Illinois State Vet Provides Update For New Year

www.agrinews-pubs.com
2010-01-04

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. – No major change are expected for livestock exhibition health requirements in 2010, according to the Illinois state veterinarian.

“We don’t have any big changes in store, per se,” Dr. Mark Ernst said at the recent Land of Lincoln Purebred Livestock Breeders Association annual meeting.

““There is one change that we’re going to introduce to our advisory board of livestock commissioners. That is to propose that Illinois swine no longer need to be tested for pseudorabies for exhibition in Illinois. Again, that has not been proposed yet.

““Hopefully, we’ll be having a meeting with the advisory board either in January or February, and we will bring that to the board at that time.

““If the board does approve that, it still has to be approved by (the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules) before it could be put into effect.”

“The state veterinarian also discussed budget cuts and the status of some diseases during his presentation to the state’s purebred livestock breeders. As with other state agencies, Ernst’s department is “doing more with less.”

“ “Hopefully nobody noticed this last year, but we’re responsible for checking in all the livestock at the fair,” he said. “In this last year we did that with approximately five to seven fewer people. If you didn’t notice, that’s good. That means we’re doing our job.

“ “We expect this year we’re probably going to do more of the same thing. We’re going to have fewer summer helpers to help us out. We spent some time talking to some of the superintendents, rearranging work schedules and things like that to try to get the job done a little bit more efficiently.

““Hopefully people didn’t have too long of a wait to get checked. That’s some of the things that we have to look forward to this year coming up as well.”

“He added there were no major problems at this past year’s state fair and that the drug testing program “went fairly smoothly and we didn’t have any major issues.”

“No major disease outbreaks occurred in Illinois during 2009, but Ernst did note a few instances the department has monitored.

“Contagious equine metritis, a reproductive disease of horses, was discovered in Kentucky in December 2008.

““We’re still working on trace-outs into Illinois. Forty-eight states have horses that were affected or are affected,” Ernst said.

“We had 28 stallions that were exposed in this state with three of them being positive. There were 26 mares exposed. We had two positive mares along with five geldings.

“We still have five stallions and one gelding that is currently under quarantine. The reason CEM is an important disease in the equine industry is primarily due to our exports. This disease is fairly common in some of the European countries.

“We require testing for those horses imported into the states and vice versa. If we were declared to be a CEM infected country, those European countries that we export to are also going to require us to test.

“So it’s important to get this disease taken care of and eradicate it from this country. Between all of the states and USDA, we’re getting that job achieved.”

Another equine disease – piroplasmosis – was found this past fall in Texas. A Tick bite or any other blood transfer primarily spreads the blood borne disease.

“To date, there are 289 positive horses that are under quarantine at one ranch in Texas,” Ernst said. “In addition, there are 62 positive horses that are located in 12 states. Of those 62, 37 of them are at other locations in Texas.

“Fortunately, we have not had any traces to Illinois horses as of yet, and we’ll keep our fingers crossed. It doesn’t look like we are going to have any traces.”

A case of avian influenza was reported in a turkey flock in northern Illinois this past summer. The turkey flock was “depopulated because of a strain of low pathogen avian influenza,” Ernst said.

One Illinois herd did test positive for the H1N1 influenza.

“The herd no longer has any clinical signs, so I don’t anticipate any further action being taken there,” the vet said.

Premise registration remains at about 50 percent with more than 14,400 premises registered.

“We don’t have any requirements or mandatory registration. We still strongly recommend that all premises are registered,” Ernst said.


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