January 24, 2008

LANSING - The Michigan departments of Natural Resources (DNR) and Agriculture (MDA) today announced that routine bovine Tuberculosis (TB) testing has identified two TB-positive deer in Iosco County from the 2007 hunting season. As a result, MDA designated two “Potential High-Risk Areas” near the southern boundary of bovine TB Zone where the deer were harvested.

In addition, a deer harvested during the late antlerless season in Shiawassee County, which is located more than 100 miles to the south of the TB Zone, may be positive for bovine TB. The DNR is waiting for final test results before it can confirm the deer was bovine TB positive.

“We have routinely designated potential high-risk areas in the past. These designations are dropped after six months of disease surveillance testing if no bovine TB is found,” said MDA State Veterinarian Dr. Steven Halstead. “There are approximately 90 farms within the two 10-mile areas around the Iosco County deer and 100 farms around the suspect deer in Shiawassee County.”

MDA and the United States Department of Agriculture will be contacting producers to schedule whole-herd bovine TB tests before the animals go out on spring pasture.

The DNR is awaiting laboratory confirmation on a 1-1/2 year-old hunter-harvested doe from Shiawassee County that had lesions compatible with bovine TB. The animal is considered a suspect, but has not been confirmed as a bovine TB-infected animal. Although the confirmatory tests take several weeks, MDA would like to begin scheduling whole-herd tests in a 10-mile radius around that deer as well. If laboratory results are negative for bovine TB, MDA will cancel the scheduled tests.

“The deer taken in Shiawassee County will be subject to genetic testing to confirm the county of origin,” said Rebecca Humphries, DNR director. “DNR, working in conjunction with Michigan State University, collected biological samples from deer all over the state and is able to determine a deer’s origin to a particular county.”

The DNR conducts annual surveillance testing in hunter-harvested deer, testing more than 8,000 deer in 2007. The DNR has examined approximately 4,400 deer from Iosco County and 370 deer from Shiawassee County since 1998.

Since the TB eradication effort began, all of the state’s one million cattle have been tested for the disease, with no TB found in cattle outside the bovine TB Zone. To date, the DNR has tested over 161,886 wild white-tailed deer, with 587 testing positive for bovine TB. Strategies adopted by the DNR to reduce bovine TB in the wild white-tailed deer have reduced the prevalence rate of the disease from the high in 1995 of 4.9 percent to 2.3 percent in 2007.