The President-Elect of the National Pork Producers Council says the creation of a Foot and Mouth Disease Vaccine Bank will help mitigate losses in the event of an FMD outbreak in the United States.
The National Pork Producer's Council has been lobbying government for funding to create a Foot and Mouth Disease Vaccine Bank.
David Herring, the President Elect of the National Pork Producer's Council, told those on hand last week for World Pork Expo in Des Moines there's not enough vaccine available in the United States to accommodate a USDA policy change from using euthanasia to eradicate Foot and Mouth Disease in the event of an outbreak to one of using vaccination.
David Herring-National Pork Producer's Council:
Over the last 20 years we have gone from four or five percent exports to almost 25 or 26 percent exports.
If we would get a Foot and Mouth Disease outbreak here in the United States, overnight we would lose our export markets so what we're trying to do is a preventative tool to have in our box so maybe we could regionalize the outbreak and help open those export markets quicker.
Any way you cut it, if we get a Foot and Mouth outbreak in the States, it's going to be very expensive.
Source : Farmscape