Sympathy for the devil
Scientists working on trying to control the facial tumour disease which threaten to wipe out the Tasmanian devil (Sarcophilus harrisii) have increased their understanding the disease. The Tasmanian devil is the largest carnivorous marsupial remaining and is now found only on the island of Tasmania, having been exterminated from the Australian mainland. The disease that…
BSE: Twenty years old
Twenty years ago, a paper appeared in the Veterinary Record recording a new disease in dairy cattle. The syndrome had been seen in cattle in England for a couple of years but with the publication of the paper by Wells and others, the disease was described and named, and the new term bovine spongiform encephalopathy…
Bluetongue virus: knocking at the door.
The big animal health story in the newspapers in the UK this summer has been the return, after 6 years, of foot and mouth disease. The outbreak was almost certainly caused by the escape of the virus from the virology research laboratory in Pirbright, Surrey. It seemed as if the outbreak had been contained quickly…
Biosecurity: who will guard the guardians?
The recent outbreak of foot and mouth disease in UK, possibly from a neighbouring laboratory working on vaccines for the disease, has raised the question of biosecurity in micro-organism research and the risks to the health of people, animals and plants. The Initial report on potential breaches of biosecurity at the Pirbright site 2007, by…
Foot and mouth: back again?
As soon as I heard the news on Saturday (4 August) that foot and mouth disease had returned to the UK, being found in a herd of cattle near to Guilford, I thought “That’s suspiciously close to the Pirbright Laboratory.” The Institute of Animal Health (IAH) has for a long time been a world centre…
Changes in the veterinary profession.
Think of a veterinarian and, thanks in part to James Herriot, most people conjure up images of genial man in tweed jacket (except when he has his arm down the back of a cow). Most of his time spent trundling down country lanes from farm to farm treating livestock and dealing with farmers. When Alf…
Melamine: important information being ignored?
The saga of the pet food contamination in North America (‘The Recall’ as it is now being called) rumbles on with some murky new twists. The culprit seems to be a chemical called melamine, an industrial chemical that boosts the nitrogen content of food giving it the appearance of having higher protein content. There are…
Cowpox, cats, smallpox and history.
It is 30 years since the last recorded case of naturally acquired smallpox. The eradication of this terrible disease which caused the deaths of hundreds of millions over the centuries, could raise the possibility that cowpox virus, which played an important part in the fight against smallpox, could be taking advantage of the removal of…
Origins of BSE?
The recent publication of a paper describing an atypical form of BSE, referred to as ‘bovine amyloidotic spongiform encephalopathy’ (BASE) could help in explaining the mystery of the origin of the BSE epidemic. This different type of BSE was identified in two cattle, aged 11 and 15 years, in Italy, and a similar strain of…
Pet Food Safety
The recall of lines of cat and dog food in the USA, Canada and Mexico is causing great concern amongst pet owners and veterinarians as a they try to establish what the scale of the problem is and what the risk is. The problem came to light following the reports of sickness and deaths of…
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