Press releases

Dr Claire Colenutt received the Innovation in Animal Healthcare award on Monday 3 December 2018 at the Guildford Innovation Awards 2018. Dr Colenutt won the award for the creation of a new foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) field test, which could improve disease surveillance and alleviate the burden which it places on many smallholders and subsistence farmers who are reliant on foot-and-mouth disease (FMD)-susceptible livestock.

The World Reference Laboratory for Foot-and-Mouth Disease (WRLFMD) marked 60 years of being the global centre of expertise in the diagnostics and surveillance of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) with a two-day symposium on Monday 5 and Tuesday 6 November.

Scientists from The Pirbright Institute’s Vaccine Differentiation group have recently returned from Chennai in India, where they conducted a mass peste des petits ruminants (PPR) vaccination campaign and awareness programme. The trip marked the end of a four year collaborative project that has successfully uncovered important details about the PPR virus and generated tools to help eradicate the disease.

Researchers in the UK, led by The Pirbright Institute are to receive £3.1 million of investment to produce a more affordable and effective vaccine to protect animals against foot-and-mouth disease (FMD).

Foot-and-mouth disease is endemic in large parts of Africa, South America, the Middle East and Asia and, globally, is the most economically important infectious disease of livestock, affecting cattle, pigs, sheep and goats and other cloven-footed animals.