ESSENTIAL components required for a vaccination against bird flu to be successful, is the focus of a new report.

From The International Egg Commission (IEC), the report explains the advantages of vaccination against the disease, as well as ways to overcome potential barriers to vaccination.

Vaccination can provide an additional layer of protection for poultry businesses, according to its findings.

It comes as the global poultry industry continues to face unprecedented levels of high pathogenicity avian influenza (HPAI).

The UK alone has seen more than 330 cases confirmed and 4 million birds culled over the past year.

Chair of the IEC’s Avian Influenza Global Expert Group, which was established in 2015, Ben Dellaert, said the report would support countries considering vaccination.

“Alongside robust biosecurity, vaccination can be an important additional tool for preventing and managing HPAI," he said.

It comes alongside the release of Defra’s own report evaluating future actions against HPAI in Britain which looked closely at the viability of vaccination.

The first part of the report focuses on the reasons why vaccination has not been widely used in the past.

It notes that the sporadic nature of the disease and success in containing and eliminating outbreaks meant that it was previously unnecessary.

However, infections have increased, with the current viruses now well established in both migratory and non-migratory wild bird populations.

High level biosecurity measures which previously would have prevented HPAI are no longer stopping all incursions of the virus.

As the Defra report also mentions, vaccination has been in use since the early 2000s in some countries where the virus can’t be eliminated using standard control measures.

Although the disease has not been eliminated in many of these countries, vaccination has helped to minimise the damage of HPAI and protected food security and livelihoods.

The example of Hong Kong SAR in particular, where vaccines have been used for over 20 years, proves that vaccination can be used successfully and that an effective surveillance system can be implemented alongside it.

According to the paper, vaccination should be used in partnership with other biosecurity methods as either a preventative measure, an aid to control outbreaks, or as a routine measure to reduce the likelihood of infection.

The IEC's expert group set out their ten essential components for an effective vaccination programme.

These include the monitoring of vaccinated flocks for their immune response, only using high potency vaccinations in order to produce a robust immune response, and ensuring vaccination is used as an additional layer of biosecurity rather than as a replacement for current measures.