Most animals are vaccinated with a routine commercial vaccine, but sometimes herd-specific vaccines are needed. And they’re on the horizon for farmers and ranchers.
“Sometimes individual herds develop recurring infections with different strains of an organism than is present in the vaccine, and the commercial vaccine doesn’t work,” said Dr. Bob Judd, host of Texas Vet News on the Texas Farm Bureau (TFB) Radio Network. “In that case, a vaccine has to be made especially for a certain farm or ranch to treat the exact strain of an organism that is present on the farm or ranch.”
With Merck Animal Health recently acquiring Harris Vaccines, the herd specific vaccine technology could become more prominent.
“Harris Vaccines uses new technology to make a RNA particle vaccine that can be used for almost all livestock and even farmed fish,” Judd said.
He noted these vaccines can be made for specific diseases on individual farms and ranches.
“The disease-causing organisms are collected from a farm, genes are sequenced and inserted into a platform creating RNA particles, making a safe and potent herd-specific vaccine,” he said.
This system was used to develop a vaccine against Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea virus (PEDv) that killed more than 8 million piglets in 2013.
“The advantage is if you have a herd of animals and the vaccines that are commercially available are ineffective at preventing disease, this is an option in which you can get a vaccine made to protect against the specific disease on your farm or ranch,” Judd said. “Your veterinarian will take samples of intended material and send them to the lab where the lab will isolate the disease-causing organisms and make the vaccine.”