Friday, March 29, 2024

Global scientists fight M bovis

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TO ERADICATE a disease we need to be efficient and accurate in our efforts and industry bodies are no looking at ways to determine if there is a better way of prioritising farms potentially affected with Mycoplasma bovis. The Ministry for Primary Industries, DairyNZ and Beef + Lamb have established the Mycoplasma Bovis Programme to eradicate it from New Zealand, to reduce the impact of the disease and the eradication programme for everyone affected and to leave NZ’s biosecurity system stronger.
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They have appointed global epidemiology consulting company Ausvet and NZ company Working Formula (WF) to do research that could accelerate the eradication.

Ausvet and WF specialise in finding disease patterns in populations. That knowledge will help understand the risk of spread from different properties at different times, MPI’s chief science adviser and M bovis Strategic Science Advisory Group (SSAG) chairman Dr John Roche says..

“Farms potentially infected with M bovis are currently prioritised for follow-up using several criteria. 

“Ausvet and WF will investigate if there is anything we can do to improve the current criteria to more effectively prioritise farms at high risk of infection for urgent follow-up.

“It’s more critical to apply movement controls on high-risk farms than other properties. 

“If these farms can be identified and actioned more quickly it will slow the spread of the disease and speed up eradication,” Roche says.

It will be a short-term project based on analysis of existing data. Farmers will not have to provide any new data.

Ausvet will also review the existing M bovis Programme surveillance strategy. It will review the performance of all the surveillance streams and highlight areas that need more surveillance and those that could be scaled back. 

The surveillance programme is made up of multiple surveillance elements such as bulk tank milk testing, mastitis milk testing, meat processor surveillance, aggregator surveillance and cow-calf surveillance.

The review might find extra surveillance streams are warranted in some sectors. And it will give more information about the expected duration of background surveillance following identification of the last known infected property.  

The review is expected to take three to four months and as part of it Ausvet will deliver training to M bovis Programme epidemiologists so they can do the same surveillance analysis in-house in future on an as-needed basis.

Roche says ongoing background surveillance of the different cattle sectors is a vital component of NZ’s eradication effort. 

There will be ongoing surveillance for at least seven years following identification of the last known infected property.  

An effective surveillance programme is what will provide assurance M bovis is absent from NZ.

The projects support recommendations made in a recent Technical Advisory Group report into the M bovis Programme. They have been identified as priorities in the M bovis Science Plan, developed by the SSAG with input from a wide range of experts to ensure research is directed where it will most effectively accelerate eradication and minimise the negative impacts on farmers and rural communities.

The M bovis Programme has allocated up to $30 million for research projects as part of the $870m in funding allocated to eradication.

Proposals to do several other science plan projects, including a major diagnostic research programme, are being evaluated.

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