaks occurring throughout the world each year, especially in Asia and South America.

 

New Zealand maintained rigorous border controls and the renewed contract to help counter an outbreak of FMD was one part of the Ministry's ongoing readiness and response initiatives aimed at ensuring New Zealand's preparedness to combat pests or exotic diseases found in the country, Thomson said.