Extract fromRoyal Society Infectious Disease Inquiry Follow-Up review (pdf file)
From Main Recommendation 7 page 10 ".......By this we mean vaccination-to-live, under which meat and meat products from animals vaccinated and subsequently found to be uninfected may enter the normal human food chain."
Page 11
The creation of a satisfactory exit strategy after emergency vaccination is crucial, and it is important that all stakeholders understand exactly what is involved.
During the consultation phase of the development of the EU Directive, Defra worked with EU officials and colleagues in other Member States to obtain derogations to the provisions in the period between the completion of surveillance testing and obtaining disease free status for a particular area. This ensures that meat and milk from vaccinated animals can be sold on the domestic market without having to undertake costly deboning or heat treatment [Articles 25-27, EU Directive (EU 2003)].
The recent publication on the role of vaccination (Defra2004d) does not mention these derogations in the sections dealing with each of the various animal species (cattle paragraph 17, pigs paragraph 23 and sheep paragraph 28) although they are described later in the document. This has caused some confusion, for example the front page of the Veterinary Times (VT 2004) entitled “Vaccinate to live in debt?” Defra is consulting on notes on the treatment of products from vaccinated animals which were designed to inform the relevant stakeholders. Furthermore we understand that Defra are currently preparing a paper to explain the meat treatments required in a FMD outbreak.