RUMA Agriculture wants to gather insights to build a deeper understanding of the impacts vaccine supply issues are having across livestock and aquaculture sectors to help ensure readiness to respond when shortages occur.

The Responsible use of Medicines in Agriculture (RUMA) Alliance has launched an online survey (13 May 2025) designed to gather insights from vets, farmers and SQPs about the vaccines shortages that have been a growing source of concern for UK livestock sectors over recent years.

The survey will close on Friday 27 June at 5pm. Vets, farmers and SQPs are all encouraged to share any vaccine supply insights by answering a set of questions that aim to build a picture of what supply challenges each sector has been facing, and the short and long term impacts of these disruption issues. The survey can be accessed via this link: https://forms.office.com/e/D6EYM81Mip

Vaccines play a key role in safeguarding the health and wellbeing of animals and limited or no supply, which is something that has been reported more frequently over the past few years by numerous livestock sectors, can have widespread implications on animal wellbeing. This could include an increase in antibiotic use to manage conditions that may otherwise have been prevented with vaccinations. 

The vaccine production process is a time-sensitive biological process with potential for delays and variability. The supply chain is vulnerable to many factors which can include batch failures, too little supply being imported or developed to meet demand, sometimes recalls, increased demand to support disease outbreaks, as well as manufacturing challenges, including potential disruptions from Brexit.

Cat McLaughlin, RUMA Agriculture Chair, says: “Vaccine shortages and disruption to supply, is not something that can be solved overnight. We know this is a complex area with many variables at play, and therefore we want to use the insights we gather from this survey to work directly with livestock sectors and the roles that work in the industry, to explore the best way to ‘cope with’ shortages until solutions can be found for the medium and long term.”

Cat continues: “RUMA Agriculture, alongside many other industry stakeholders has contributed to a number of meetings held recently by the VMD to address the concerns around the shortage of vaccines and we look forward to continuing to collaborate on this important issue moving forwards.

“What we do know is that delays in vaccinations can lead to an increased risk of disease outbreaks, and this can be a source of much worry for both animal owners, SQPs and veterinary practices who are working hard to maintain the high standards of animal welfare that the UK is known for. We have listened to the concerns of our members and that’s why we are launching this survey – the insights from which will enable RUMA to work directly with affected sectors to explore what management strategies can be developed to help ensure everyone is as prepared as they can be to respond to supply issues when they do occur.”

Responses to the survey are anonymous. In due course RUMA Agriculture will publish anonymised headline findings to help support the ongoing focus on addressing vaccines shortages.