Annual Report

NOTE

I. New activities of the veterinary services
Following the first diagnosis of BSE in a 10 years cow from a dairy herd in the Golan Height the IVSAH had put into effect a contingency plan that includes the following measures:
· A compulsory testing for BSE of all slaughtered bovines aged more than thirty months before being released for human consumption.
· Removal and incineration of SRM from all bovines aged more than 12 months.
· Limiting the age of bovines sold to the Palestinian Authority for slaughter to thirty months.

II. Comments on specific List A diseases
1. Foot and mouth disease
No cases of FMD have been reported since 09/1999. Israel continues with the policy of annual vaccination, all cattle above the age of 3 months are vaccinated with a triple vaccine (against O1, A22, Asia1), a booster is given 2 to 8 weeks after the first vaccination to calves under the age of 18 months. The sheep and goats are vaccinated annually with mono-valent O vaccine.

2. Peste des petits ruminants
No outbreaks were reported during 2002, compared to 10 in the previous year. Sheep and goats are vaccinated annually from the age of 4 months.

3. Sheep pox and goat pox
Six outbreaks were reported compared to 17 in 2001. Vaccination of all sheep is carried out in high-risk areas.

4. Newcastle disease
Fifteen outbreaks were reported in 2002 in commercial flocks, compared to 17 in the previous year. Law requires Newcastle vaccination of all poultry in Israel, yet all affected flocks were destroyed, quarantine measures were taken and monitoring had been carried out.

5. Scrapie
The disease had been diagnosed for the first time since 1996 in 3 herds of sheep. All animals were destroyed while epidemiological studies could not follow any possible common sources.

6. Brucella melitansis
The vaccination of young sheep and goats with Ovirev is still on. Data for the years 1995-2002 are presented in the following Table:

Year 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002
Isolates in cattle 2 3 3 - -
Isolates in sheep 15 14 9 7 7
Isolates in man 111 35 31 21 12
N vaccinated (*1000)a 168 49 113 95 87

III. Comments on specific List B diseases
1. Rabies
Sixty-four cases of rabies were recorded in 2002 compared to 7 in the previous year. No cases were diagnosed in the area of 5000 km2 in the north of the country where oral vaccination of wild animals had been carried out in an in the last four years. With a larger budget available, Israel Veterinary Services are planning this year to extend the vaccination program to the rest of the country.

2. Bovine spongiform encephalitis
The first and only BSE case in Israel was diagnosed on 29 May 2002 in a dairy cow, born in 1992, showing clinical CNS symptoms
All 7,472 slaughtered cows tested before entering the food chain since that date in 2002, as well as 704 fallen stock and 49 cows showing nervous clinical symptoms tested in 2002 had been found negative for BSE.

IV. Comments on other diseases
1. Bovine ephemeral fever
No cases were diagnosed in 2002 after the disease had severely affected both dairy and beef herds for the previous three years. Active surveillance for antibodies also failed to diagnose new infections in 2002.

2. West Nile Fever
Like in 2001 no cases were recorded in 2002 in commercial geese flocks although monitoring of sentinels, the diagnosis of the virus in both migrating and local wild birds and in mosquitoes confirmed the virus-vector activity in 2002. The absence of the disease from the commercial geese flocks could be attributed to the efficient compulsory vaccination of all geese with a killed WNF vaccine developed in the Kimron Veterinary Institute, and the intensive anti-mosquitos campaign carried out by the Ministry of the Environment,