The Japan Society of Veterinary Epidemiology has been contributing to the promotion of epidemiological research and education in animal health and public health since its establishment in 1997. The Society has been publishing two issues of the ‘Journal of Veterinary Epidemiology’ every year and organizing at least two academic meetings every year since its establishment. The Society compiled a textbook of veterinary epidemiology that meets the university core curriculum adopted in 2012. Members of the Society contributed to providing useful information to policy makers in solving problems of various animal and zoonotic diseases. Among them are foot-and-mouth disease, BSE and highly pathogenic influenza, which had never occurred or occurred for the first time in many years in Japan in the early 2000s. The Society currently faces the challenge of how to increase the number of journal publications and promote international exchange.

Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) has been known as an infectious disease of animals since a long time ago. This disease still threatens the sound development of livestock industry in the most infected countries. Once the disease invades to the disease free country, devastating economic loss are generated, as seen in the previous outbreaks in Taiwan, the United Kingdom, Netherland, Korea and Japan. Therefore, FMD has been serious restraints of international trade of animal and animal products for infected countries. Epidemiological researches have contributed to establishing better control and preventive measures. In particular, modeling studies become a powerful tool to evaluate different control strategies and support preparedness for the FMD outbreak. Collaboration with neighboring countries is a key to promote further progress on the epidemiological researches of transboundary animal diseases.

Rabies is a typical zoonosis directly transmitted to neural tissues by bites and shows acute progressive encephalomyelitis due to lyssaviruses. “One Health” is a key word for the control and prevention of rabies. Bats are the principal reservoir hosts for most lyssaviruses, but rabies lyssavirus (RABV) was successfully distributed among the meso-carnivores in the world represented by canids, raccoons, skunks, mongooses, ferret badgers and as much as only bats of the New World. In Japan rabies has not been reported from 1958, except three human imported cases of 1970 and 2006. The imported animal rabies from endemic countries was often reported in Europe and the United States, even after the eradication of the indigenous dog rabies. In Taiwan wildlife rabies of ferret badgers was suddenly reported in 2013 after canine rabies free for 52 years, and also a new lyssavirus was found from Japanese house bats in 2016 and 2017. These facts were a strong impact and urged reconsidering of a rabies free status in Japan. “The National Guideline for Rabies Control, 2001” was established in 2001 for the administrative measures and report system of rabies in the local government, and the action plan was also come out in 2013 as “The National Guideline on Rabies Countermeasures, 2013” for the risk management after found rabid animals in Japan. In reaction to the wildlife rabies in Taiwan “The Guideline for Animal Rabies Survey” was developed in 2014. In this article recent rabies in the world was overviewed focused on the etiological agents and the disease burden to the public health. The avail of rabies management with indispensable animal surveillance in Japan was also discussed on a view of veterinary epidemiology as well as a value of the medical and veterinary cooperation.

Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) was first reported from the United Kingdom (UK) in 1986. Approximately 190,000 BSE cases were reported in the world, about 185,000 cases were detected in UK so far. BSE were transferred among cattle by Meat and Bone Meal with an inadequate heat treatment produced from Specified Risk Materials (SRM) of BSE cattle. Infectious agent is a proteinaceous infectious particles (prion), these are causative agents of BSE and also of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD) in human. 178 cases of vCJD cases were reported in the world since 1995. One case was also reported in Japan.

130 atypical BSE cases were reported in the world. Atypical BSE has a different western blot pattern from typical BSE. There are two patterns, High and Low types. Atypical BSE case was borne sporadically, and onset of BSE symptoms were detected older than typical BSE case. Two L type cases were detected in Japan in 16,100,000 cattle tested so far.

To prevent dissemination of BSE in the world, feed ban which is not fed SRM to cattle was introduced. 65 BSE cases were borne after real feed ban in the world.

No typical BSE case was reported in 2017, therefore, typical BSE case will be eradicated near future in the world.

Most bovine leukemia virus (BLV)-infected cattle do not have clinical signs (aleukemic AL), but some develop persistent lymphocytosis (PL) and B-cell lymphosarcoma (enzootic bovine leucosis [EBL]). BLV infection is a well-known cause of chronic wasting disease, which is associated with a reduction in milk productivity and immunity in dairy cattle. However, the effect of BLV infection on beef cattle is not clear. The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of BLV infection on the productivity of slaughtered beef cattle. A total of 997 blood samples were collected from cattle in 2 slaughterhouses in Miyazaki prefecture, Japan. BLV-antibodies were tested in these cattle’s blood samples using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), to identify BLV-infected cattle. We compared blood parameters and carcass weight between BLV ELISA-positive and ELISA-negative cattle in two age groups : young (≤ 60 months) and elder (> 60 months) groups. The results showed that the proportion of ELISA-positive cattle in the young and elder groups were 22.8% and 24.9%, respectively. The number of white blood cells (WBCs) and lymphocytes in ELISA-positive cattle was significantly higher than that in ELISA-negative cattle in the young group. In addition to the number of lymphocytes, the number of monocytes and neutrophils were also significantly higher in BLV ELISA-positive cattle than in ELISA-negative cattle in the elder group. There was no significant difference in the carcass weight between ELISA-positive and ELISA-negative cattle in both groups. The results of this study suggest that BLV infection has an effect on the host immune response in beef cattle.