Veterinary epidemiology: vaccination strategies for foot-and-mouth disease

Abstract

When foot-and-mouth disease struck the United Kingdom in 2001, the traditional 'stamping out' policy of 1967-68 was supplemented by the pre-emptive culling of animals in premises contiguous to infected premises. A model proposed by Tildesley et al. indicates that the introduction of vaccination should at least halve the number of premises that would need to be subjected to culling in the event of another outbreak. We contest, however, that the overlapping confidence intervals of the outputs of their model, and the inconsistency of their results compared with those from previous models, call into question the model's value as a decision tool, while adding little to the recognized tenet of ring vaccination.