One Planet

The Battle Against Bluetongue

In one bite a deadly virus is transmitted to a new host, not human but animal. The battle against Bluetongue was lost in Asia and Africa, now in Europe will it be won?

Susie Emmett will meet the continental farmers whose terrible losses sparked the race to develop a vaccine; the researchers, in government and private laboratories, who have fought hard to win the race to bring a vaccine in huge quantities to market, ahead of the 2008 season when the biting insects would breed and carry the virus to new zones.

She also talks to the veterinarians and farmer leaders who oversaw a massive campaign to deliver and administer on an unprecedented scale a fragile – and some say unproven vaccine – to every farmed animal at risk in Western Europe; the meteorologists whose spies in the sky were focused on the winds that could blow clouds of the vector, biting midges, ahead of the vaccination line.

And for what? Who wins in the battle against Bluetongue? Will there be a deepening rich/poor divide in tactics and control for animal health?