A group of Danish researchers has found a new test for foot and mouth disease that can save millions of cattle by determining whether anti-bodies are from the disease or a vaccination, according to videnskab.dk.

Foot and mouth disease is one of the most contagious and feared cattle diseases and in 2001 cost the lives of eight million cattle in Britain alone.

The new test is an anti-body test developed by researchers at the Veterinary Institute at Denmark’s Technical University. Although anti-body tests are not new, they have not previously been able to determine whether cattle have developed anti-bodies from the sickness itself, or whether the anti-bodies are the result of a vaccination.

“That is something we wanted to be able to do,” Senior Researcher Karl Johan Sørensen tells Videnskab.dk.

The new test will enable veterinarians to avoid destroying millions of animals as they will be able to see whether an animal has the disease or not.