LAHORE, April 9: The WTO Quality Control Laboratory of the University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences (UVAS) has developed a vaccine to fight foot and mouth disease (FMD) affecting milch animals.

The disease is a viral problem of cloven-footed animals such as buffaloes, cows, sheep, goats and camels.

A UVAS spokesman said the disease had caused heavy economic loss worth Rs2 billion per year in Pakistan.

He said the UVAS laboratory had evolved all diagnostic techniques for typing of the virus. With the financial aid of Agriculture Support Programme Loan II, he said, the Punjab government, Agricultural Linkage Programme of Pakistan Agriculture Research Council, and the UVAS developed the technique for production of trivalent FMD vaccine.

He said the experimental data showed that the animals vaccinated twice a year with the newly developed vaccine could resist the field infection.