NZ Dairy Herds Free of EBL Virus
NZ - The NZ dairy industry is free of the contagious viral disease, Enzootic Bovine Leukosis (EBL).
24 September 2009
1 minute read
The industry began a national eradication campaign in 1997, which has been run by farmer-owned co-operative Livestock Improvement (LIC), without any government intervention.
EBL disease is passed from mother to calf and also between cattle and can leave animals riddled with cancer reports The Otago Daily Times. There is no evidence of it infecting humans.
Herd infection rates were cut from nearly 10 percent in 1997 to below 0.1 percent by 2005, and intensive monitoring since then had led to no EBL-infected dairy herds being detected last year.
An LIC spokesman told The Otago Daily Times that no systematic testing has been done on beef herds, and that natural-mating beef bulls brought into dairy herds remained a potential risk to EBL-free dairy herds.
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