- Hello Jeff - If the tests find cattle positive for Bovine
TB, wildlife in the area will be destroyed. This seems so sad and so unnecessary
to me.
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- How easy it is to kill animals for some people. If
livestock were not overcrowded in small areas and pens, diseases like BTB
would not be flourishing. We overcrowd livestock, we then weaken their
immune systems by giving them a steady diet of antibiotics, hormones and
other pharmaceuticals and, for too many years, fed cows to cows. No wonder
the animals get sick. Then, when they do get sick, what do we humans do?
Slaughter them.
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- Patty
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- ND Wildlife Officials Monitor Cattle Tests
- By Blake Nicholson
- 1-12-9
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- BISMARCK, ND -- If tests
find bovine tuberculosis in a southwestern North Dakota beef cattle herd,
wildlife in the area will be destroyed in what one state official calls
a "very expensive, very complex and a very ugly business."
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- The state Game and Fish Department is hoping that will
not be necessary. But if the cattle herd is found to have bovine TB, "the
idea is to not allow wildlife to become a reservoir" for the disease,
said Randy Kreil, wildlife chief for the state Game and Fish Department.
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- "This is a livestock issue, and we're just preparing
in case wildlife is affected," he said.
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- The testing of the cattle herd began after a cow with
a TB lesion at a meat processing plant in Long Prairie, Minn., was traced
back to the herd late last year. North Dakota's Board of Animal Health
has not identified the quarantined herd of more than 200 animals because
testing is not complete.
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- State Veterinarian Susan Keller said initial screening,
which involved an injection at the base of the tail, turned up 28 "suspect"
cows. Those cows were killed so further testing could be done.
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- The tests are being conducted at the National Veterinary
Services Laboratory in Ames, Iowa, the same lab that confirmed the diagnosis
in the cow with bovine TB. Keller said she does not expect results until
mid-February.
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- In the meantime, the herd will remain quarantined. Any
movement of cattle must be cleared through the Board of Animal Health,
Keller said.
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- The TB-free status North Dakota has enjoyed for more
than 30 years would not be threatened unless another herd was found with
TB within two years. If the herd being tested has bovine TB, it could be
transmitted to deer, elk or bighorn sheep, which could in turn pass it
on to another cattle herd.
-
- Kreil pointed to what happened in northwestern Minnesota,
where infected cattle herds were eliminated, but infected deer in the region
passed on the disease to new cattle that were brought in.
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- If the suspect southwestern North Dakota herd has bovine
TB, "there's no doubt" the Game and Fish Department would kill
and test wildlife in the region, Kreil said. "Our deer densities are
nowhere near what they are in Minnesota ... but we can't take any chances,"
he said.
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- Kreil said officials do not yet know how large of an
area would have to be covered, but he said the number of animals that would
have to be killed would be "in the hundreds for sure," and that
the cost would be "hundreds of thousands of dollars."
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- "It's going to be a pretty ugly business if we have
to go do this," he said.
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- The last time a North Dakota cow herd tested positive
for bovine TB was in 1999 in Morton County. The herd was destroyed.
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- Kreil said that situation was different because the Game
and Fish Department sent an airplane over the area to find any deer that
might have had contact with the herd. The search turned up none within
25 miles.
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- "The difference here is we know there's wildlife
in close proximity to the cattle herd," Kreil said.
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- North Dakota has never had a documented case of bovine
TB in the wild. The Game and Fish Department, with the help of deer hunters,
tests for both that disease and chronic wasting disease. The agency also
has negative bovine TB test results from three bighorn sheep in the area
of the infected herd.
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- "At this point, it remains a livestock issue, but
we're working very closely with the state veterinarian's office to not
make it a wildlife issue," Kreil said.
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- http://www.fortmilltimes.com/124/story/419448.html
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- Patricia A. Doyle DVM, PhD Bus Admin, Tropical Agricultural
Economics Univ of West Indies Please visit my "Emerging Diseases"
message board at: http://www.emergingdisease.org/phpbb/index.php Also my
new website: http://drpdoyle.tripod.com/ Zhan le Devlesa tai sastimasa
Go with God and in Good Health
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