BANFF, Alta. – More than 1.5 million Alberta cattle are under surveillance, not for nefarious activities but to monitor their well-being.
The Alberta Veterinary Surveillance Network collected disease data from 4,500 farms in 2006 and 4,900 farms in 2007.
Alberta Agriculture veterinarian John Berezowski said most were cow-calf operations.
He told last month’s Banff Pork Seminar that the network looks for clusters of disease over a period of time. Administrators will speak to local veterinarians if trends are noticed.
The information is confidential and the network knows only the county where the animals reside.
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“Large outbreaks will always get noticed,” he said. “Surveillance is just to detect diseases earlier before the dead pile gets too big.”
Information on disease status can help with market access and provide a quick response to disease investigations, eradication, prevention and establishing future policy. It can also identify new diseases and changing risks and determine if a disease is important.
Today, a disease can travel around the world in two weeks by hitching a ride with human and freight traffic.
Berezowski said 40,000 ships are on the ocean at any one time and they can cross in 14 days, bringing pathogens with them if they are moving animals and animal products
There are also more than one billion border crossings of people per year.
“People are vessels for pathogens,” he said.
Alberta reported 7.5 million cattle movements in 2007.
“Huge quantities of animals are moved constantly in this province,” Berezowski said. “This sets up a mechanism to move disease around the world very quickly.”
He said surveillance makes a timely response possible.
When foot and mouth disease struck the United Kingdom in 2001, 57 farms were infected before the disease was reported.
“This was a failure of surveillance,” he said.
The World Organization of Animal Health (OIE) handles disease reporting on an international scale.
In 2007, the OIE changed disease reporting requirements to include emerging diseases, which are new, previously unrecognized pathogens or those that exhibit changes in disease expression, severity and location.
Member nations are obligated to report the occurrence of any of these diseases, especially if they present a threat to animal or public health, but Berezowski said countries must be able to detect disease occurrence before they report them.
“The OIE has been checking up on countries,” he said.
“In 2008, the OIE challenged member nations 129 times for not reporting diseases in their countries. It is not possible for a country to keep its disease status from the rest of the world.”
