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Video: Steps of the bovine TB investigation

Did you know that the methods for testing and confirming bovine tuberculosis have been around for more than 100 years? Learn more about testing methods by watching this short video.

Steps of a bovine TB investigation – Transcript

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency corporate introduction plays. It shows images that represent the work of the Agency, including a petri dish, strawberries, a growing plant, a chicken and a maple leaf.

Text: CFIA - Safeguarding with Science

Text: The steps of a Bovine Tuberculosis investigation

On screen speaker: Former Chief Veterinary Officer for Canada 2014-2017, Dr. Harpreet Kochhar.

While a bovine TB investigation can be complex and require months to complete, the same steps has required in any other TB investigation apply to this: establishing movement controls, testing exposed herds and depopulating any infected herds.

This investigation is more complex than other situations because we are dealing with large herds with a significant number of animal movements and sales activity. Also, the use of community pastures means greater exposure to other herds and this means additional tracing work to determine the scope of the investigation.

One of the challenges of bovine TB is the difficulty in testing and confirming cases. The bacterium that causes bovine TB can lay dormant in animals for years and there isn't a simple blood test to confirm infection like there is for other diseases. Despite years of research by scientists around the globe, the internationally accepted methods for testing and confirming bovine TB have been around for more than 100 years.

The caudal fold skin test is used to identify potentially infected animals and take three days to complete. Post-mortem examinations and laboratory culturing of tissue samples from potentially infected animals are required to confirm if an animal is infected with bovine TB.

The tissue culturing process can take up to 14 weeks but is required to make a final determination if an animal was infected or not. The culture test also allows the strain of bovine TB to be identified in any positive cases.

In the current investigation, the CFIA has been using additional blood tests to reduce the risk of infected animals not being picked up by the initial CFT test and to eliminate false positive reactions but the CFT and lab culture test are still the key testing tools.

Canada wordmark. Copyright Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada (Canadian Food Inspection Agency), 2017.

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