[waterhouse]

On July 5th GB will be officially declared free of bluetongue and the sheep industry will be at the end of a saga stretching back nearly four years.
 
The announcement by Defra this week that GB has met the required criteria to be officially recognised as being disease free has two significant direct effects in terms of sheep production and management
1.      From July 5th it will not be legal to vaccinate sheep against bluetongue as the regulations prevent vaccination in a free area
2.      Exports of sheep to other countries not affected by bluetongue will be free of the current restrictions. This is of particular relevance to people exporting to Northern Ireland into which exports are only possible at the moment if certain conditions are met.
This is however not quite the end of the story, NSA and indeed Defra still wish to see a change to the regulations which permits the use of vaccine even if an area is deemed to be free of disease. There are still numbers of farmers who wish to vaccinate against the disease, mainly in the east and south east of England and NSA believes they should be able do so if they wish as there are no significant downsides or risks associated with such a permission being granted. This issue is being looked at by the EU Commission and even though they have not agreed to date there is a good level of confidence that they will recommend such a change in the coming weeks.

[Cobra]

Good news.

Always makes me laugh how people in positions of responsability can be so bloody thick. Just because a virus has been eradicated; never means it wont return and in my mind further prevention of a return is a no brainier and so vaccination shouldn't even have been considered to be illegal.

But thats my take on it; the only reason that i could think of is that a vaccinated animal is restricted in it use, or where a vaccine has an inherent cause of added symptoms or other health problems through its administration. Anyone have experience of it? and know of any issues with the vaccine? Just curiouse.

[kanisha]

You cannnot get a dog or cat vaccinated against rabies in australia or new zealand unless to be exported and export requires it nor could you in the uK when there was no pet passport scheme.

[SallyintNorth]

The problem with the vaccination for rabies was that once an animal had been vaccinated it became impossible to distinguish (under the microscope - brain cells or neural fluids or whatever it is they have to look at for rabies detection) between an animal that had the disease and an animal that had been vaccinated, so disease control became a major issue. 

I don't know if a similar thing applies with bluetongue, but I suspect there is some similarity because all the false alarms we had with imported animals turned out to be false positives from vaccinated animals.  So I always assumed that was why we had to declare ourselves not disease free in order to be allowed to vaccinate; if you were actually disease-free but vaccinated, then it would be really hard to tell if the disease had really arrived.

Sorry I haven't expressed that very well - it's late and my grammer is not so good this time o' night...

[kanisha]

Infact the only way to determine clinical rabies is from neural tissue under the microscope not practical in a live dog...............
The difference between active infection and vaccina tion is not apparent with antibody levels which is a much simpler blood test.

[feldar]

Living on the south coast we were required to vaccinate during the Bluetongue scare and indeed we were shut down for a suspected case. I know there was a lot of worry about a drop in fertility using the vaccine ( making the tups infertile) and that is why a lot of large producers refused to vaccinate.
We have about 200 sheep give or take a few and we saw no drop in production for vaccinating, but of course it is personal preference. We wont vaccinate this year purely because of cost but If a scare arose again we would, better to be safe than sorry.

[SallyintNorth]

Be aware people, in getting ourselves declared bluetongue free (as we are) we will (as regs currently stand) be unable to vaccinate.  Our Eurocrats are working to get these regs changed, but as of today you may only vaccinate if you are in a Bluetongue Protection Zone.  Which is why we decided to declare ourselves not bluetongue free in the first place.     All I can say (apart from 'first against the wall') is, please pleeeease PLEASE don't anyone import live animals from regions which have bluetongue!!!!!!