Six-year follow-up of slaughterhouse surveillance (2008-2013): the Catalan Slaughterhouse Support Network (SESC)

Meat inspection has the ultimate objective of declaring the meat and offal obtained from carcasses of slaughtered animals fit or unfit for human consumption. This safeguards the health of consumers by ensuring that the food coming from these establishments poses no risk to public health. Concomitantly, it contributes to animal disease surveillance. The Catalan Public Health Protection Agency (Generalitat de Catalunya) identified the need to provide its meat inspectors with a support structure to improve diagnostic capacity: the Slaughterhouse Support Network (SESC). The main goal of the SESC was to offer continuing education to meat inspectors to improve the diagnostic capacity for lesions observed in slaughterhouses. With this aim, a web-based application was designed that allowed meat inspectors to submit their inquiries, images of the lesions, and samples for laboratory analysis. This commentary reviews the cases from the first 6 years of SESC operation (2008–2013). The program not only provides continuing education to inspectors but also contributes to the collection of useful information on animal health and welfare. Therefore, SESC complements animal disease surveillance programs, such as those for tuberculosis, bovine cysticercosis, and porcine trichinellosis, and is a powerful tool for early detection of emerging animal diseases and zoonoses

An all-island approach to mapping bovine tuberculosis in Ireland

This study used techniques in Geographical Information Systems (GIS) to explore the spatial patterns of bovine tuberculosis (TB) in the whole island of Ireland over an 11-year period. This is the first time that data pertaining to TB from the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland have been collated and examined in an all-Ireland context. The analyses were based on 198, 156 point locations representing active farms with cattle in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland between the years 1996 and 2006. The results consist of a series of maps giving a visual representation of cattle populations and associated detected bTB levels on the island of Ireland over this time interval

Shaping our future: animal health in a global trading environment

Ireland is currently experiencing both the positive and negative effects of global trade in agricultural products. With increasing global competition, there is little doubt that Irish agricultural product must increasingly compete on the basis of quality, rather than price

Combining genomics and epidemiology to analyse bi-directional transmission of mycobacterium bovis in a multi-host system

Quantifying pathogen transmission in multi-host systems is difficult, as exemplified in bovine tuberculosis (bTB) systems, but is crucial for control. The agent of bTB, Mycobacterium bovis, persists in cattle populations worldwide, often where potential wildlife reservoirs exist. However, the relative contribution of different host species to bTB persistence is generally unknown. In Britain, the role of badgers in infection persistence in cattle is highly contentious, despite decades of research and control efforts. We applied Bayesian phylogenetic and machine-learning approaches to bacterial genome data to quantify the roles of badgers and cattle in M. bovis infection dynamics in the presence of data biases. Our results suggest that transmission occurs more frequently from badgers to cattle than vice versa (10.4x in the most likely model) and that within-species transmission occurs at higher rates than between-species transmission for both. If representative, our results suggest that control operations should target both cattle and badgers

Eligibility of expenditure

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Interference of paratuberculosis with the diagnosis of tuberculosis in a goat flock with a natural mixed infection

2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Financiación: AGL2004-08092 of the Spanish Ministry of Science; ParaTBTools (STREP 23106) of the European Union. Julio Álvarez: predoctoral grant assigned by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Culture.Detection of infected animals is a key step in eradication programs of tuberculosis. Paratuberculosis infection has been demonstrated to compromise the specificity of the diagnostic tests. However, its effect on their sensitivity has not been clarified. In the present study, skin tests and the interferon-gamma (IFN-γ) assay were evaluated in a goat flock (n = 177) with a mixed tuberculosis–paratuberculosis infection in order to assess the possible effect of paratuberculosis on their sensitivity. Culture of mycobacteria was performed as the gold standard to determine the true infection status. All techniques showed lower sensitivities than previously described; the single intradermal tuberculin (SIT) test and the IFN-γ assay detected 71% (62.4–78.6, 95% C.I.) of the infected animals; the single intradermal cervical comparative tuberculin (SICCT) test detected only 42.7% (34.1–51.7, 95% C.I.) of infected animals. The highest level of sensitivity was obtained when SIT test and IFN-γ assay were combined in parallel (90.8%, 84.5–95.2, 95% C.I.). Sensitivities of the tests were also assessed by comparing animals suffering tuberculosis and animals with a mixed infection; tests were found to be more effective in the former group. Paratuberculosis seems to have a major effect in the sensitivity of the diagnostic tests under study, and therefore must be taken into account; in particular, the use of the SICCT test should be questioned when both tuberculosis and paratuberculosis are present.European UnionMinisterio de Ciencia y TecnologíaMinisterio de Educación y CulturaDepto. de Sanidad AnimalFac. de VeterinariaCentro de Vigilancia Sanitaria Veterinaria (VISAVET)TRUEpu