Is it safe to eat meat from a BVD animal?

Backfire

hi guys,

my father currently has a single bvd 4 month old calf, that has proved positive for the virus.

The calf is isolated from all other animals and my father is considering in keeping the animal to 9 - 10 months of age for killing for our own freezer.

I have heard that the meat is safe to eat, even though the animal will not fatten as fast or as well as an uninfected animal. Its just a better option than putting a bullet in its head and paying €35 to have it taken from the yard.

Also is it legal to butcher a BVD infected animal? (by a registered butcher of course).

any info is appreciated. Thanks

Base price

The meat is safe to eat - see http://www.bvd-info.ch/veterinarians/infos/faq.html see section BVD and problems with calves.
To be honest I think you would be mad to consider keeping the animal even in isolated conditions. This calf will shed the virus and contaminate your other stock.
I presume that the calf was born on your Dad's farm. If so the mother is infected but may not show positive to a test. Others on this forum know more that I do about positive/negative results in older animals.
Best advise is to get it sent off in the dead lorry ASAP.
Apologies for been blunt.

Backfire

Base price wrote: »

The meat is safe to eat - see http://www.bvd-info.ch/veterinarians/infos/faq.html see section BVD and problems with calves.
To be honest I think you would be mad to consider keeping the animal even in isolated conditions. This calf will shed the virus and contaminate your other stock.
I presume that the calf was born on your Dad's farm. If so the mother is infected but may not show positive to a test. Others on this forum know more that I do about positive/negative results in older animals.
Best advise is to get it sent off in the dead lorry ASAP.
Apologies for been blunt.

No apologies needed and I know you are correct. The virus could still spread even if the animal is completely isolated. But I don't make the decisions. The mother of the calf probably had TI bvd while in calf. But unlikely to be PI herself. As she is an old cow, we have 3 daughter cows off her, all blood tested for bvd, all their calves tested, this is our first positive. Had entire herd blood tested twice. Nothing else has shown positive.

Anyway, getting back to butchering the animal, is it legal to butcher them since they have BVD, I presume it is legal since bvd is not a food safety issue.

greysides

Base price wrote: »

The meat is safe to eat - see http://www.bvd-info.ch/veterinarians/infos/faq.html see section BVD and problems with calves.
To be honest I think you would be mad to consider keeping the animal even in isolated conditions. This calf will shed the virus and contaminate your other stock.

Very true on both counts. The virus is so easily transmitted that being able to keep an animal in isolation is dubious.

If an previously uninfected animal is caught by the virus in the early-to-mid stage of pregnancy another persistently infected animal will develop. If born alive then the cycle continues.

I presume that the calf was born on your Dad's farm. If so the mother is infected but may not show positive to a test.

In that case the mother MAY be affected but she should be checked out as per protocol. If she is persistently infected herself she will show positive to a test for the virus (which is the test being done for the control programme) but would show negative to a test for viral antibody.
She may not harbour the virus any longer though as if she's a normal animal it will have cleared her system since both she and her developing calf were infected with it during her pregnancy. She will have been able to mount an immune response to it and have eliminated it but the calf wasn't able to and it has taken up residence in him permanently.

Base price

Backfire wrote: »

No apologies needed and I know you are correct. The virus could still spread even if the animal is completely isolated. But I don't make the decisions. The mother of the calf probably had TI bvd while in calf. But unlikely to be PI herself. As she is an old cow, we have 3 daughter cows off her, all blood tested for bvd, all their calves tested, this is our first positive. Had entire herd blood tested twice. Nothing else has shown positive.

Anyway, getting back to butchering the animal, is it legal to butcher them since they have BVD, I presume it is legal since bvd is not a food safety issue.

I do know that BVD positive calves have been slaughtered at an approved Dept of Ag slaughter facility after the min 10 days and before the max 40 days.

LivInt20

Gid rid of calf ASAP.

Even walking in and out of the shed will spread the virus.

milkprofit

LivInt20 wrote: »

Gid rid of calf ASAP.

Even walking in and out of the shed will spread the virus.

So true there is no such thing as safe on farm isolation Go out now and shoot

_Brian

Wasn't there statistics shown earlier in the year that 60% of positives were being kept on, so it seem OP's father is in good company..

I would take a jump to a 60% rate in just the second year of the scheme to show that the BVD eradication scheme has failed big time..

blue5000

How come it's nearly always 'my father' or an 'elderly neighbour' that is holding on to these bvd calves? Obviously nobody has explained the situation to them. I think ahi or somebody didn't do enough to get the word out that these calves are useless.

greysides

AHI couldn't have done any more. Talks all over the place, reports/info in the papers. Still some people didn't bother attending. It's attitude, pure and simple.

_Brian

greysides wrote: »

AHI couldn't have done any more. Talks all over the place, reports/info in the papers. Still some people didn't bother attending. It's attitude, pure and simple.

I think it's lads trying to beat the system. Thinking theirs will be the one to buck the system and not have problems, land into the factory and make a fortune. Prove "the man" wrong.

milkprofit

_Brian wrote: »

I think it's lads trying to beat the system. Thinking theirs will be the one to buck the system and not have problems, land into the factory and make a fortune. Prove "the man" wrong.

The local vet should refuse to attend

Backfire

blue5000 wrote: »

How come it's nearly always 'my father' or an 'elderly neighbour' that is holding on to these bvd calves? Obviously nobody has explained the situation to them. I think ahi or somebody didn't do enough to get the word out that these calves are useless.

