Dogs linked to health hazard
Dog-proofing your dairy suggested to guard against protozoa-related abortions
BY DON STONEMAN
The farm dog may be contributing to abortions in your cow herd, warns OMAFRA veterinary scientist Ann Godkin.Dogs are an intermediate host for neospora, a protozoan disease that shows up increasingly in lab testing of aborted tissues. Protozoa, Godkin explains, are neither a bacteria nor a virus. For the most part they infect an animal, and the infection is passed on to an intermediate host before infecting another animal.
In the case of neospora, dogs, coyotes and foxes can be the link. Their feces can spread the disease into the feed of dairy and beef cattle.
Neospora is becoming associated increasingly with abortions in dairy herds, Godkin says. Recently, 16 per cent of abortions going into the laboratory at Guelph tested positive for neospora. (See Assigning Cause.)
Depending on the stage of pregnancy, a cow may either abort or produce an infected calf. Research is ongoing to determine at what stage of pregnancy a cow is more susceptible to protozoa, Godkin says.
A Quebec study conducted on dairy farms in 1995 showed the risk of neospora increased with the number of dogs on the farm. "We believe that the risk of a female dog having it is greatest at pregnancy and whelping," Godkin says. Puppies certainly increase the risks.
Dogs should be spayed to eliminate offspring, and they shouldn't be allowed in the barn, Godkin asserts. If there are dogs on the property, careful attention should be paid to feed hygiene.
Don't allow dogs access to the feed, either to concentrates or to hay. "Deny them access to the mow," Godkin advises.
Aborting animals should be strictly quarantined, Godkin says. Dumping an aborted calf or membranes on the manure pile or leaving it out for any animal to scavenge is simply not acceptable. "Burn or bury these things right away." There is no evidence that raccoons, cats or rats carry the disease.
OMAFRA keeps a blood serum bank that dates back almost 20 years. Recent testing of serum taken from cows in the 1980s found positive antibodies for neospora as far back as 1982.
A reason for the emerging concerns about neospora may be its apparent connection to bovine viral diarrhea (BVD), Godkin says. There's a suspicion that both occur in dairy herds at the same time.
"Maybe it was always there, and it was BVD that emerged and made it more of a problem," she suggests. "We don't know."
It would be prudent for producers to keep BVD vaccinations up to date, she says. There are no vaccines for neospora.
Neospora has had a profound economic impact in California, the largest dairy producing state in the U.S. A study, which pegged the cost of abortions at US$1,000, found neospora cost the state dairy industry US$35 million in 1996.
The study also found that cows testing positive for neospora produced 2.5 pounds of milk per day, or 750 pounds of milk per lactation less than cows testing negative for the disease.
OMAFRA's Godkin says the milk loss theory is controversial. She doesn't mention it in talks to farmers here in Ontario.
A 1997 newsletter from the U.S. Animal Health Association reports that most abortions occur between the third and six month of pregnancy in heifers, but the abortion window appears to narrow in subsequent years. Cows don't need to be exposed during pregnancy toabort. Cows that have aborted in the past may continue to abort in future pregnancies.
© copyright 1999 Agricultural Publishing Company Limited.
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TV sizzle trimmed from beef promo budget
BY DON STONEMAN
Sizzling steaks won't be tempting TV viewers' taste buds during barbecue season. Producer-funded generic TV advertising for beef is as dead as any steer that ever walked into a packing plant, a victim of Beef Information Centre budget cuts.The BIC budget was $8.8 million last year. With money from the Beef Industry Development Fund running out, this year's budget was cut to $5.8 million. In a mid-January priority-setting exercise, neither the BIC board and its three new Alberta members nor its staff listed a national TV ad campaign among its top three priorities.
The development fund was federal money left over when the National Tripartite Stabilization Program was curtailed. Money from the fund let the industry undertake programs it couldn't before, says Darlene Bowen, who will likely carry on as Ontario Cattlemen's Association's senior representative on the BIC board. BIC has changed strategies, she says: "We do not have the dollars to do the [TV] job properly."
When BIC initiated TV advertising 16 years ago, spots were bought in all major Canadian markets 10 months a year. But a static budget and increasing costs to purchase prime time resulted in a narrower campaign. Last year the ads were seen in only five major markets for a total of 15 weeks spread over six months, mostly in barbecue season. Newly elected BIC board members from Western Canada who never got to see the ads at home were instrumental in bringing the axe down.
"We probably hung in there five years too long," says Wilfred Campbell, a Tompkin, Sask., rancher and chairman of the BIC. Campbell concedes that concentrating on sizzling steaks may have been the wrong way to go. The consumer wants something quick, convenient and safe, Campbell says: "The housewife wants fuel."
Bowen says BIC will increase spending on retail, food service and new product programs. A million dollars will be funneled into magazine advertising to mount a campaign on nutrition and health issues. "We've seen some excellent programs done by dairy and egg people," she says.
The new programs will be more consumer-oriented, she says. And with TV dollars freed, the public relations campaign will also be better funded, says Bowen. It is now being handled on a contract basis, outside the BIC office. "We've always had good results with the PR campaign. We can do a better job yet."
