Test a first for Canada

Monday, January 26, 2009

© Copyright AgMedia Inc

by SUSAN MANN

CanWest DHI’s new mastitis test available in late February will make it easier for farmers to manage the infection, says Eastern Ontario dairy producer John Bongers.

Called Staph ID Testing, the test can identify the DNA of one of the mastitis pathogens, staph. aureus, in the milk sample.

CanWest is the first DHI organization in the world to offer it. The test is available in Finnish and Dutch animal health labs.

Bongers, the chairman of CanWest DHI’s board says, “If I can isolate staph and be confident about the test and have the results quickly, then I can make some decisions on it.”

Would Bongers use the test even if he wasn’t on DHI’s board? Absolutely, he says, adding it’s farmers who sit around DHI’s board table and if staff tried to implement something that didn’t seem right it wouldn’t go anywhere.

“Farmers are going to use this because it provides them with valuable information that they’ve been trying to get for years and really weren’t able to get,” he says.

Mountain-area dairy farmer Michael Hall says the current method of trying to find out which pathogen is causing mastitis is very unsuccessful.

Hall says the new test will become very important in the industry. “The milk samples are already going in once a month and we already have indicators of which cows may have a mastitis infection so you can automatically have it checked to see if it’s a staph mastitis.”

CanWest DHI marketing and customer service director Richard Cantin says testing now is done at animal health labs where “they try to culture the organism.” But in 25 to 40 per cent of results the organism couldn’t be located.

Cantin says cows show signs of sickness in cases of clinical mastitis but farmers don’t know which bacteria are causing the infection. “That’s important because depending on the type of bacteria the course of action is different.”

An infection of the cow’s udder, mastitis costs the Canadian dairy industry million of dollars every year in lost milk production, cow treatments, discarded milk and premature cow culling. There are different types of bacteria that cause mastitis.

Cantin says the milk samples will be tested at the DHI lab in Guelph. Milk samples submitted by DHI customers for other tests, such as fat and protein content, will be used for the new mastitis test. “The convenience of being able to use that same sample is a real big plus with this test,” he explains.

Costs haven’t been finalized yet but will be in the $25 to $30 range for each mastitis test. It will be available only to DHI customers initially but eventually it will be open to all dairy farmers “as capacity allow,” Cantin notes. The test will be introduced regionally starting with southwestern Ontario, then central and eastern Ontario and finally Western Canada. BF