FOOT AND MOUTH DISEASE: THE 1967 OUTBREAK AND ITS AFTERMATH The transcript of a Witness Seminar held by the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL,London,on 11 December 2001 Edited by L A Reynolds and E M Tansey Volume 18 2003 ©The Trustee of the Wellcome Trust, London, 2003 First published by the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL, 2003 The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL is funded by the Wellcome Trust, which is a registered charity, no. 210183. ISBN 978 085484 096 0 All volumes are freely available online at: www.history.qmul.ac.uk/research/modbiomed/wellcome_witnesses/ Please cite as: Reynolds L A, Tansey E M. (eds) (2003) Foot and Mouth Disease: The 1967 outbreak and its its aftermath. Wellcome Witnesses to Twentieth Century Medicine,, vol. 18. London: Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL. Key Front cover photographs, top to bottom: Lord Soulsby Mr Howard Rees Mr Keith Meldrum Dr Noel Mowat (1927–2009) Inside front cover photographs, top to bottom: Dr Maurice Allen, Professor David Rowlands Lord Plumb, Mr Ken Tyrrell Ms Abigail Woods Professor David Rowlands, Dr Tony Garland Back cover photographs, top to bottom: Dr Bob Sellers, Dr Walter Plowright (1923–2010) Lord Plumb, Miss Mary Brancker (1914–2010) Mr Gareth Davies, Dr Alan Richardson Dr Alan Richardson, Mr Angus Taylor, Mr Sherwin Hall, Lord Plumb Inside back cover photographs, top to bottom: Dr Maurice Allen, Mr Angus Taylor Mr Sherwin Hall Mr Ken Tyrrell, Mr Chris Shermbrucker Mr James Morris, The Duke of Montrose CONTENTS Illustrations and credits v Introduction Dr Lise Wilkinson vii Acknowledgements xiii Witness Seminars:Meetings and publications E M Tansey and L A Reynolds xv Transcript Edited by L A Reynolds and E M Tansey 1 References 77 Biographical notes 85 Glossary 95 Index 103 iii ILLUSTRATIONS AND CREDITS Figure 1 Mr Howard Rees, CB DVSM HonFRCVS, Chief Veterinary Officer, 1980–88. Crown Copyright. Reproduced by courtesy of Mr Howard Rees. 6 Figure 2 Mr John Reid CB FRCVS DVSM, Chief Veterinary Officer, 1965–70. Crown Copyright. Reproduced by courtesy of Mr Keith Meldrum. 11 Figures 3 a–d Outbreaks of FMD during the 1967–68 epidemic, October 1967 to June 1968. Crown Copyright. 13 Figure 4 Mr Keith Meldrum CB MRCVS DVSM HonFRSH, Chief Veterinary Officer, 1988–97. Crown Copyright. Reproduced by courtesy of Mr Keith Meldrum. 16 Figure 5 Steer at Pirbright shows excess salivation indicative of the development of FMD lesions in the mouth. Reproduced by permission of Dr Noel Mowat. 19 Figure 6 Mr Angus Taylor receives an inscribed silver salver from the Cheshire Agricultural Society. L to R: Lt Col. Sir Richard Verdin, Mr Angus Taylor and Miss Mary Brancker. Photograph from the Chester Chronicle, published in TheVeterinary Record, 23 March 1968, 354. Reproduced by permission of The Veterinary Record. 25 Figure 7 Preparing a pyre for slaughtered cattle and sheep, 1967. Reproduced by permission of Lord Soulsby. 26 Figure 8 Cattle attendants decontaminate their protective clothing by spraying with alkaline disinfectant prior to leaving one of the animal isolation units at Pirbright, c. 1967. Reproduced by permission of Dr Noel Mowat. 28 Figure 9 JCB backhoe loader, an example of the machinery used to prepare burial sites during the 1967–68 FMD outbreak. Reproduced by permission of J C Bamford Excavators Limited. 32 v Figure 10 FMD virus particle and illustration of capsid components. Reproduced by permission of Dr Noel Mowat. 42 Figure 11 Industrial-scale equipment for the manufacture of FMD vaccine, c. 1966. Photograph courtesy of Merial Laboratories, Pirbright, and reproduced by permission of Dr Noel Mowat. 46 Figure 12 Annual incidence of FMD, 1950–90. Reproduced by permission of Dr Noel Mowat. 47 Figure 13 Neutralizing antibody response of cattle to inactivated FMD vaccine. Reproduced from Northumberland (1969a), Figure 4, 66. Crown Copyright. 53 Figure 14 Restocking plans discussed following the 1967 FMD epidemic. L to R: Tom Stobo, Henry Plumb and Mary Brancker. Reproduced by permission of The Veterinary Record. 73 Table 1 Origins of FMD Outbreaks, 1954–67. Table adapted from Northumberland (1969a), Table 10, 77. Crown Copyright. 7 Table 2 Isolation of FMD virus O from samples taken 1 during the 1967–68 epidemic. Table adapted from Northumberland (1969a), Table 6, 55. Crown Copyright. 18 Table 3 Sources of infection in FMD outbreaks during 1967–68. Table adapted from Northumberland (1969a), Table 5, 54. Crown Copyright. 