Biobest Johne's Risk Assessment

The Biobest Johne's Risk Assessment provides the farmer and his veterinary surgeon with a practical approach to establishing Johne's Risk Status through veterinary risk assessment and targeted sampling. In many instances it can be the first step towards understanding and managing Johne's in a herd.

The assessment programme has been designed to improve the ability of veterinary surgeons to help their clients to identify the Johne's Risk Status of their farms. It has been prepared by Biobest staff with the assistance of Peter Orpin of Park Veterinary Group, and is consistent with the latest DEFRA Guidance and the Johne's Initiative. It is a risk-based system of assessment and is designed to augment existing official Johne's schemes (such as a HiHealth Herdcare) licensed by CHeCS which may not be immediately practical for many commercial herds.

The programme offers a logical system of classification of herd status according to the risk of presence of the organism (based on purchase history) and targeted sampling. After completion of a veterinary risk assessment and a first laboratory screen, the veterinary surgeon and client should be better positioned to evaluate the risk of disease presence in the herd. Following repeated annual assessments and tests the confidence in the risk status will be progressively increased.

Knowledge of Johne's Risk Status then provides the impetus to develop a control programme to limit the spread of Johne's within the herd if the disease is found at the screening stage.

The cost of the scheme is £85 per year, and this includes all Biobest veterinary input, the 10 blood or milk sample tests, a bulk milk sample (dairy only) and an environmental faeces sample.

For more detailed information please download the Johne's Risk Assessment programme guidelines, and Johne's Risk Assessment submission form.

In addition, two papers that were presented at BCVA Congress 2005 can be downloaded:

• The use of targeted and risk factor analysis to investigate presence of Johne's disease in dairy herds
• Analysis of antibody in individual and bulk milk samples is a useful tool for investigation of Johne's disease

These papers provide details of relevant background research that led to the development of the risk assessment programme.

If you wish to discuss the programme (or have questions regarding the diagnostic tests and results) please do not hesitate to contact our health scheme manager or vets.