Grant supporting study of costly bovine disease, vaccines
Researchers from the Veterinary Education, Research, & Outreach program at the Texas A&M School of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences (VMBS) have received $300,000 from the United States Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture to study the costliest disease in the cattle industry, bovine respiratory disease (BRD). The grant will fund a highly collaborative project involving Mississippi State University, West Texas A&M University and Texas A&M AgriLife that looks at the effects of vaccination and management strategies on the cattle immune system and microflora, specifically as it relates to BRD.
BRD costs the cattle industry around $1 billion each year in prevention, management and treatment fees, as well as in herd losses.
Though scientists have studied BRD for decades, the ability to accurately predict which individual animals will contract BRD remains elusive, making management strategies less effective.
For the last 50 to 60 years, BRD has been the No. 1 cause of disease and death in cattle feedlots of North America. It has a high morbidity rate, accounting for 35 to 50% of all diagnosed disease, which means that infected herds often experience significant losses.
Despite having been the focus of research for decades, BRD is difficult to prevent because there are many factors that can affect whether an individual animal contracts BRD. “Age, proximity to other cattle with BRD, vaccination status and individual immune response are just some of the contributing factors,” Dr. Matthew Scott, an assistant professor of microbial ecology and infectious disease at VERO, said.
The variety of factors can make it hard to predict exactly which animals will get sick and which ones will resist infection.
“Sometimes low-risk cattle still get sick,” Scott said. “Sometimes really high-risk cattle — the ones coming from multiple sources with no management or vaccines at all — don’t get sick. So, there’s a lot of incongruences at the individual level and we don’t really know why.”
Vaccines and management strategies, such as physically separating cattle that are vulnerable to BRD, are typically the most reliable way to keep cattle healthy.
“Those are the two main tactics we have in preventing BRD,” Scott said. “We can use these tactics to predict whether a herd is at high or low risk for BRD infection, which is information crucial to producers who may be buying or selling those animals.”
“Given how much the industry loses to BRD, the economic benefits of the research can’t be overstated.”
– Dr. Matthew Scott Veterinary Education, Research, & Outreach program
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