MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Growing concern in Uruguay with Brazilian delay in FMD vaccination timetable

Top quality beef is one of Uruguay’s main export items

Uruguay is concerned that in neighbouring Rio Grande do Sul, one of Brazil’s breadbaskets and famous for livestock breeding, the vaccination campaign against foot and mouth disease remains disturbingly delayed.

With ten days left for the end of the vaccination period “only 20% of livestock has been immunized”, according to official sources from Porto Alegre.

Uruguayan sanitary officials are closely monitoring the Brazilian situation and data from the compulsory vaccination campaign since the north of Uruguay is exposed to Rio Grande do Sul livestock given the porosity of the border which has no major geographical barriers and is an extension of South America’s rolling plains.

Both Uruguay and the state of Rio Grande do Sul are considered free of FMD with vaccination by the World Organization for Animal Health, a FAO dependency, which awards the crucial certification to access the strictest markets.

Top quality beef is one of Uruguay’s main export items. Brazil is among the world’s leading exporters of different meats (beef, pork and chicken).

Rio Grande Do Sul Agriculture Secretary has called on cattle breeders to speed up the vaccination rate against FMD, because so far “only 20% of livestock has been immunized”, although admitting that the main problem is with small farmers who have rodeos less that fifty head.

Agriculture Secretary Gelmar Tiebohl, according to Porto Alegre’s Zero Hora daily has recalled that the vaccination period will be over by May 31 with no extension of the period planned.

Zero Hora reports there have been unexpected difficulties with the distribution and the free vaccines are not arriving on time to the small farmers. Apparently of the four million doses distributed free of cost by the provincial government only 241.000 are recorded as having effectively been used. The information covers 392 municipal areas with information from another 104 still missing.

“The creation of ‘immunity windows’ is the main alarming consequence of the delay in vaccinating cattle in a given period of time” pointed out Rio Grande do Sul Agriculture Livestock health director Bernardo Todeschini.

Meantime in Uruguay over 50% of the rodeo to be immunized has already been vaccinated according to local authorities. The vaccination period ends May 31.

During this period all cattle less than two years, estimated in 6 million head, has to be inoculated for which 6.5 million FMD doses have been distributed. Besides the May period, in February every year the whole national rodeo (over 12 million head) is vaccinated and in the November period all calve born in the previous 12 months.

Uruguay is particularly concerned because in 2002 it lost its condition of FMD without vaccination when a highly volatile virus spread over from Argentina. Similarly in several states of Brazil the disease in recurrently endemic and threatens the whole Mercosur area because many small farmers do not bother to vaccinate or don’t have the means to do so.