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Transboundary disease management: the theory and the practice--the science and the politics.

Dear Reader, When Wolfgang Langhans decided to step down as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Veterinary Medicine, Series A at the beginning of 2007, Wiley-Blackwell took this opportunity to assess the needs of the veterinary science community. During numerous conversations, a clear message emerged that we are at a crucial threshold of change with regard to the impact of animal health. Rapid growth in international transport, both of humans and animals, coupled with dramatic increases in the consumption of animal protein and, indeed, global warming means that we are confronted with health threats on a scale never encountered previously. Researchers expressed an urgent need for a scientific forum, multidisciplinary in nature, to propel discovery and management of these threats. Ultimately, at the root of science lies the material impact of the field, in this case animal health, on the larger human community both from a health-related and economic standpoint. Therefore, it is with an eye to these pressures that we present this new journal Transboundary and Emerging Diseases. A journal dedicated to the subject of transboundary animal disease is overdue. Transboundary disease is often used synonymously with epidemic animal diseases, such as foot-and-mouth disease (FMD), classical and African swine fever and avian influenza (AI) which have significant economic and animal health impacts and directly affect trade in live animals and their products. They were originally identified on the World Animal Health Organization (OIE) List A, but this way of classifying animal disease has been discarded by OIE as no longer helpful. For while FMD and AI are still important, there are other emerging diseases, such as those caused by new strains of porcine circovirus and PRRS virus, which are threatening to spread globally. It would be naive to consider transboundary disease as purely an animal disease issue. The presence of a disease in the animals of a trading partner can be used as a trade barrier. With the reduction in the number of other legitimate trade barriers, animal disease remains as a defensible reason to prevent the importation of live animals or their products, and thus the threat of importing disease may be used to protect a national industry. If the disease in question is also potentially transmissible to humans, such as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) or avian influenza, public support can be mobilized to encourage the politicians to prolong the trade ban. The OIE publishes a Code which provides guidelines to help countries of different animal disease status to trade safely, by reducing the risk of inadvertently moving infected animals or their products across international borders. The OIE advises the WTO on trade disputes related to livestock using the Code guidelines, but the Code is only a guide that can be replaced by a country’s own risk assessment. The conditions required to resume trade based on a risk assessment, can be very difficult to meet, and may effectively prevent the re-establishment of a previous trading arrangement with severe economic consequences for the exporting partner. It is often said that risk assessments are based on the best available science, but because accurate information is frequently missing for many transboundary diseases, even for the major diseases which have been studied for a considerable time, there is the opportunity to interpret what is available in a very risk-averse manner – the significance of the FMD virus carrier animal is a good example. The application of precautionary principle allows for the worst possible scenarios to be developed and provide the basis for a trade ban, and there is rarely any incentive for politicians and senior bureaucrats to take an unnecessary career risk by giving the exporting country the benefit of any doubt. The other side of the argument is that because of the major economic consequences of discovering a new disease in the national herd or flock, and knowing that the initial reaction from trading partners will be immediately to stop all trade in the particular commodity, there is a growing tendency for countries not to report disease in a timely fashion. In this way the present international animal health system provides a disincentive to early and accurate notification of new animal disease outbreaks. Furthermore, management of animal disease is becoming increasingly complex, with traditional control methods, such as mass slaughter causing disgust and reaction from the general public. The consequences of current animal disease management, whether environmental, economic or ethical are often worse than the problem being addressed, and there is therefore a clear need to develop more rational, science-based and cost-effective Transboundary and Emerging Diseases