Resumen de Foot and mouth vaccine to end mass cattle culls
Smoldering pyres of cattle sacrificed to halt foot and mouth disease could be consigned to history, thanks to a new vaccine. The vaccine allows testers to distinguish between cattle that have the virus and those that have been vaccinated. During an outbreak of foot and mouth disease in 2001, the UK government elected to slaughter 6 million animals at a cost of 8 billion pounds rather than use a vaccine to contain the disease. Now, Bryan Charleston of the Pirbright Institute in Woking, UK, and colleagues have developed a synthetic vaccine that produces a different antibody signature. The vaccine will need to be tested successfully in herds of at least 17 animals to win European approval, and Charleston warns it could be seven years before it is available.
