As of this Wednesday, June 7, cattle will be able to leave Castilla y León again, coinciding with the publication of the order of the regional Superior Court of Justice suspending the relaxation of the bovine sanitation measures of the community and recovers the control and eradication protocol for bovine tuberculosis prior to May 15. According to the Ministry of Agriculture, which on May 23 filed an appeal against the regional decision to establish a more lax regulatory framework, this “contravenes European legislation” and introduces an “inevitable risk of spreading the disease to new areas, farms and animals”.
It is a zoonotic disease (transmitted from animals to humans) that is notifiable in Spain. It can affect several different species of domestic (cattle and goats) and wild (foxes, wild boars, deer) animals.
Transmission to humans is a public health problem. Exposure to MTC (Microbacteryum tuberculosis) by aerosol is the most frequent route of contagion in animals, but infection by eating contaminated meat is also possible, although rare.
According to WHO data, in 2021, 10.6 million cases were registered in people worldwide and 10% died.
In 2020, 20 cases of tuberculosis due to M. bovis were registered, four more than the previous year. In the EU the prevalence of infected herds was 0.6%. Only Ireland (4.6%) and Spain (1.3%) presented a prevalence higher than 1%. The communities with the highest prevalence in herds were AndalucÃa, Castilla La Mancha, Extremadura and La Rioja. In Murcia, the Basque Country, the Canary Islands and the Balearic Islands it was 0%.
According to the EU criteria, there are currently autonomous regions free of infection (Galicia, Catalonia, Asturias, Euskadi, Murcia, the Canary Islands and the Balearic Islands), as well as the provinces of Valladolid, Burgos and León. Aragón, Cantabria and Navarra have a low prevalence, Castilla y León and Valencia have a medium prevalence and Andalusia, Castilla-La Mancha, Extremadura, La Rioja and Madrid have a high prevalence.
The first actions to combat ovine tuberculosis began in Spain at the beginning of the 1950s. Currently, they are based on EU regulations –and financing-, with the aim of achieving eradication by 2030. Intermediate objectives in Spain They consist of achieving an annual reduction from 2022 of at least 20% in both the prevalence and the herd incidence compared to those obtained two years earlier.
A farm is considered a case if at least one animal that can be examined does not pass any of the official tests (both routine and complementary) or has not undergone any diagnostic tests on animals after 6 weeks.
Sacrifice is mandatory. Depending on the prevalence of the autonomous community or other reasons of a sanitary nature, slaughter may or must be extended to the entire farm. The owner will be compensated.
In establishments where a positive has been detected, prophylactic measures are applied in the facilities and pastures, and the control of movements and diagnostic tests is intensified. Check-ups are carried out prior to animal movements, with the aim of protecting disease-free herds.
Affected farms may not send animals of reproductive fitness to other establishments of reproductive fitness until they obtain negative results in a test carried out at least 12 months after the slaughter of the last positive ones.
Veterinary staff dependent on the autonomous communities, professionals who have passed regulated training courses in theoretical, practical and legal aspects regarding the diagnosis of bovine tuberculosis, which will include a validation test of the IDTB technique on infected animals and/or sensitized by M. tuberculosis complex and uninfected/sensitized animals.
“In no case will the request for verification of official tests be accepted after obtaining the official results,” the regulations indicate.
It is very difficult, explains a veterinary specialist in animal health. If control measures on farms have not worked, the signs of tuberculosis are not difficult to detect in slaughterhouses. Positive samples or suspicious lesions during postmortem inspection imply removal of the animal.
Symptoms of tuberculosis in humans can include fever, night sweats, and weight loss. In most cases, antibiotic treatment will serve to mitigate the disease.
It has the largest bovine census in Spain and most of the herd is in areas with a special incidence of tuberculosis. A large number of animal movements take place daily, and one of the most important markets is located in Salamanca.
Through an order dated May 15, the Board decided to reduce the controls for the maintenance, suspension, withdrawal and recovery of the farm status free of bovine tuberculosis.
In this way, it exempted farms from mandatory movement tests, allowed departures from farms with suspended health status to farms free of tuberculosis, and relaxed the requirements for obtaining disease-free health status for affected establishments.
The Ministry of Agriculture responded with a resolution (May 26) limiting the transport of cattle from Castilla y León, understanding that the community seriously failed to comply with “community and Spanish regulations on the eradication and control of bovine tuberculosis”.
