Foot and Mouth Disease Vaccine Bank

Foot and Mouth Disease Vaccine Bank

Rick Worthington
Rick Worthington
What would happen if the US farm and ranch industry was hit with an outbreak of Foot-and-Mouth Disease?

Iowa State University says research shows, an outbreak would result in $128 billion in losses for the beef and pork sectors, $44 billion and $25 billion, respectively, to the corn and soybean farmers, and job losses of more than 1.5 million across U.S. agriculture over 10 years.

That would be really bad - to say the least. Dr. James Roth with Iowa State explains.

“If the U.S. had a large outbreak of FMD, it may be impossible to control without the rapid availability of adequate supplies of vaccine,” said Dr. James Roth, a professor in the department of Veterinary Microbiology and Preventative Medicine at Iowa State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine. “The U.S. vaccine bank is our best insurance policy to respond to an FMD outbreak in the United States. As with most insurance policies, we hope to never use it, but it’s paramount that we have fast access to enough vaccine if we ever need it. The funding provided in the 2018 Farm Bill provides a good start toward building up a more robust FMD vaccine stockpile to help protect American agriculture.”

To that end, representatives of the National Pork Producers Council, the National Milk Producers Federation, the National Corn Growers Association joined forces and called on the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to move as quickly as possible to establish a Foot-and-Mouth Disease (FMD) vaccine bank.

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