Eradication Program Rids Cattle Herds Of Brucellosis

America’s cattle ranchers are getting ready to say goodbye and good riddance to brucellosis, a stubborn disease that has devastated herds and sickened humans over the years.

After 60 years of effort, the Agriculture Department says the disease is close to being stamped out in this country through a diligent program of blood tests, vaccines and quarantines.

Back in 1957, nearly 124,000 livestock herds had to be quarantined because of brucellosis, according to the USDA. That number has been falling ever since, and is now close to disappearing, with just 82 herds under quarantine.

“The brucellosis-eradication program has passed a real milestone by having fewer than 100 quarantined herds,” said Claude Barton, program director for the USDA. The department hopes to eliminate the disease by 1998.

Brucellosis is a bacterial disease that causes cows to abort, decreases milk production, interrupts breeding cycles and can be spread to humans as undulant fever through unpasteurized milk or contact with carcasses at slaughter.

“It’s one of the reasons why we pasteurize milk,” said Dr. Donald Evans, an epidemiologist for the USDA.

Undulant fever - marked by severe flu-like symptoms that can last for years, if not treated - is now so rare in America that there are “only a handful of cases,” said Tom Skinner with the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.

But at least one especially troublesome pocket of brucellosis remains. The disease is also found in bison, and the herds in Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks are infected. This week, officials met in Wyoming to seek a way to eliminate the disease without eliminating most of the 3,500 bison in Yellowstone.

For years, the disease has been the rationale for shooting bison every time they stray outside the confines of the national park.

Progress in the battle against brucellosis is measured against the USDA’s first nationwide survey of the disease in 1957. At that time, nearly every state reported hundreds, sometimes thousands, of infected cattle herds.

Now 34 states have been declared brucellosis-free, including all the Great Lakes states, most of the Rocky Mountain states and most of the Atlantic seaboard. The bacterium still lingers in the South and Midwest, and in California.

The slow but successful eradication effort has been a joint goal of ranchers, dairy farmers, state officials, the USDA and the taxpayers. The federal share of the brucellosis effort is $27.7 million in the current fiscal year.

Recently USDA boosted the bounty on diseased cattle, figuring the quickest way to eliminate the bacteria was to slaughter infected or exposed animals. At the same time, state and federal officials have grown more aggressive in testing livestock in local hot spots.

“It’s still out there,” said Evans, who scours Kansas for brucellosis. “But the number of herds we’re finding is starting to slow down.”

Still, brucellosis is not easy to eradicate. It can be a sneaky opponent, with the bacteria infecting cattle (and occasionally people) in a variety of ways, and with carriers showing few outward signs of infection. Millions and millions of brucellosis blood tests are given to cattle each year to halt the disease.

“It lasted longer than everybody wanted it to, but we’re getting real close,” Evans said of the brucellosis program. “We need to work hard to finish the job in the next couple of years.”