MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Uruguay free of FAM by vaccination.

Uruguay was declared free of foot and mouth disease, FAM, by vaccination during the annual meeting of the International Office of Epizooties, OIE, held in Paris last week with participation of delegations from 164 countries, which also approved radical changes to the current procedures.

The decision means Uruguayan beef, even with bone, --and live cattle-- are in better conditions to access important and traditional markets of the country such as Brazil, China, United States and Arab countries among others.

Once the OIE resolution was made public an enthusiastic Uruguayan president Jorge Batlle said that "this is the result of a formidable joint effort by farmers and our local sanitary authorities in line with Uruguay's responsible and serious attitude in addressing an issue so important for our economy".

In complete contrast with two years ago, April 2001, when on his way to the White House and minutes before meeting President George Bush, Mr. Batlle was informed that the outbreak of FAM that began in Paraguay, rapidly spread to Argentina had jumped to Uruguay and the country consequently had lost its free of FAM without vaccination status plus the possibility of increasing Uruguay's quota in the US market.

"A blow that cost Uruguay the equivalent of a billion US dollars in markets, exports, sales and jobs", emphasized president Batlle. Beef is Uruguay's main single export commodity ranging between 400 and 500 million US dollars annually.

Actually a change in OIE rules helped Uruguay anticipate its partly recovered status since the 24 months of absence of any foot and mouth virus reports was reduced to 18 months. Previously rules talked of reported clinical cases, now it refers to disease infection cases that demands constant "serological" monitoring in random blood sampling of cattle to check the absence of "anti-bodies" that determine the exposure at some moment to the live virus.

However those countries free of FAM by vaccination must "prove there's no live virus circulation" which demands an "important veterinary network to be able to come up with the evidence", explained in Paris Dr. Bernard Vallat, Director General of OIE.

OIE will be demanding from that those countries free of FAM by vaccination have "the appropriate and necessary infrastructure to monitor the disease, to make the necessary investigation proving that the virus has disappeared after having appealed to a massive vaccination campaign".

Uruguay made its request based on the presentation of over 180.000 serological blood samples, both bovine and ovine.

Another radical change in OIE regulations that was adamantly rejected by the European Union and Chile but strongly sponsored by Australia and Mercosur was that the free of FAM by vaccination, under the new system, entitles the country to export beef with bone. United States said it wasn't convinced about the argument but finally accepted the change that was passed unanimously by all OIE delegations.

"This means we now have a formidable support to fight the long established tradition demanding free of FAM without vaccination to have access to certain markets", said the head of the Uruguayan delegation, Dr. Recaredo Ugarte.

"There's no reason why we should increase our overseas sales 25% in the coming twelve months", added Mr. Ugarte who also revealed that the representative from Namibia, who actually presides over the FAM Committee in OIE, requested Uruguayan counseling to achieve a quick approval of FAM by vaccination in certain African territories.

The radical changes in the OIE FAM code also received an important support from OIE Director General Mr. Vallat.

"Some Latinamerican countries decided not to proceed with anti FAM vaccination campaigns fearing the commercial consequences, but two years ago they were infected from neighboring countries and losses were even higher", said Mr. Vallat in direct reference to what happened in Mercosur.