Schering-Plough bluetongue vaccine ‘needs more testing’

The batch of bluetongue vaccine the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) received from Schering-Plough’s Intervet unit this week requires further testing before deployment, it states.

As such, Defra asserts the anticipated extension of the protection zone will no longer go ahead.

Current European Union law states vaccination is only allowed in a protection zone.

A statement from Defra in recent days noted that only one batch of vaccine requires further examination and that there are no concerns about the production process or the vaccine supplied so far.

The department also stated that Intervet has delivered the vaccine faster than was expected.

“As soon as further batches of vaccine are available, we will continue to expand the Protection Zone in line with the published vaccination roll-out plan,” Defra concluded.

It was recently reported on web resource ThePigSite.com that Intervet/Schering-Plough has appointed Marc Dickie as its head of global swine.