Province plans to be even more thorough testing elk for bovine TB
By Tim Kalinowski on November 7, 2017.
Medicine Hat News The most recent government update to the Alberta Beef Producers regarding the tracking of bovine TB states the Alberta government will be expanding its efforts to do more scientific testing on elk killed in this year’s Suffield elk hunt. Last year, government inspectors, with a heavy reliance on co-operation from the hunters themselves, did mainly visual inspections of the animals killed, looking for unusual lesions on lymph nodes, (a possible sign of TB), in conjunction with an existing program searching for signs of chronic wasting disease in the local herd. According to government stats, out of 1,258 elk harvested in 2016/17 no physical evidence of bovine TB was found. This conclusion however, could not be backed up by laboratory culture testing, as most labs in the province were fully engrossed on herd testing for domestic cattle in the area under quarantine at the time. A government brief to the Beef Producers states only six cases of bovine TB were proven in one herd despite the slaughter of 11,500 animals in the region last year. Over the next three years the government will be conducting “active surveillance,” which will mean a proportion of animals hunted will be laboratory tested regardless of whether visual symptoms of the disease are found. Approximately 120 elk per year in the Suffield area will have their lymph nodes tested in this way. Post-mortem visual examinations will also continue to be conducted on all elk killed in this year’s hunt. The News reached out to Alberta Environment and Parks for further comment Monday but did not hear back before to press time. 7-6
