BVD eradication programme April 2019
According to data which has been recently published by Animal Health Ireland, the level of BVD infection in calves born in Ireland continues to decline.
For the period from the 1st January 2019 to the 31st of March 2019, over 1.1 million calves were tested for BVD. 0.03%, or approximately one in three thousand, of all calves born were persistently infected. This represents a twenty fold decrease from the situation at the commencement of the eradication programme in 2013, when 0.66% of calves born were persistently infected. Only 0.53% of Ireland’s 83,000 breeding herds experienced the birth of a persistently infected (PI) calf or calves during the first quarter of 2019. This figure for the number of herds which experience PI births is also declining steadily over time.
Most of the PIs born in 2019 have been removed from the farms where they were disclosed. It is believed that only 65 PI calves were alive countrywide as of 31st of March 2019.
For more information, please see the recent Animal Health Ireland bulletin here:
http://animalhealthireland.ie/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/AHI-Bulletin-April-2019-FINAL.pdf