Livestock vaccination worldwide may be insufficient for diseases such as rabies or contagious nodular dermatosis

Livestock production is a fundamental factor in providing high-quality protein for human consumption, as well as an important economic resource in many countries. The progressive increase in the world's human population, together with the growing demand for food with higher nutritional quality, has triggered a boom in pig, cattle and poultry production worldwide.

This growth in livestock populations of these and other animal species has led to a shift towards large-scale intensive farming, as well as an increase in the global trade in animals and their products. Modern production systems determine or facilitate the emergence of new challenges such as the rise of infectious diseases, many of them zoonotic, which threaten public health, food security, production efficiency and environmental sustainability. In the face of these challenges, it is essential to implement effective measures for the prevention and control of such diseases.

In recent years, we have witnessed the emergence and/or spread of outbreaks of new and not-so-new infectious diseases in Spain and the rest of Europe, affecting cattle such as contagious nodular dermatosis (CND), epizootic haemorrhagic disease (EHD) and bovine tuberculosis; African swine fever (ASF) and swine flu in pigs; or highly pathogenic avian influenza in poultry and wild birds.

An essential measure in the fight against infectious diseases is the vaccination of animals in cases where an effective and safe vaccine is available. It is important to emphasise that the decision to vaccinate animals depends on the disease in question; there are some diseases which, due to their severity and significance, are subject to mandatory reporting to national or international health authorities, which determine the mandatory application of vaccination or other control measures, depending on their availability, feasibility or appropriateness. In other less serious cases, it is the farm veterinarian who determines the appropriateness of vaccination based on clinical, economic and other criteria.

In any case, maintaining a healthy, safe and productive livestock population at the global level must be carried out in a coordinated manner between health authorities at different levels: local, national and, ultimately, global. To this end, it is essential to have the necessary information on the evolution of the various diseases that affect livestock over time and space.

In this study, an estimate has been made of the incidence and global vaccination coverage of 104 diseases affecting cattle, pigs and poultry in 203 countries and territories over the last two decades. As a result of the study, the 11 diseases with the highest degree of application of official vaccination programmes in 2025 were selected to estimate the vaccination coverage of livestock populations at risk worldwide. The study shows that, in order to reduce the global incidence of some important livestock diseases, vaccination measures need to be strengthened in India and Argentina for cattle, China and Russia for pigs, and China, Brazil and Iran for poultry.