Cattle from area around Yellowstone pose risk of infection

By MATTHEW WEAVER

Capital Press

WALLA WALLA, Wash. -- The Washington state veterinarian is asking livestock producers to maintain a high level of slaughter surveillance to prevent a brucellosis outbreak.

USDA has reduced slaughter surveillance for brucellosis nationally, Leonard Eldridge told the Washington Cattlemen Association during an animal health update at its convention.

The reduction decreases confidence in the ability to detect a case of brucellosis, Eldridge said. He is concerned about the potential resurgence of the disease.

Eldridge wants the industry to consider its options to maintain a high level of surveillance.

Washington receives "a considerable number" of cattle from states surrounding the Yellowstone area, such as Idaho, Montana and Wyoming, where elk and buffalo can spread brucellosis to livestock.

"Those animals that come in for slaughter from those states are not really the risk," said Terry McElwain, executive director of the Washington Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory at Washington State University. "The risk is the other animals who come in, reside in the state of Washington and eventually go to slaughter or reside on the ranch for a while."

Slaughter animals would not be in contact with other animals in the state and would not transmit the disease.

McElwain said the change proposed by USDA reduces the number of animals tested in Washington from 117,000 to 48,000. Tests of Washington cattle slaughtered in other states will be reduced from roughly 45,000 to 13,000.

Samples would be sent to a federal laboratory in Kansas for testing.

Previously, most of the laboratory's costs were covered by the federal government. Without that support, McElwain estimates it would cost about $2.30 per head for the lab to continue the testing. The lab will continue to test as funding allows, but slaughter surveillance is not included.

"Vaccination is a tool to guard against infection, but it's not 100 percent," Eldridge said. The disease has been found in animals in the Yellowstone area that have received the Bangs vaccination.

If a brucellosis infection is found and movement restrictions are placed on producers, the loss in value is about 10 cents per pound in the market, Eldridge said. The only option for a quarantined herd is a restricted feedyard for slaughter, without market incentives. The cost of additional, multiple testing is about $8 to $10 a head.

"There's considerable expense if infection shows up," Eldridge said. "The goal and the hope is that we are very quickly able to find infection, determine where a cow came from, where she went and what's been exposed."

McElwain pointed out the cost of negative publicity when brucellosis is discovered in a state. The disease can infect humans, he said.

"Heaven forbid we have somebody infected," he said. "That would be about as bad a press as you can possibly get."

Eldridge said brucellosis ran wild in Washington in the 1970s and 1980s, and he remembers ranchers who faced significant losses.

In the mid-1960s, brucellosis had been on the downturn and Eldridge was advised to tell producers to stop vaccinations.

"We watched brucellosis go wild in the unvaccinated herds in the 1970s and 1980s," he said. "So when USDA started to say, 'Why are you Bangs vaccinating?' my answer is 'I'm old, but I remember.'"

Eldridge said he and other Western state veterinarians intend to maintain vaccinations until the option is taken away.