Walter Plowright: The Veterinarian Whose Vaccine Ended the Cattle Plague

Who was Walter Plowright?

Walter Plowright graduated from the Royal Veterinary College in London in 1944 and joined the Royal Army Veterinary Corps, serving in Kenya. He returned to Kenya in 1948 as a pathologist in the Colonial Veterinary Service, spent about two years in Nigeria, and then worked for more than 15 years at the Muguga laboratory of the East African Veterinary Research Organisation, as the Pirbright Institute's tribute records.

He died on 19 February 2010 at age 86. The honors after his name, CMG, DVSc, FRCVS and FRS, mark a career of laboratory research with consequences on the ground.

What was rinderpest?

Rinderpest, or cattle plague, was a viral disease that killed cattle and many wild hoofed animals. It had devastated herds across Europe, Asia and Africa for centuries and had been a driver of the creation of veterinary schools in the first place. In Africa it wiped out herds, destroyed the wealth of pastoral families and left famine in its wake.

Early vaccines existed, but they were laborious, and some carried the risk of contamination because they were made from animal tissue.

How did Plowright make the tissue-culture vaccine?

At Muguga, Plowright and R. D. Ferris found that the rinderpest virus could grow in bovine kidney cell cultures. Growing the virus in cell culture avoided the contamination risk of vaccines drawn from the tissues of infected animals. He then showed the resulting vaccine was safe and effective across breeds, ages and sexes of cattle.

According to The Scientist's obituary, it was a live attenuated vaccine grown in calf kidney cells, the first veterinary viral vaccine made in tissue culture. It was inexpensive, needed only a single dose and could be used on livestock of all ages. Those features made it practical for field campaigns.

From Muguga to Pirbright and the Royal Veterinary College

Plowright joined the Animal Virus Research Institute at Pirbright in 1964 and was seconded to the East African organisation as Head of Virology in 1966. In 1971 he became chair and head of veterinary microbiology and parasitology at the Royal Veterinary College. In 1978 he became head of microbiology at the Institute for Research on Animal Diseases at Compton, Berkshire, and he retired in 1983.

He also worked on African swine fever and took part in missions to vaccinate thousands of wild and domesticated animals.

The 1999 World Food Prize and eradication

Plowright received the 1999 World Food Prize for the vaccine. When he died, The Scientist reported that rinderpest eradication was expected to be formally declared within 18 months, which would make it only the second disease eradicated through vaccination after smallpox. Eradication was in fact declared in 2011.

The World Food Prize Foundation also published its own notice of his death, which reflects his standing among agricultural scientists.

Why Plowright matters to cattle people

For anyone raising cattle in Africa or Asia, the end of rinderpest meant that a disease that could erase a herd in weeks no longer had a place to hide. For readers interested in how animal health shaped the cattle business, see farm.FM's ranching section and a farm.FM story about the cattle plague.