Is FMD Eradication Possible?

Another way to address the threat of FMD would be to launch a global campaign to eradicate the disease, similar to the successful effort that recently led to the eradication of rinderpest.

If a global vaccination campaign managed to eliminate all cases of FMD and the remaining laboratory stocks of the virus were destroyed, the threat of intentional introduction of FMD virus would remain, albeit to a lesser degree. As is the case with smallpox virus, which has been eradicated and polio virus which is nearly eradicated, the FMD virus could be recreated by chemical synthesis in the laboratory because it is a small, positive-strand RNA virus that is closely related to poliovirus, which was synthesized from scratch in 2002.²²