They are not completely useless, if they can be semi-fattened for home freezing then at least some use can be made.

A poor fiancial compensation programme for dairy farmers and the lack of 100% certainty with test results has resulted in a large amount of farmers holding onto the bvd animals.
Farmers operate on very tight profit margins and its hard to blame a farmer for not looking at the long term effects of keeping a bvd animal on the yard when he should be grabbing the .22lr and putting a hole in the calves skull.

A neighbour of mine kept onto a charloise bull calf last year. He was tested 4 times, once using the ear tag, the latter 3 were blood tested, at day 1, 1 month, 3 months and 5 months. All failed. He still kept the animal until eventually his vet came to the yard insisting he get rid of the animal. The farmer got the animal blood tested for bvd again at 7 months old and passed. He tested the animal again in march this year, animal is 14 months old at this stage and still result is bvd free. His vet is my father's vet and its his vet that told me and my father this story and he cant believe it. He even got the farmer to show all the test results since its initial test. 6 tests done in total. Farmer still has the animal.

So the idea that an animal, at 1 day, 6 weeks, 3 months and 5 months proved positive for bvd but suddenly at 7 months is bvd free. Makes no sense. So uncertainty isnt helping this bvd eradication programme. And of course dna tests were done to ensure samples were genuine, thats standard procedure.

J.O. Farmer

blue5000 wrote: »

How come it's nearly always 'my father' or an 'elderly neighbour' that is holding on to these bvd calves? Obviously nobody has explained the situation to them. I think ahi or somebody didn't do enough to get the word out that these calves are useless.

The problem with the scheme is that you're telling farmers that it's in their interest to go shoot a seemingly healthy animal and pay to have it taken away. On a suckler farm your telling him take the source of income and make it an expense.
If the department was serious about eradication they would make disposal compulsory and give compensation as with TB. Failure to do that means that lots of farmers might try and make something by finishing at 9-10 months.

Base price

Backfire - At the end of the day it is up to you and your Dad to decide. You seem to be well educated on BVD so why come on here to ask others opinions. If you have a gripe with the Dept of Ag policy than take it up with them.
However I have seen good herds been decimated over the years due to BVD.

I first came across BVD in 1989. We bought a in calf commercial cow (SHxBB) which a year later went to rags due to spewing out of her rear end....
Our vet at the time suggested we blood test the herd, which we did at enormous cost. At that time the test indicated another 7 animals including pedigree stock. We had to continue doing the blood tests for another 2 years before we were sure that we were clear and could sell pedigree stock.
I am going to say and print this and I am sure I will get some sort of censure for doing so - If I found out that my neighbour was keeping BVD positive cattle than I would spare them the culling expense.
As I posted above, take your fight/gripe directly to the Dept.
Most responsible farmers get positive calves culled.

greysides

Backfire wrote: »

So the idea that an animal, at 1 day, 6 weeks, 3 months and 5 months proved positive for bvd but suddenly at 7 months is bvd free. Makes no sense. So uncertainty isnt helping this bvd eradication programme. And of course dna tests were done to ensure samples were genuine, thats standard procedure.

I would agree that story does not make sense with the current understanding of BVD. It's possible that you've seen proof of a 'self-cure'. If you have, it's an absolute rarity, defying scientific odds. But it's still one in a ..... million, billion, whatever. It's not a case to use as a standard.

I don't think there's any ground swell of uncertainty. I think there's a feeling of 'here's another eradication programme being imposed on us'; there's an attitude among some that the rules don't apply to them; there's those that couldn't be bothered going to the meetings (thought they wouldn't understand it); there's those that can't or won't see beyond the immediate future; there's those that would distrust anything they were told.

Whatever the reason there's a large amount of ignorance (meant in the true sense, not in a pejorative manner) still in the farming community about it.

To start with.......... it's not a Dept Scheme.

I think the continuing TB Scheme has had a very strong negative effect on the Irish farming psyche (despite the same test being able to eradicate TB from other countries). It has given farmers in general a very pessimistic view of disease control and this has coloured responses to a scheme that has the technical ability to eradicate BVD if everyone pulls together. It's looking like they won't and it's looking like it'll be another dragged out scheme but this time the blame won't be outside the agricultural sector. It's not a problem with the testing, it's a problem with the Irish.


Anyway, all that's a long way off your original question. There's no health problem with slaughtering an animal for human consumption. I can't help you with the rules about on-farm slaughtering but if it's allowed then there shouldn't be a problem because the animal is BVD positive. Bear in mind that all offal, fluids, unwanted body parts will be infective to naive animals.

tanko

"A problem with the irish"??? Do you realise the effort that many farmers have made to get rid of BVD? Lots of farmers have now completed three years of testing, vaccinate all their breeding stock and have shot Pi calves as soon as they were discovered, all at considerable expense. It's the actions of a sizeable minority of farmers that's messing it up for the farmers who play by the rules, as usual.
As for the TB "eradication"scheme, it has been a gravy train for vets for decades.

greysides

tanko wrote: »

"A problem with the irish"??? Do you realise the effort that many farmers have made to get rid of BVD?

Indeed I do. I was helping eradicate BVD from farms long before the present scheme. Successfully, because those farmers were motivated by a problem they had to sort out.

It's the actions of a sizeable minority of farmers that's messing it up for the farmers who play by the rules, as usual.

I agree, hence my comment. In another time and place with a different disease history, my opinion is that the 'sizeable majority' would be a lot, lot smaller.

If the exact same scheme were undertaken in the UK, or Germany, I think the results would be a lot better.