Qualitative comparison of BVDV control programmes in Europe to substantiate freedom from infection
Résumé
Objective: Several European countries have implemented control or eradication programmes for non-regulated diseases such as bovine viral diarrhoea virus (BVDV). However, the diversity in such control programmes (CP) creates difficulties for intra-community trade given that the probability of freedom from e.g. BVDV will differ between countries. This poses a risk of potential movement of BVDV into free regions. An understanding of equivalence with respect to disease freedom is important when seeking to facilitate interstate animal movements,whilst also managing the risk of infection. In this project, six European countries collaborate to develop an output-based approach to assess and compare confidence of freedom resulting from different CPs. The aim was to qualitatively compare the confidence of freedom resulting from different BVDV CPs. Materials and methods: An existing tool for harmonized description of surveillance programmes (the RISKSUR tool) was used to collect information from each participating country about BVDV status, demographic information and surveillance activities for BVDV, and expanded to also include control measures of the BVDV CPs. Results: The design of BVDV CPs differed considerably as well as country demographics (Table 1). The aspects of the different CPs were grouped in three main topics: context (i.e. BVDV status, occurrence of risk factors), actions to obtain a BVDV free status and measures to monitor the free status. Conclusions: The variation in context was larger than the variation in control programmes, resulting in different risk classifications for territories. The context of a country or territory is crucial information for an outcomebased comparison of BVDV CPs.