29 Crown copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen’s Printer for Scotland.Crown copyright material held at The National Archives is reproduced with the permission of the Keeper of the Public Records and Commissioner of Historical Manuscripts. vi INTRODUCTION In December 2001 the History of Twentieth Century Medicine Group chose a veterinary disease for the subject of a Witness Seminar, the first time in its nine years’ existence. Although the title specified the 1967–68 outbreak, it so happened that at that time Britain was still in the grip of its worst outbreak of foot and mouth disease (FMD) since 1967. Epizootics, or plagues affecting domestic animals, have for centuries caused havoc in farming communities in every continent across the globe. FMD may be assumed to have appeared in higher mammals at the time when man began his first forays into animal husbandry and became dependent on herds of domestic animals, inevitably susceptible to diseases of various kinds. Their presence is documented in descriptions in early Graeco–Roman literature from Aristotle (384–322 BCE) and the elder Pliny (CE 24–79) to Vegetius (fl.c. CE 450), although retrospective diagnosis must always be treated with caution. Confusion between FMD and rinderpest (cattle plague), both viral diseases and highly infectious, continued well into the nineteenth century.1 As indicated by its suffix ‘plague’, the latter disease is far more deadly than FMD, with a fatality rate of up to 1 in 10 animals per affected herd. That Britain’s position as an island offered some protection against the introduction of animal diseases from its continental neighbours was described as early as 1807 by Samuel Bardsley (1764–1851), physician to the Manchester Infirmary.2George Fleming (1833–1901), veterinary inspector to the War Office and later to the Army, noted 30 years later that in 1839 ‘…our ports were thrown open to foreign cattle’,3 and rinderpest, FMD, and contagious pleuropneumonia of cattle were introduced to a country whose veterinary profession was not well prepared to deal with epizootics in domestic animals in general. Most veterinary surgeons had been educated at the London Veterinary College, under Edward Coleman (1765–1839), that animal medicine was inferior to its human counterpart, and that horses were worth exclusive attention compared to other domestic animals. 1Wilkinson (1992): chapters 1 and 2. 2ibid., 82. S A Bardsley also published on rabies in the Memoirs of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester. 3Fleming (1871): xxxiv. vii By the end of the 1860s, after the rinderpest epidemic, the responsibility for increasingly tighter controls on imports from countries harbouring infections with cattle diseases finally passed to the state. After very serious outbreaks in 1871 affected an estimated 3 million animals, the sheer scale of that epidemic led to the inclusion of FMD as notifiable under the Contagious Diseases (Animals) Act (1869).4 The economic burden was high. To quote again George Fleming, writing in 1871 after the 1865–66 outbreak of rinderpest: The losses from only two exotic bovine maladies (‘contagious pleuropneumonia’ and the so-called ‘foot and mouth disease’) have been estimated to amount …to 5 549 780 head, roughly valued at £83 616 854.5 In Britain the emphasis was on isolation of infected animals and their possible contacts; prevention of movement of livestock within infected areas; and consequent closure of markets and fairs; measures which were successful in banishing endemic FMD from Britain by the end of 1884.6 By the later decades of the nineteenth century, increased microbiological knowledge paved the way for the emergence of the new discipline of bacteriology. Discovery of the existence, if not yet the structure and the nature of ‘filterable viruses’ additionally facilitated diagnostic characterization. Early work on vaccines followed Koch’s work on anthrax and Pasteur’s on rabies; work which was to develop in the twentieth century to benefit the fight against animal diseases as well as human ones.7 With regard to FMD vaccines in Britain, it is curious that although state- sponsored research followed the serious outbreaks in 1922 and 1924 at the Pirbright Institute,8 the resultant effective vaccines have never been used in outbreaks in Britain. Even now, into the twenty-first century, the exclusive use of slaughter continues to find favour, as demonstrated in the most recent, severe outbreaks in 2001–02. Yet the Pirbright Animal Virus Research Institute has long been recognized as the World Reference Laboratory, with samples submitted from countries worldwide, and offering information, published annually, in return.9 4See note 6, page 4. 5Fleming (1871): xxxiv. 6See Henderson (1954): 91. 7Fleming (1871): xxxiv. 8See note 8, page 5. 