Management of Animal Botulism Outbreaks: From Clinical Suspicion to Practical Countermeasures to Prevent or Minimize Outbreaks

Botulism is a severe neuroparalytic disease that affects humans, all warm-blooded animals, and some fishes. The disease is caused by exposure to toxins produced by Clostridium botulinum and other botulinum toxin–producing clostridia. Botulism in animals represents a severe environmental and economic concern because of its high mortality rate. Moreover, meat or other products from affected animals entering the food chain may result in a public health problem. To this end, early diagnosis is crucial to define and apply appropriate veterinary public health measures. Clinical diagnosis is based on clinical findings eliminating other causes of neuromuscular disorders and on the absence of internal lesions observed during postmortem examination. Since clinical signs alone are often insufficient to make a definitive diagnosis, laboratory confirmation is required. Botulinum antitoxin administration and supportive therapies are used to treat sick animals. Once the diagnosis has been made, euthanasia is frequently advisable. Vaccine administration is subject to health authorities' permission, and it is restricted to a small number of animal species. Several measures can be adopted to prevent or minimize outbreaks. In this article we outline all phases of management of animal botulism outbreaks occurring in wet wild birds, poultry, cattle, horses, and fur farm animals

Detection of Potential Botulinus-Toxin-Producing Areas in Western Duck Marshes with Suggestions for Control

The history of western duck sickness is so well known to con-servationists and sportsmen that a repetition of this subject is not considered necessary. An attempt to elucidate some of the highly complex factors involved in the production of Clostridium botulinum type C toxin has been made at the Bear River Wildlife Disease Research Station during the past years 1937-38-39. The hundreds of experiments and field tests that have been made in order to understand requirements and idiosyncrasies of C. botulinum type C cannot be enumerated in a paper of this nature; however, some of the most recent findings are of sufficient importance to deserve being brought to the attention of the workers in this field. During the summer and fall of 1939 a system was worked out whereby it was found possible, with a fair degree of accuracy, to determine many of the potential toxin-producing areas in certain duck marshes. If such a test by continued application proves to be successful, definite advances have been made toward prac-tical control of the most serious menace to our waterfowl-botu-lism. In order to cope successfully with botulism, its distribution in the field must be understood. As an introduction to present knowledge of the disease it should be recorded that Kalmbach (1934) has given an excellent founda-tion on which to work in a publication, which contains a store of valuable information on the subject. The present paper is chiefly concerned with anaerobiosis, i.e.