Bowen, the only Ontario director at the January meeting, intends to stay on as a BIC director. The other Ontario representatives, former OCA president Linda Barker, Hagersville, and veteran director Bert Vandendool, Port Lambton, are both stepping down from the BIC board. Mid-February, their replacements had yet to be chosen by OCA.
Vandendool says some new product development ideas have already been successful. One example is halal beef, marketed by Ontario's St. Helens Packers and aimed at the growing Muslim population in Canada and the U.S.
New products will be important in the future, Vandendool says. "They tell us that 10 years from now three-quarters of [current] products won't be in the grocery store any more."
The big push is to value-added products that cost the consumer more, but are more convenient. "You can't even find a cheese grater any more," says Vandendool. "If you want grated cheese, you buy grated cheese.
"I think we should advertise anyway," adds Vandendool, who is retiring from the OCA board after 18 years. But "$3 million didn't do it. We should have had $10 million and been in their face all year round. Milk and eggs [TV campaigns] were extremely successful. We are going the other way. I feel bad about that."
Linda Barker, who wasn't at the BIC strategic planning meeting in January, also has mixed feelings. "The figures and facts show that TV advertising pays," she says. "I believe in promoting whatever you have that's good."
Chicken has continued to whittle away at beef's share of the meat market, even though it has never had a national advertising campaign like beef.
© copyright 1999 Agricultural Publishing Company Limited.
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Setting new course for beef promotion
Among many recent changes at the Beef Information Centre, long-time BIC manager Carolyn McDonell of Milton has resigned.She'd headed up BIC since its inception in 1973 and was instrumental in bringing in the television campaign 16 years ago. She resigned shortly after last December's Alberta Cattle Commission annual meeting, where four new directors opposed to generic advertising were elected to the BIC board.
BIC chairman Wilfred Campbell, Saskatchewan, stresses that the changes to the program were made several weeks after McDonell left. "Her resignation," he says "really wasn't anything to do with the change.
"I have a tremendous amount of respect for Carolyn. She was very loyal." But Campbell admits that when she resigned, "We never really discussed anything."
McDonell, who could not be reached for comment, had overseen a staff of about 15 in three offices. As an arm of the Canadian Cattlemen's Association, BIC was directly responsible to the CCA office in Calgary, but received its direction on spending from a 14-member board and a chairman.
Of those directors, six are from Alberta, where most of Canada's beef cattle are located. Saskatchewan has two directors, while British Columbia and Manitoba each have one. Ontario has three board members, while Quebec and provinces to the east have one director.
BIC's day-to-day operations are being handled by a three-manager team, with one manager in each of the three offices, located in Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver, reporting to the Canadian Cattlemen's Association office in Calgary. Campbell says the team is doing a more than satisfactory job while a new general manager is sought and he isn't hurrying to find a replacement. - Don Stoneman
© copyright 1999 Agricultural Publishing Company Limited.
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Export 'em, Danno
Canada says aloha to Hawaiian beef
BY DON STONEMAN
Hawaii has become the third state to receive health status from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to export feeder cattle to Canada.Hawaii, you say? What Canadian beef raiser in their right mind is going to buy feeder cattle from Hawaii? Talk about bringing coal to Newcastle.
Well, quite a few Canadians, as a matter of fact. Importing feeder cattle from Hawaii isn't quite as silly an idea as it sounds, as a red-faced Farm & Country reporter found out.
"Your reaction is typical," says Cindy McCreath, communications issues, Canadian Cattlemen's Association. The announcement that Hawaii is now on the list of states cleared to ship feeder cattle directly to Canada created incredulity in lots of circles, she says. But it makes lots of sense, sort of.
Rob McNabb, CCA assistant manager, says cattle have been imported to feedlots in Western Canada from the mid-Pacific state for 25 years, usually between 3,000 and 5,000 head a year, but not every year. Imports to Canada tend to depend on exchange rates as much as on cattle prices.
Hawaii has about 80,000 beef cows with calf at foot, mostly of British breeding. There is considerable good grazing land, but no feeding industry.
Cattle come to Canada rather than to the continental U.S. because of the Jones Law, dating back to 1920, which allows only U.S-built and -owned ships crewed by Americans to carry goods between U.S. ports.
McNabb says there likely aren't many American ships equipped to carry livestock. He's been told it's cheaper to fly cattle to the U.S. mainland than to ship them.
Washington and Montana already enjoy a health status that lets ranchers there sell feeder cattle to Canadian feedlots between Oct. 1 and March 31. All three states are now regarded as free of tuberculosis and brucellosis and are low risk for blue tongue and anaplasmosis. The U.S. is undertaking a stringent program to rid itself of TB and brucellosis and "is getting close," McNabb says.
A state's animal health ratings are established by the United States Department of Agriculture and state veterinary officials. The state then applies to CFIA for status to avoid health testing that is otherwise required for cattle entering Canada.
McNabb says since Oct. 1 Canada has imported about 45,000 head of feeder cattle under the Northwest program. A couple of border states in the Midwest and central eastern U.S. have applied for similar status. McNabb thinks their health status could be established within a few weeks - "probably short of time for this year but anything is possible."
States further south will find it more difficult to achieve the necessary disease status. Blue tongue risks increase in states further south and anaplasmosis seems to be endemic, McNabb says.
© copyright 1999 Agricultural Publishing Company Limited.
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