CATTLE tick could very easily make its way into the north Australia beef industry if research into a vaccine is not completed.
Meat and Livestocks Association (MLA) R&D project manager for animal Health, welfare and biosecurity Dr Johann Schroder addressed the crowd at last month’s Northern Beef Research Update Conference, and said the risk of cattle tick in the north was real.
“One thing that looms quite large on the horizon is cattle tick,” Dr Schroder said.
“If producers respond to consumer demand for better beef eating quality, it’s almost inevitable that we will introduce more Bos taurus into our genome which which increase our northern beef industry’s chance of tick.
”For me that means that we’ve got to really increase our efforts of the research for a cattle tick vaccine.”
Dr Schroder said half of the R&D needed for tick had already been completed with more underway.
“In the terms of cattle tick there’s not that much of a knowledge gap - we know what we are dealing with,” he said.
“There have been various recent attempts (not MLA-funded) to develop a sustained release formulation of the Bm86 hidden tick antigen (i.e. a vaccine that might require only one injection per season).
“MLA is about to contract a new project as part of this work, following its first open call last year for research proposals.”
Dr Schroder said funding was always an issue for MLA.
“Of the $5 that the government collects from cattle sales in Australia - MLA gets $4.58 - of that, investment in R&D is $0.92,” he said.
“That’s just reality and that’s the way it is, but we have to cut our coat according to our cloth.
“That 12c from the levy translates to $5 million a year to invest in animal health and biosecurity research.”
MLA tick research has so far included:
- $140,000 (ending 2011) and $91,000 (ending May 2012) in the possible efficacy of the Metarhizium fungal biopesticide
- $383,000 over three years in Beef CRC antigen work (due to finish end if 2017)
- $658,000 over two years for the sustained release vaccine investigation (contract being drafted).
The geographic spread of the tick line was recently update with the re-drawing of the line, and Dr Schroder said there is also a new cattle tick management framework, however MLA is not involved in such policy matters.