Three-hour turnaround time for new foot-and-mouth disease diagnostic kit
The US Department of Agriculture has licensed a rapid-response foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) diagnostic kit, .
The kit was developed jointly by federal agencies and animal health scientists. The diagnostic test can be used for cattle, pigs, and sheep.
Up to now, currently approved blood tests used in the US require an overnight incubation process.
The new test has a three-hour turnaround time.
It is likely to be used by state and federal authorities in the extensive regulatory programmes in the US to facilitate identification of, response to, and control of foot and mouth, if it should ever appear in the US.
With one in every nine Americans employed in agriculture or related industries, the effects of an outbreak would be devastating, estimated at nearly $200 billion in lost revenue over 10 years across affected industries.
Authorities in the EU are likely to be interested in the rapid-response FMD diagnostic kit.
It could play a vital role in the early detection of the disease, which scientists at the Pirbright Institute in the UK and Wageningen Bioveterinary Research in the Netherlands say is vital for controlling transmission of foot-and-mouth.
Their latest research showed clinical inspection alone was found to be ineffective at blocking transmission during an outbreak.
They found that weekly sampling using saliva swabs of at least ten animals per farm or daily air sampling (for housed cattle), both reduce the risk of transmission substantially, and reduce the number of animals culled unnecessarily.
