WRITTEN QUESTION E-1143/01 by Erik Meijer (GUE/NGL) to the Commission. Combating the further spread of foot-and-mouth disease by resumption of vaccination.
Date: 2001-04-10
Institutions: European Parliament, Provisional data
Subjects: EU Member State, export, foot-and-mouth disease, slaughter animal, vaccination

C 350 E/82

Official Journal of the European Communities

EN

11.12.2001

Answer given by Mr Solbes Mira on behalf of the Commission

(3 July 2001)

A careful examination of the title and the text of the call for proposals published in the Official Journal of
the European Communities (1) clearly shows that it was never intended to foster promotional activities in
any Member State,
let alone in Member States having not expressed the wish to join the euro.
Furthermore, no project promoted by an organisation based in the United Kingdom has been registered, so
that no British organisation appears as project leader in this framework.

Out of the six organisations mentioned, four are at European level, and naturally also have members in the
United Kingdom. As for the two remaining ones (Industrie-und Handelskammer Trier and Asform), they
are used to working with a certain number of partners, one of them happening to be British. Each
promotor is free to choose its partners in a given project and each project rests on a division of labour
between the partners, so that a British partner can never retain a major share in a project.

This allows the Commission to confirm that funding will not be channelled into promotional projects in
the United Kingdom, as none was received in the framework of the call for proposals. Moreover, all
projects are controlled during their implementation and financial reports are due halfway and after
completion of each project to obtain payment of the second and of the last part of the grant awarded.

The text (cid:145)transnational actions involving at least three Member States, at least one of which is in the euro
zone(cid:146) should not be read as imposing one member of the euro zone and two having not expressed the
wish to join, but sets one of the minimal conditions at which a given project can be taken into
consideration, at the risk of otherwise becoming pointless. None of the 34 selected projects actually
presents such a configuration, which means that there was no misunderstanding regarding this point
among the applicants.

The euro is nevertheless of concern to British enterprises, and notably to small and medium-sized
enterprises (SMEs) involved in imports and exports. In this respect it is worth noting that the British
Government has spent several million pounds on informing them on the implications of the changeover to
the euro.

(1) OJ C 212, 25.7.2000.

(2001/C 350 E/089)

WRITTEN QUESTION E-1143/01

by Erik Meijer (GUE/NGL) to the Commission

(10 April 2001)

Subject: Combating the further spread of foot-and-mouth disease by resumption of vaccination

1.
Can the Commission confirm that vaccination of livestock against foot-and-mouth disease, which
was used to tackle periodic epidemics of the disease in the past, has been systematically abandoned since
the early 1990s?

To what extent was the policy of non-vaccination based on the expectation that the disease had

2.
virtually been eradicated and vaccination was therefore superfluous?

3.
To what extent was the policy of non-vaccination based on the expectation that it would boost the
export of European meat to the United States given that the US wrongly tended to equate vaccination with
evidence of the disease?

4.
Does the Commission think that the current massive outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in the
United Kingdom and the further spread of the disease in the Netherlands and France, resulting in the
massive slaughter of livestock, a ban on all exports and restrictions on the movement of people and goods,
can still be brought to a permanent end without the rapid re-introduction of vaccination?

11.12.2001

EN

Official Journal of the European Communities

C 350 E/83

5. When will it be technically feasible to make vaccination compulsory for all livestock susceptible to
the disease?

Is the Commission prepared to play an active role in bringing the policy of non-vaccination to an

6.
end as soon as possible?

Answer given by Mr Byrne on behalf of the Commission

(29 June 2001)

In the early 1990s, in the framework of the establishment of the internal market, the Community adopted
a non-vaccination policy against foot and mouth disease (FMD), taking into consideration that this disease
had been successfully eradicated from its territory and the limitations of vaccination.

These limitations include:

(cid:129) after infection with FMD virus, vaccinated animals may act as virus carriers, although they do not
show signs of disease. This may lead to further spread and persistence of FMD virus in the animal
population. As a result of this risk, the movement of vaccinated animals and the trade of their
products such as milk and meat must be subjected to certain restrictions;

(cid:129) there is no test to distinguish vaccinated animals from infected ones;

(cid:129) there are seven strains of FMD, each with several sub-strains. Vaccination is only effective against the
targeted strain and for a limited period only.
In the absence of disease in the territory of the
Community, the choice of the appropriate targeted strain for large-scale prophylactic vaccination
would be very difficult;

(cid:129) there are over 300 million susceptible livestock (cattle, sheep, pigs, goats) in the Community which

would need to be vaccinated to give total coverage;

(cid:129) the application of a generalised prophylactic vaccination policy would make it extremely difficult to
export live FMD-susceptible animals, as well as their products, such as meat and milk, to third
countries where FMD is absent and vaccination forbidden, including the United States. In a similar
manner, the free Community market for these goods would not be possible unless all Member States
adopted a common approach to vaccination.

However, the Community(cid:146)s non-vaccination policy does not exclude the possibility for Member States to
resort to emergency vaccination, if there is a serious risk of disease spread. Indeed, vaccination has been
applied in the Netherlands during the recent epidemic, in accordance with the conditions laid down in
Commission Decisions 2001/246/EC of 27 March 2001 laying down the conditions for the control and
eradication of foot-and-mouth disease in the Netherlands in application of Article 13 of Directive 85/511/
EEC (1) as modified by Commission Decision 2001/279/EC of 5 April 2001 (2).

Similar provisions were also adopted for the United Kingdom, which, however, decided not to make any
use of vaccine. Vaccination was not used in France and Ireland, where FMD was quickly eradicated.

The Commission intends to review the current policy on FMD in the light of the experience of the recent
outbreak. This review will include the conditions under which vaccination may be applied. The on-going
development of new laboratory tests, which are aimed at distinguishing the vaccinated animals from
infected ones, might increase the available vaccination options.

(1) OJ L 88, 28.3.2001.
(2) OJ L 96, 6.4.2001.