Koi herpesvirus disease (khvd) surveillance and diagnosis

According to the European Council Directive 2006/88/EC, additional legislation should be implemented describing sampling and diagnostic procedures for the diseases listed in Annex IV Part 2 of the Directive. The sampling plans and the diagnostic methods for the detection and confirmation of VHS and IHN diseases and for ISA disease are described in commission decisions from 2001 and 2003, respectively. However, KHV was only included as a non-exotic disease at the implementation of the Council Directive and no descriptions of procedures were available for this disease. A preliminary version, describing sampling and diagnostic procedures, was later provided on the EURL Fish web page. This version was based on recommendations from the report of a KHV expert working group under the EPIZONE network “KHV PCR diagnosis and surveillance” convened at the Central Veterinary Institute, Lelystad, The Netherlands, in 2009. However, significant new knowledge based on new research on KHV has appeared in recent years. So, the EURL asked the Commission for permission to organize an expert meeting in order to discuss and agree common new recommendations for sampling and diagnosis of KHV for implementation in a new Commission Decision. The two day meeting was held at the premises of the EURL at Frederiksberg, Denmark and three of the top experts in the field of KHV from Germany, Netherlands and UK, respectively, were invited to participate. The meeting was very successful and produced final drafts of two documents:
1) The Commission decision Part 2 on surveillance and diagnostic methods for KHV 2) Diagnostic procedures for the surveillance and confirmation of KHV disease. Significant changes from the former versions were accepted and recommended for inclusion in the commission decision. Among the changes are:
- The splitting of sampling and diagnostic tests for diagnostic and surveillance purposes respectively.
- Inclusion of real-time PCR as the method of choice for surveillance.
- Specification on how to define a CyHV-3 strain.

The participants agreed that the meeting had been fruitful and brought together skills and experience on this fish disease from different parts of Europe. In the report of the meeting sent to the commission important issues concerning serology and cyprinid herpesvirus variants were raised. We hope that our recommendations to resolve these issues will be considered by the Standing Committee On the Food Chain and Animal Health (SCOFCAH). This presentation will provide more details of these issues as well as providing detail from the final documents described above.