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The Uniting Protestant Churches in The Netherlands (Samen op Weg-kerken), has given tacit backing to the Dutch government decision to adopt vaccination. The European Union, of which The Netherlands is a member, reluctantly gave permission on March 26 for limited vaccinations here. They began the same day.

The Netherlands is one of a handful of European countries to be affected by the foot and mouth crisis. Both in the United Kingdom and in continental Europe, vaccination is a divisive issue. Foot and mouth has seven different strains with many sub-groups, and to be effective the correct vaccine is required for each strain. Also, countries which use vaccination lose their disease-free status on international markets. Volkskrant, a daily newspaper, pointed out that vaccination could in fact be a source of infection—of the 34 outbreaks of foot and mouth in Europe between 1977 and 1987, 13 were due to causes such as viruses escaping from laboratories making vaccines.

In 1991 for economic reasons the EU banned vaccinations against foot-and-mouth. This decision brought an extra 40 million guilders (US$16.1 million) in annual income to Dutch farmers through exports to the United States, Japan and Korea, according to Volkskrant. These countries buy only meat from non-vaccinated animals. Vaccination is estimated to cost 24 million guilders (US$9.7 million) a year.

When foot and mouth was confirmed in England early in February, The Netherlands imposed some of the strictest restrictions and animal slaughter policies in Europe. The Netherlands is particularly vulnerable to infection because animal farming is very intensive. Farm animals and poultry here total 122 million cattle, pigs, sheep and chickens.

The Uniting Protestant Churches said in a public statement on March 21 that the EU decision to end vaccination against foot-and-mouth disease a decade ago was due to economic pressures that were "too one-sided."

"The current crisis is an outgrowth of the policy decisions taken by the EU in 1991, "church spokesperson Klaas van der Kamp told ENI. "With these sorts of excesses, of which farmers here are very critical, we have reached the end of this process."

Van der Kamp said that Dutch farmers were strongly protesting against the mass slaughter of animals.

A group of Uniting Protestant clergy in the eastern part of The Netherlands—the area currently worst affected—had signed a public statement calling for vaccination, he said.

According to the statement, the Uniting Protestant Churches are providing pastoral support to Dutch farmers, but, the statement added, there were no simple solutions to the crisis. "Experience of a catastrophe like this reveals how powerless humans are in the 21st century, despite the economic and material progress of the past."

The statement added that international trade was transforming local problems into much larger disasters.

Jaantje Vink, coordinator of the ecumenical Network on Churches and Agriculture (Netwerk Kerken en Landbouw), also expressed support for vaccination. They were urgently needed and both ethically and economically acceptable, she told ENI. However, there was uncertainty as to whether an effective vaccine would be ready in time. "Vaccination will have no relevance for this epidemic," she predicted. "We will have to wait until the next outbreak of foot and mouth."

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April (Web-only) 2001, Vol. 45