• Question: Can Bovine Tuberculosis be treated by means other than kiling the cow? What is the alternative treatment?

    Asked by danrumford to Cat on 16 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by leydon, iisnutworth.
    • Photo: Cat O'Connor

      Cat O'Connor answered on 16 Jun 2011:

      Hi Dan,

      Thanks for asking me a bTB (bovine tb) question!

      You know I asked this exact same question about six years ago and I had to ask a lot of people to get an answer I was satisfied with…not that I’m happy with the answer though.

      So first I think you need to know something about TB in humans and how we treat it. If a person is found to have TB, they are given really really strong antibiotics and they have to take them for months! These drugs have some side effects too but you know I think in most countries there is actually a law that MAKES you take the drugs and you can be put in prison if you refuse or don’t take the full course of the drugs. Anyway, what i’m trying to say is that it is really hard to treat in humans.

      And the same would ring true for cattle too. If we wanted to treat cattle, they’d have to be given very strong drugs for a very long time. And the thing with cattle is that, well, we eat them. And we can’t/shouldn’t eat meat or drink dairy products that have antibiotics in them as they could cause allergic reactions in some people. Another thing you should know that even if the animal no longer takes the drug, there can be bits of the chemical in their muscles and excretions (milk) and these are called residues. So before we can use meat or say milk from animals who are given drugs, we need to make sure all the residues are gone and if the animals are on a course of drugs for a long time, a farmer would be feeding, taking care of the animal and paying for very expensive drugs for an animal that may not be ‘usable’ for a very long time. So really, the main reasons we don’t treat cattle is for economical reasons.

      Also of course, there is the disease control reason. By killing the cows as soon as we detect disease, we know that that certain animal can no longer spread infection. Whereas if we were treating the animal with drugs, they may still be spreading it! So that is why there is an EU law (and a law in most other 1st world countries) that makes us kill an animal that is thought to be infected.

      Does this make sense? Please respond if it doesn’t or you want me to clarify anything! It is 23.40 right now and my brain may not be working very well :S

      Cat

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