75th Session of the Executive Committee of the European Commission for the Control of Foot-and-Mouth

75th Session of the Executive Committee of the European Commission for the Control of Foot-and-Mouth Disease 29-30 November 2007 London, United Kingdom Executive Summary and Recommendations The Executive Committee of the European Commission for the Control of Foot-and-Mouth Disease (EUFMD) held its Seventy-Fifth Session in London, UK, on the 29th and 30th of November 2007.

Members of the Executive Committee present were: Dr Peter de Leeuw (the Netherlands) Chairman, Dr Ulrich Herzog (Austria) Vice-Chairman, Dr Jeko Baychev (Bulgaria), Dr Spiros Doudounakis (Greece), Dr Carlos Pinheiro (Portugal) and Dr Fred Landeg (UK). Other participants were Dr Aldo Dekker (the Netherlands), Chairman of the Research Group, Dr Kris De Clercq (Belgium) ViceChairman and Dr David Paton (UK) representative of the FAO World Reference Laboratory. In addition, the CVO of Greece, Dr Batziliotis, attended the Session, and Dr Georgiev attended as technical advisor to Dr Baychev. Observers from the international organizations were Dr Alf-Eckbert Füssel, Head of Sector, DG-SANCO, Brussels, Dr Gideon Brückner, Scientific Department of the OIE, Paris and Dr Giancarlo Ferrari, FAO, representing the Chief of the Animal Health Service of FAO Dr Joseph Domenech. The list of participants is given in Appendix 28.

The Session considered the current risk situation and recent events in FMD epidemiology in the region and reviewed progress of actions as agreed in the Strategic Plan for 2005-8 and endorsed by 37th Session of the Commission.

The Recommendations reached are as follows: Considering that: 1. Member countries of EUFMD Commission have been at risk or directly affected by the ongoing epidemic of type O PanAsia II in the middle-east, which spread as far as Thrace and Egypt in October 2007; 2. further spread of the type O PanAsia variant virus and type A Iran 05 and possibly A Egypt 06 to countries in the near-east is likely to occur in the winter of 2007; 3. high containment facilities are essential in Europe to ensure adequate capacity for research on FMD control and for production of vaccines required by member states; 4. member states in which high containment facilities for FMDV are authorized to have a duty to ensure that the Minimum Standards for laboratory containment of FMD virus are continually applied; 5. reporting of the signs of FMD in cattle by owners and animal attendants is not completely reliable and that active surveillance, in addition to passive surveillance, may be required to ensure early detection of new outbreaks; 6. member countries should perform FMD surveillance using farmers and veterinarian networks, and notify the disease according to the standards of the OIE Terrestrial Code; 7. new approaches and methods to assist the pre-clinical diagnosis of FMD and the diagnostic of infection in decentralized settings (pen-side) are now possible and could assist earlier detection of infection in endemic and newly affected countries; 8. member states should maintain their preparedness for FMD laboratory confirmation, involving an annual involvement in the FAO/CRL proficiency test exercises; 9. progress has been made in the validation of NSP tests for the major species, but that many countries lack the experience in surveillance after FMD outbreaks and that confidence is needed to design suitable decision “”trees”” to assist decisions on flocks or herds with positive animals; 10. the Commission has received requests from member states for training in the field investigation of FMD outbreaks; 11. an epidemic type A strain that is poorly matched to the A22 Iraq vaccine has been detected in Afghanistan, which possibly threatens Iran and Turkey; 12. Thrace region and the Transcaucasus, remain under high risk because of the high volume long distance animal marketing patterns and the incidence of type O and A infections in neighbouring regions of Turkey and Iran and because of the relatively low and variable vaccination at village level in these source regions; 13. collaborative work on FMD surveillance has shown that FMD is under reported in Iran and continuous circulation occurs, mainly in the less biosecure village level production systems with spill over infections occur in more intensive livestock systems; 1