This Tuesday morning, the country’s cattlemen’s leadership delivered a letter to the Minister of Rural Development and Lands, Rémy Gonzales, with whom they want to meet and explain the need to vaccinate cattle against foot-and-mouth disease. paralyzed.
Adrian Castedo, president of the Bolivian Confederation of Cattlemen (Congabol) and the Santa Cruz Cattlemen’s Federation (Fegascruz), assured that there is no technical condition to prevent vaccination, as it could affect beef production and therefore the national economy.
“A foot-and-mouth disease outbreak without a vaccine is a disaster for the country, as it would mean the movement of animals would have to be paralyzed, given that 65% of the meat for the whole country comes from Santa Cruz. And 100% is exported goes into the U.S.; then, it would be disastrous for the livestock sector and the economy as well”, Castado analyzed with La Razón.
Last week, Javier Suárez, director general of the National Agrarian Health and Food Security Service (Cenassag), clarified that the decision to suspend the foot-and-mouth disease vaccine in Santa Cruz and a part of Cochabamba was “purely technical and scientific”.
He explained that Pando and the Highlands (La Paz, Oruro and part of Potosí) are certified free of foot-and-mouth disease by the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) without vaccination. And the rest of the country is certified as free from the disease since 2014 with vaccination.
While in the north of Beni and La Paz, at the end of this month, on the occasion of the General Assembly of Representatives of the World Organization for Animal Health, there will be a certification of foot and mouth disease without vaccination.
In this regard, Castedo assured that “it is not being handled with good information” from Senasag, which is why he believed that there is no good advice on the issue of vaccination against foot-and-mouth disease, which is why ” We believe that it should be analyzed very carefully”.
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At the same time, he assured that no precaution is taken to increase surveillance in case vaccination is stopped, there are more personnel for this work, there is no budget, whether there is a fund for compensation in case of outbreak or not. No information. Or is there a vaccine bank to deal with an emergency should it arise.
“This is a decision that is outside the animal health regulations and in the sense that it has to go back to the regulatory channel and every health system is public-private, not that the public authority defines; It doesn’t work like that,” Castedo said.
Since 2018, in Beni, La Paz, Chuquisaca and part of Tarija, vaccination has been progressively removed as all technical and scientific evidence that there was a transmission or transmission of foot-and-mouth disease was discarded.
According to Senasag, the vaccination cycle against the disease for April and May only established vaccinations for 3,930,000 animals, taking into account that blood samples were taken from the animals annually to ensure that there was no viral circulation.
