It is not wise to go back to the situation of many small livestock farms. This was stated by health care professor Arjan Stegeman when answering questions from MPs during the debate on ‘Zoönoses in the crosshairs’. The risk that a pandemic will come from the Netherlands is small, according to the report.
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The report ‘Zoönoses in the visor’ was commissioned by the Ministers of Medical Care and Sport and Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality. The compilers, experts from human and animal health, were led by Henk Bekedam, who as a doctor at the World Health Organization experienced outbreaks of SARS in China and influenza H5N1 in China and Egypt. Stegeman is vice-chairman of the expert group.
In explaining the report, Bekedam emphasized that it is not easy to predict a new pandemic. ‘That is why a good monitoring system is important. In the animal sector, this is very well done in the Netherlands. This can be done much better in human health care. Real-time monitoring and reporting are necessary, especially from an international perspective.’
Wildlife markets
A number of critical factors apply to a pandemic caused by a zoonosis. That is a lot of contact with wild animals and many animals and people kept together. The risks are therefore greatest in Asian countries where there are still markets with wild animals in the major cities.
Although there are many animals and people in the Netherlands, on a global scale that share is only 1 percent among animals and even less among people. That does not mean that nothing can happen in the Netherlands, but the risk is small.
Improvements in the Netherlands
The risk is also small because the situation in the Netherlands has improved considerably in recent years. For example, at its peak there were 15 million pigs on 135,000 farms in the Netherlands. Now less than 12 million on less than 4,000 companies. This reduces the risk of spread between companies.
‘Due to all the rules that are now being introduced for refurbishment due to, among other things, nitrogen, you should not want to return to many small companies,’ says Stegeman. ‘Larger companies that are further apart is better. However, a disease can persist longer on a large farm. So internal biosecurity is very important.’
Vaccination is a better solution for bird flu than compulsory confinement, Stegeman also noted in the context of the discussion about the report. ‘However, the vaccines that have been developed so far do not yet work well enough in practice. But a new generation is on the way with better expectations.’
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