Disease surveillance under strain as outbreaks surge

Serious livestock diseases could slip through the net as Britain’s animal health services struggle to cope with multiple outbreaks, MPs have been warned.

The NFU raised concerns about disease surveillance and response capacity following this summer’s severe bluetongue (BTV-3) outbreak and the arrival of Shamonda virus.

See also: First cases of Shamonda virus detected in GB cattle

There have so far been 3,472 BTV-3 or unspecified serotype positive premises across the UK since June, including 2,917 in England, 500 in Wales and 55 in Scotland.

Giving evidence to the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Efra) select committee on Tuesday (3 November), NFU chief animal health and welfare adviser Catherine McLaughlin warned that mounting pressures could undermine disease detection.

“We are very concerned that our capability just isn’t there to deal with it on several fronts,” she said.

She also highlighted the risk of reporting fatigue, with farmers potentially mistaking symptoms of other notifiable diseases for bluetongue.

“I just hope and pray that we’re not missing things,” she added.

Animal and Plant Health Agency (Apha) chief executive Richard Lewis revealed that reports of exotic disease outbreaks had risen from 57 between 2015 and 2020 to approaching 5,000 over the following six years.

Acknowledging that Apha’s operating model had not kept pace, he said: “That model, or the way that we are structured now, ignores the reality of our situation rather than faces into it.”

However, he stressed that safeguards remained in place to identify other notifiable diseases, including foot-and-mouth.

System constraints

This summer’s BTV-3 outbreak exposed weaknesses in testing and reporting, with farmers facing delays of three weeks or longer for disease confirmation.

Dan Horton, director of science at the Pirbright Institute, said laboratory submissions increased from around 100 weekly in mid-July to approximately 150 daily by late July.

Testing turnaround times lengthened to 10-12 days, although the laboratory backlog was cleared by the end of August.

Mr Horton described receiving “crates full of jiffy bags, all with three samples in, all with individual submission forms”.

About 40% lacked necessary information, while prioritising pre-movement tests created further bottlenecks.

However, despite the delays experienced by farmers and vets, he maintained that Pirbright “didn’t actually exceed our stated testing capacity”.

Lessons learned

Witnesses called for faster reporting, clearer communication and greater capacity to manage future outbreaks.

British Veterinary Association president Dr Gwen Rees said adding suspected cases to Apha’s disease heat map had transformed vets’ ability to explain local risks to farmers, rather than relying on confirmed cases several weeks old.

Mr Lewis said Apha was introducing digital reporting and developing permanent outbreak teams to reduce reliance on staff switching between routine duties and emergency responses.

“The lesson that we need to learn more than anything is the ability to respond at scale and quickly, and that’s disease agnostic,” he said.

Apha will hold a lessons-learned exercise with government and industry representatives later this month to identify further improvements.