Dr Stephen Angus
Compiled by RANOBA BAOA
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In 1990, Fiji was declared brucellosis-free by the animal health department at that time, finally putting to rest problems of the dairy industry.
But 19 years later, the industry was under the microscope as the disease once again crippled the dairy herd and became not only a national issue but a regional one.
Aside from improving pasture, cattle feed, introducing artificial insemination and so on, animal disease eradication is something that Government and stakeholders are continuously working on.
Animal diseases, especially ones that affect the Gross Domestic Product, should be something that experts should never assume to think being eradicated.
They should be tested thoroughly and most impeccably without any flaws to ensure the diseases’ complete disappearance.
Government has no doubt been trying its best to improve the dairy industry.
Programmes have been put in place to ensure that the targeted production of 15 million litres by 2015 is met.
Sun Business had a chat with Principal Veterinary Officer from the Department of Agriculture in Fiji, Dr Stephen Angus, a veterinarian, and asked him his thoughts specifically on the cow disease.
He even brought up another disease that is crippling the industry for by gone years besides discussing the eradication process of brucellosis.
He anticipates and in fact is confident that the disease will be long-gone after five years and already positive media reports are noting that it is decreasing.
Questions for Principal Veterinary Officer from the Department of Agriculture, Dr Stephen Angus:
1. What is the progress of the brucellosis diseases in the country?
We started in May 2012, that’s when I first started and we took over running the brucellosis campaign from Biosecurity Authority of Fiji. Since that time there was 2.8 percent to three per cent of dairy herd that were infected out of about 20,000 cattles.
We had a peak in 2012 where 34 farms and 300 registered dairy farms which is more than 10 percent of the dairy herd in Fiji were infected and more than that were badly infected. But we are now coming to the end of it and have everything under control.
What we’re doing now is we have gone from the peak of 34 to 30 farms down to 14 infected farms. Out of which we were able to get sporadic reactions every now and then but no large scale numbers though.
The progress is that we’ve become successful in controlling the disease. We’ve done it in a little over 18 months and we now want to move onto an eradication phase. We’ve gone down well into eradication with very small numbers but the problem now with the success of the control programme is that it has now become harder and harder to find any cases. We’ve been testing thousands and thousands of cattle but with negative results in order to find the last one.
2. What are the programmes mapped out in the process or the step-by-step procedures the department is doing to address the disease?
The programme now is going to spread out resources: vehicles, equipment will soon be made available. We’ve just been granted $1 million this year through the 2014 National Budget. But whether this promise turns into reality, we’re going to ramp up our resources so we can be able to expand the programme to cover the whole of Fiji.
And over a period of time we’ll have to rollout the programme and systematically test all cattle in Fiji. These will include dairy farms which are not member of the Fiji Dairy Company Limited. Absolutely every single village, every single farm, beef farms as well.
Since I’ve been here, we’ve also been screening cattles in the abattoir but we haven’t had a positive test yet. We are quite confident that the problem in the whole of Fiji is relatively small. We’ve had some samples from outer islands including Taveuni and the Lau Group but so far we haven’t received any positive results. And so eventually we’re going to have to get everywhere.
And this of course depends on what I call the ‘Fiji factor’ meaning depending on the availability of resources, time, money, laboratory staff and so on.
Over the five-year period, after which we have exhausted all resources, I’d like to think that we would reach a point where we would be able to give up because there are no more cases. And that’s what we intend to do.
3. Which areas were prevalent?
The brucellosis problem was common in the low lying areas of Tailevu and Naitasiri even with the water problem and it infected Navua one time.
4. Has the department been able to identify how the disease was first contracted and why?
In 2009 there was a series of abortion storms in Tailevu. We examined it, tested it and traced all the animals to find out how it has been spread around and the only conclusion we could come to was as we imagined that brucellosis emerged was that the country was never free. There had not been a recent import from any country that they are not brucellosis-free and animals coming in to Fiji have been tested before it gets on the boat.
So there was no question of whether it was a new importation. It would have been lying dormant in feral cattle. (Feral animals are previously domesticated animals which have gone back into the wild.)
So the findings in 1989 were a false assumption that the disease was eradicated. From Tailevu the cases also appeared in parts of Naitasiri which we traced back to a particular farm where the problem first began.
5. How does it affect the dairy herd?
It is a contagious disease caused by bacteria called brucellavoices which we are successfully growing in one our laboratories. We isolated it, we grew it and we’ve sent samples down to CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation Australia), the Australian Animal Health Laboratory in Geelong, Victoria.
It causes problems of breeding animals. It has cost the dairy industry about 1000 cattles since 2009 however the numbers have now gone very small. So loss that are going to be recorded have already been recorded.
What happens with Brucellosis is initially it causes abortion. It causes fertility problems, it also causes infertility in growth and also mastitis, an inflammation of the breast tissue. So it definitely does have an impact on production and even humans can catch it as well.
6. We understand it can also affect humans. How so?
It is a very unpleasant disease in humans and it known to humans as undulating fever and if you don’t get treated very quickly it becomes chronic and then you’ll have to live with it. It’s reported that some people who have been living with it for years become suicidal. There was one case in the 80s. But we usually conduct tests at the VTL (Veterinary Technology Lab) in Koronivia but we have not found any cases so far. The milk comes from the dairy farms and then they go the dairy companies where it pasturises all the milk.
We advise people very strongly never to drink raw milk. It’s pasturised by the dairy company. If someone sells milk from the dairy farm, people should heat it first.
The other risk is that people working in farms, this used to be relatively common in farmers and veterinarians.
7. Have there been other cattle diseases which poses risk to the dairy industry?
The other one that we’re actively trying to eradicate and deal with as well is tuberculosis. It’s consumed the dairy industry now since the 70s when the case was first discovered.
We are actively working this tuberculosis eradication and this is the new angle that we are taking. We’re doing herd profiling and starting to introduced the new diagnostic test.