Vaccine could help prevent egg recalls
<p>Dominic Chiodo, 7, of Des Moines, Iowa, eats eggs benedict at the Drake Diner Tuesday in Des Moines, Iowa. The egg recall hasn't affected this popular breakfast spot in downtown Des Moines. Manager Shannon Vilmain credits quality suppliers for keeping the diner stocked with safe eggs. She said that while more customers have been asking about the brand names of the eggs used and whether they're safe, she hasn't noticed a decline in the number of orders that use eggs.</p>
DES MOINES, Iowa - Low-cost vaccines that may help prevent the kind of salmonella outbreak that has led to the recall of more than a half-billion eggs haven't been given to nearly half the nation's egg-laying hens.
The vaccines aren't required in the U.S., although in Great Britain, officials say vaccinations have given them the safest egg supply in Europe. A survey conducted by the European food safety agency in 2009 found about 1 percent of British flocks had salmonella compared to about 60 to 70 percent of flocks elsewhere in Europe, said Amanda Cryer, spokeswoman for the British Egg Information Service.
Since Britain's vaccinations began, the only salmonella outbreaks in eggs have been linked to those imported from elsewhere in the European Union, Cryer said. Overall salmonella cases in the country dropped by half within three years.
There's been no push to require vaccination in the U.S., in part because it would cost farmers and in part because advocates have been more focused on more comprehensive food safety reforms, those watching the poultry industry said. And the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has not yet determined how the hens in Iowa became infected.
But Darrell Trampel, a poultry veterinarian at Iowa State University, predicted vaccination will become more common after the recent outbreak.
About 125 million of the 218 million egg-laying hens in the U.S. have been vaccinated, said Gary Baxter, a spokesman for French pharmaceutical company CEVA, which makes some of the vaccines available in the U.S. The salmonella vaccine prevents chickens from becoming infected and then passing the bacteria on to their eggs. It has been available in the U.S. since 1992.
There are two forms. One is a spray that uses a live bacteria, and chickens inhale it. The other contains dead bacteria that's injected. Jewanna Porter, a spokeswoman for the Egg Safety Center, an industry group, said both forms provide good protection. The injected vaccine lasts longer, but veterinarians recommend both be updated.
In most cases, laying hens are vaccinated at between 10 and 16 weeks old, which is before they are put into production.
The FDA said last month it doesn't believe mandatory vaccination is necessary, but it supports farmers doing it voluntarily.
Doug Grian-Sherman, senior scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the vaccine deserves additional study, but it would likely have only have limited effectiveness against a bacteria like salmonella, which has many different strains.
"It's only going to be a Band-Aid on a much bigger problem," he said.
It would be more effective to give the FDA additional authority to stop repeat offenders and pull contaminated products off shelves and to move away from big production facilities that ship across the nation and can quickly spread disease, Grian-Sherman said.
"The way we produce a lot of our food and meat and eggs in particular, has gotten to a scale where it's very difficult to prevent these problems," he said. "That needs to change and we need to think about producing food on a scale that is better for the communities and safer for consumers."