Emerging diseases and their impact on animal commerce: the Argentine lesson.

As a result of the Argentine experience with foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) in 2001, a need was postulated for the establishment of efficient supranational schemes for continuous surveillance of the interrelations between tropical extractives livestock systems and the prairies that are optimal for the feeding of livestock in the southern region of South America. FMD in Argentina and in other countries, new or re-emerging risks from avian influenza with potential risks for public health, the spongiform encephalopathies, porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome, and classical swine fever, among other animal diseases, have generated a strong reaction and evolution within the veterinary services of the country. These present lessons will influence decision-making within countries and should be accepted by the technical and scientific community.

Risk assessment and risk regionalization, based on the surveillance system for foot and mouth disease in South America.

Within the framework of the International Animal Health Code of the Office International des Epizooties (OIE), important contributions have been made by the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service/United States Department of Agriculture (APHIS/USDA), the Ministry of Agriculture of Canada, the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries of New Zealand and other organisations, by the development of risk assessment methods and regionalization criteria for risk assessment. The authors attempt to contribute to these efforts by proposing a regional risk evaluation of foot and mouth disease (FMD) in South America. Two examples of risk assessments for international trade, i.

Registration of veterinary products in Argentina.

A scheme for registering pharmaceutical and biological products for veterinary use was introduced in Argentina in 1994, as part of a joint scheme for countries of the Common Market of the South (Mercado Común del Sur: "Mercosur'). The authors describe the main features of these regulations, and the process which led to their development.

Quantitative risk analysis applied to innocuity and potency tests on the oil-adjuvanted vaccine against foot and mouth disease in Argentina.

The authors describe the method used in Argentina for quantification of risk in controls of the potency and innocuity of foot and mouth disease vaccine. Quantitative risk analysis is a relatively new tool in the animal health field, and is in line with the principles of transparency and equivalency of the Sanitary and Phytosanitary Agreement of the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT: now World Trade Organisation [WTO]). The risk assessment is presented through a description of the steps involved in manufacturing the vaccine, and the controls performed by the manufacturer and by the National Health Animal Service (Servicio Nacional de Sanidad Animal: SENASA).

Bovine spongiform encephalopathy surveillance in Argentina.

Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) is a new disease of cattle first described in the United Kingdom in November 1986. BSE belongs to the scrapie-related group of diseases. The epidemiological studies performed in the United Kingdom demonstrate that the BSE epidemic was caused by feeding cattle with ruminant-derived protein contaminated by a scrapie-like agent.