New England veterinarian Andrew Biddle recently travelled to Nepal to participate in training in Foot and Mouth Disease measures which could benefit the livestock industry should an outbreak ever occur in Australia.

He was one of five District Livestock Health and Pest Authority vets from across NSW selected to participate in the training, which was funded by the Federal Department of Agriculture (DAFF) and allowed participants to gain practical real-time experience in FMD issues.

The work included FMD lesion identification and ageing, lesion sampling, real-time FMD outbreak investigation and consideration of appropriate control measures such as vaccination.

The experiences of each individual involved in the training were dependent on the village and enterprises they visited, Dr Biddle said.

“Nepal is a developing country where most livestock are kept in villages by individuals. These animals contribute in some way to the nutritional and financial wellbeing of their owners, however Nepal is also predominantly Hindu so they do not slaughter cattle for food,” he said.

If an outbreak of FMD were to occur in Australia, models from the 2001 UK outbreak would be used to plan for the speed of the spread, however Dr Biddle reported that in some villages in Nepal the spread of virus both between villages and within villages was much slower than he expected, and certainly slower than in the major UK outbreak.

“The amount of common grazing had a lot to do with spread between villages as well as the movement of goats prior to festivals and feasts,” he said.

“Some of the practices in Nepal, such as preventing contact between neighbouring stock by ensuring they never leave their area, makes any spreading of disease slow and may also provide an opportunity to vaccinate,” he said. 

By providing similar opportunities in Australia, particularly in extensive grazing areas where livestock contact across boundaries would be limited, the pattern of disease spread might be less like the UK outbreak and more like Nepal, which would be helpful in containing disease spread.

Dr Biddle was also interested to find out what Nepal’s views on vaccination were when determining potential risk factors in the spread of diseases such as FMD.

“In all cases those villagers interviewed were willing to vaccinate and pay for vaccine. The reason they didn’t was because they were concerned it could make their cows sick or abort. Just as in Australia the importance of ensuring industry understands disease control and prevention is critical to successful programs,” he said.

• Dr Biddle will share information gained from his FMD training in Nepal at the annual LHPA District Veterinarians conference in March.