Advice of the Scientific Committee of the Belgian Food Safety Agency on risk factors of (potentially) (re)-emerging infectious animal diseases

The objective of this advice is to identify the risk factors of emergence of infectious animal diseases in Belgium to allow the risk managers to undertake control measures in time. 
For that purpose, 34 examples of (re)-emerging or at risk of (re)-emergence infectious animal diseases and 33 risk (or protection) factors of emergence were selected aiming for the most complete representativeness as possible. The effect of 
these factors on the risk of emergence of the 34 animal diseases was analysed via a Delphi survey by 50 experts. 
The study allowed to rank the risk factors according to their relevance to the emergence of separate groups of infectious animal diseases (for example, exotic, zoonotic, foodborne diseases, etc.), as well as for all the diseases, taken together in 
one global group. The six most important risk factors, when considering (re)-emerging animal diseases as one global group, are the following: presence of an animal reservoir, detection problems of emergence of disease, difficulties to control 
the disease by vaccination, geographical extension of the disease, asymptomatic carriage and increase in the incidence of the disease in other countries. This ranking of risk factors allowed to make recommendations, namely in regard to 
« early warning », vigilance, surveillance, and control of animal diseases. Concerning the “early warning”, it is recommended to monitor the measurable risk factors of emergence. The appearance of the increase in incidence of risk factors can alert the risk manager early of the increased risk of emergence of infectious animal diseases