Chicago - A Michigan agriculture official said an outbreak of tuberculosis in white-tailed deer in the northeastern part of the state had likely spread to a small cattle herd in that area.
One beef cow on an Alpena county farm was confirmed to have had bovine tuberculosis after testing positive in preliminary tests and being destroyed for an animal autopsy, or necropsy, said Bob Bender, coordinator of the state's bovine tuberculosis eradication group formed in February to control the outbreak.
The remaining 19-head cattle herd was being tested, he said.
“The assumption is that the disease is so prevalent in the deer population that that's probably what's infecting the cattle, but we don't know that for sure,” Bender said.
Michigan has been designated by USDA as a bovine TB accredited free state since 1979 and if another animal comes up positive the state will lose its TB free status, Bender said.
A TB free status allows the state's cattle to be sold without prior testing.
One dairy cow was suspected to have had the disease late last year but was not confirmed, he said.
Bovine tuberculosis is a bacterial respiratory disease that can be transmitted to any warm-blooded mammal and can theoretically be passed to humans, although the likelihood of that was not very high, Bender said.
Deer infections were confined to the northeastern part of the state where feeding by farmers and hunters had increased and concentrated the deer population. In that part of the state cattle also run on the same ground and share feed with the deer, Bender said.
“In 1994 we found, sort of by accident, a single TB infected deer and so we started doing a little additional testing and in 1995 there was about 20 animals, in 1996 there was 40 and in 1997 there was about 83 or 86, so it obviously was growing and expanding significantly,” Bender said.
Deer infected with tuberculosis were found in Alcona, Alpena, Montmorency, Oscoda and Presque Isle counties.
As a result all cattle in that five-county area will be tested for TB.
“If any of those cattle test positive that entire herd will be destroyed and removed,” Bender said.
Artificial feeding of deer also has been banned as of May 1 to control the disease's spread.
“Artificial feeding is the placement of big piles of feed, in some cases semi-(truck) loads of carrots, sugar beets, cornwhatever, and the deer all congregate around that feed pile and that's exactly how they transmit the disease,” Bender said.
Most of the feeding is done in the winter, so it could take a while before this strategy works on the deer herd, he said.
No other deer have tested positive outside of the five-county area in northeast Michigan, Bender said.
“That's the only place in North America that TB has been able to sustain itself in a wild, free-ranging deer population,” Bender said.
"That's a distinction we're not real keen about having."
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