9For details of the work of the World Reference Laboratory, see Brooksby (1974): 20–21. viii The work at Pirbright had been preceded in this country by important work on pleuropneumonia and FMD at the Brown Institution, established by the University of London in the 1870s.10 By the 1920s, this work continued, with the benefit of better facilities and improvements in methodology at the Lister Institute. The Lister Institute’s work on FMD was carried out during a period of threats of new outbreaks. For safety reasons the experiments took place on an obsolete warship moored off Harwich,11 under the auspices of the Ministry of Agriculture. This work showed the possibility of transmission of FMD to guinea pigs and other small mammals, which in turn led to the realization of the danger of transmissibility of the disease within natural populations of hedgehogs, which could act as carriers over considerable distances. That possibility has been mentioned in discussions of sources on the spread of the disease in 1967 – perhaps as well in a country intent on preserving its populations of hedgehogs.12 In spite of all the important work done in the 1920s, by June 1926 the British Medical Journal warned that the country was still ‘suffering from this very serious disease, which threatens to become enzootic’, and stressed the ‘utmost importance’ of keeping the country free from the disease ‘by scientific means’: ‘Britain is no longer an island, and it seems obvious that the pole- axe method cannot be indefinitely used to stamp out the disease. It has been fairly successful in the United States – but that country is a much more effective “island” than this country, and there is less danger of its reintroduction there.’13 We might add here that Professor Fred Brown FRS, who spent most of his working life in Britain, but unfortunately could not attend our Witness Seminar because of other commitments, is currently working at the US Department of Agriculture’s Plum Island Animal Disease Centre, NY.14 During the 2001 FMD crisis he was interviewed by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC); while making no reference to our relatively protected position as an island, as first 10See Wilkinson (1992): chapter 10. 11Chick et al.(1971): 1135–1136. 12See Northumberland (1969a): 114. 13Anon. (1926): 1002. 14See Biographical notes on page 85. ix noted almost two centuries earlier by Bardsley,15 he did pronounce himself entirely in favour of a combined slaughter plus vaccination policy.16 Progress in the experimental work at Pirbright is reflected in its first five reports from 1925 to 1937, when each report lists laboratory alterations and improvements, matching increasing knowledge of virus diseases in general and of FMD in particular. Also all experimental areas had improved safety measures including ‘vermin-proof’ fencing, carcass incinerators, and manure destructors. Meanwhile the research work at other centres was gradually discontinued; and in 1939, the last such laboratories at the National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR), at Hampstead, were closed. From then on the Pirbright Institute expanded its laboratories and experimental units as the only centre for work on FMD in the UK.17 A severe postwar FMD outbreak in 1952 coincidentally saw the beginnings of another major expansion to increase facilities at Pirbright for virus research in the fields added in the 1950s and 1960s, such as research on pathology and genetics, using tissue culture. However, in spite of additional work on exotic viruses, Pirbright still had no provision for filtration of outgoing air. Only after that outbreak were filtration plants installed in all experimental cattle units.18 The 1952–53 outbreak was as severe as those in the 1920s, and was described in detail in the first of the new postwar Committee of Inquiry Reports to the Ministry of Agriculture. This became known as the ‘Gowers’ Report after its chairman, Sir Ernest Gowers,19 and was addressed to the Rt Hon. Sir Thomas 15See note 2 above. 16Professor Fred Brown wrote: ‘I consider that the FMD Witness Seminar was a worthwhile exercise, timed as it was in the wake of the devastating outbreak of the disease in the UK in 2001. Although I was a member of the staff at Pirbright in 1967–68, not being a veterinarian, I was only on the fringe of what was going on in the field. Nevertheless I learned a lot about the larger world by talking to colleagues such as Drs Brooksby, Sellers and Mowat. Several clear messages emerged during the 1967–68 outbreak: (1) the role of sheep as a reservoir for the virus; (2) the presence of virus in the milk of cattle before they showed any clinical signs of the disease; (3) the importance of keeping animal movement to a minimum; (4) the logic of not importing products from FMD-infected countries. So why did the 2001 outbreak get out of control? It was largely because the lessons learned in the 1967–68 outbreak were ignored. A major recommendation of the Northumberland Report was to introduce ring vaccination if the disease got out of control. This should have been introduced in 2001.’ Fax to Mrs Lois Reynolds, 25 August 2003. 17See Brooksby (1974): 16–17. 18See notes 71 and 72, page 51. See also ibid., 18–19. 19See biographical note on page 87. x