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Controlling Scotland's Unwanted Visitor
PARABAN (opens in new window)
While Scotland’s often cold and wet climate may not seem particularly welcoming, it does offer ideal conditions for one unwanted visitor - the bacterium that causes Johne’s disease.
Tailoring Scotland’s action against Johne’s to suit the local climate and conditions was therefore a key element of the first on-farm knowledge exchange event in the five year PARABAN project. Funded by the Scottish Funding Council in partnership with Scottish Government, PARABAN is seeking the best and most cost effective approach to controlling Johne’s disease in Scotland. The project is led by SAC and the PARABAN partnership involves scientists from other institutes as well as industry stakeholders headed by Quality Meat Scotland and including retailers and processors.
Around 40 farmers, vets and industry representatives gathered at Glenbervie Home Farm near Stonehaven to exchange ideas and hear about the latest research. As part of the PARABAN project, John Lohoar, manager of Glenbervie Home Farm and his vet Bill Robson have been helping scientists learn more about how Johne’s behaves in local Scottish conditions. John and Bill described their systems and strategy against Johne’s.
Rupert Hough of the James Hutton Institute discussed his research into environmental risk factors, including how soil characteristics such as pH can affect the survivability of the bacterium that causes Johne’s.
The disease affects the digestive system of cattle and can lead to severe weight loss, diarrhoea and death. Not all infected animals show these signs, however, and this disease spreads through non-clinical shedders which may suffer from poor production performance and infertility problems. Another key focus of the day was therefore discussion around testing for Johne’s in sub-clinical cases. Katie Adam of SAC described the main issue with testing for Johne’s – the aim is to identify infected animals as early as possible, but the tests are not always able to detect Johne’s in the very early stages. Testing herds more frequently is a promising strategy to overcome this and is now being applied across all of the PARABAN herds.
George Gunn as project co-ordinator highlighted the need for sustained knowledge exchange between all stakeholders to establish how best to combat this problem in Scotland. He said: “The ultimate aim is to establish a platform of best practice for the Scottish livestock industry so livestock keepers know what to do when confronted with this problem in the future.”
Further PARABAN on-farm events will across Scotland – more information will be made available as venues and dates are confirmed.