Detection of Johne's Disease in Cattle

"Ruminants worldwide are affected by Johne's Disease (JD), or paratuberculosis, a fatal and highly infectious disease. JD severely impacts cattle welfare due to inflammation of their intestines, resulting in a profuse diarrhoea and emaciation. JD causes large economic losses due to decreased milk production estimated at over 4000 kg less milk produced in a lifetime, increased wastage of adult animals, increased susceptibility to other diseases: five times as likely to become lame and twice as likely to get mastitis, increased infertility and cost of diagnosis, monitoring and control programmes. Calves are usually infected via ingestion of the causal bacterium, referred to as MAP, present in colostrum or faeces of infected animals. JD is very hard to diagnose due to the long incubation period during which time clinical signs are absent. Furthermore, MAP is not completely killed by pasteurisation and can be present in retail milk and with some evidence it may be associated with Crohn's disease in humans.

IceRobotics (ICE), an Agri-Tech producing SME company will lead the project, with Harper Adams University (HAU) as its scientific partner, together with the Dairy Research Centre of Scotland's Rural College (SRUC) and Moredun Research Institute (MRI) as sub-contractors. A study undertaken by HAU using ICE sensor technology already demonstrated that daily lying time is significantly reduced in JD positive cows compared to JD negative cows around peak lactation. ICE will lead the analysis to detect JD from changes in animal behaviour, supported by MRI's world-leading Johne's expertise. Historic high-quality data will be utilised from HAU and SRUC research herds, alongside further new data from the HAU herd. The behaviour of uninfected and infected animals will be characterised and compared using measurements obtained from existing precision livestock technologies providing second-by-second monitoring individual animal behaviour.

The novel output from this project will be a new Johne's Detection module to the CowAlert system, enabling ICE to improve its business performance in the UK and internationally. Additionally it will satisfy a market need for more timely detection of a severe and costly disease, at an economic cost.

As a result of this project, farmers will benefit from early detection of JD, consequently improved control of JD, higher production efficiency and profitability. Cows will benefit from improved animal health and welfare. Milk retailers and consumers will benefit from less MAP in milk, consequently better food safety and quality. The environment will benefit from less greenhouse gas emission."