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Bovine TB. Any input?

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Gonna destroy or slaughter up to 20,000 mostly in s ab, a few effected ranches in sask.

On ranch they originated--actually, should say 'it' I think--found one cow sent to u.s. for slaughter.\\----killed all livestock, horses, dogs cats.

Looks like being extremely proactive.

Lotsa cattle been quaranteened---can't sell 'em, gotta feed them, hard to pay bills---sad deal.

You're in sask----have you not heard of this?
 
Of course there is no way it could possibly have come from the local wildlife population.
 
Silver said:
Of course there is no way it could possibly have come from the local wildlife population.
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I'm not going to rule out that the Mexican Roping Cattle strain of TB is not in Canadian wildlife, but so far it hasn't been picked up.
We've had CFIA jump in on a few of these quarantine/investigation drama shows that involve this distinct strain of Bovine TB that has worked its way north from Mexico.
This outbreak appears to be real, another case in BC's Okanagan valley was real.
Two other BC investigations were misfires. One of these cases involved the famous bull from Vanderhoof that had a misterious change of colour from when he left his home ranch until he was slaughtered. He went from a white Charolais to a red bull. After the trace back testing of thousands of cattle, no other signs of TB were found.
The other misfire was the quarantine on my cow herd in 2008. Coincidently this quarantine no longer shows up in public records, probably due to someone's embarrassment.
In this case I sold a group of 18 month old heifers through a BC auction mart. They went to a BC feedlot for a period of time and then went into another feed yard in Washington State. From there the heifers went to a Washington State packing plant where one was detected to have Bovine TB along with another heifer from the feedlot that was not from my herd.
Thats when the fiasco started.
The trace back started and ended at my gate.
There was no investigation done in any of the premises other than the herd of origin of the 2 heifers. Zero consideration that the disease could have been picked up as the cattle made their way through the auction mart, trucking and feedlot system. The guy that raised the other one only had a handful of cattle so he was soon ruled out and CFIA bailed into me.
The quarantine went for almost a year with CFIA testing and re-testing cattle and killing a handful of cattle that reacted to the skin test. Further testing showed these slaughtered cattle to be false positives and the CFIA drew a blank.
When it was all done I got the privilege of selling two year old heifers and steers, yearling heifers and steers and cull cows all in one shot.
Towards the end of the investigation and quarantine I talked to the head Washington State vet who happened to be an old family acquaintance to ask his thoughts on what had gone on. He told me that one of the two heifers was in the advanced stage of TB, the other was in the initial stage. He then pulled up the file and told me mine was in the initial stage.
This was an expensive lesson in how the CFIA malfunctions and I hope they get it right this time.
My sympathy goes out to the ranchers in Alberta and Saskatchewan that are going through this now, it isn't a lot of fun.
 
That was an awful lesson in politics and bureaucracy Bearvalley, that must have been a very difficult time.
I really do feel for the fine folks in AB and SK, I sure hope this plays itself out in the best possible fashion.
 
GM888 said:
they arnt getting it right!!
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It's not good to hear that.
The CFIA has some real prizes on staff. We were lucky, as our long time ranch vet had just accepted an offer to go to work for CFIA a few days before we were handed a quarantine order. I called him and asked him to sit in on the initial meeting with the government officials, even though his new job hadn't started yet.
If not for him and his common sense in the investigation I would probably be in jail today.
As for him and his CFIA job....it lasted about 3 years and he'd had his fill of it.
I would be curious to know if the 5 head of cattle found in the index herd (not counting the one at the plant) tested positive for the Mexican Roping cattle strain of TB or did they merely test positive on the skin test. In any given herd of cattle there will always be a percentage of false positives. CFIA authorities are fast to call the shots but there's no way they can be absolutely sure these cattle are truly affected with TB unless the Bovine TB has been cultured from samples taken from the animal that showed positive on a test.
That takes time.
 

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