In vitro method for safety testing of foot-and-mouth disease vaccines.

The susceptibility of the tissue culture system to small amounts of residual live virus was not influenced by the inactivated antigen present. The depth of inoculum over the cell sheet did not affect results. Negative cultures frequently gave positive first (but not second or later) sub-cultures.Baby hamster kidney cells were always more sensitive than cattle tongues to infection with any of the strains used.Confidence in the safety test depends on the number of vaccination doses used; the tissue culture test can be made much more reliable than the cattle test because it is not limited to the 15 ml. of inoculum that restricts the cattle test.