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By Nick Nielsen

4 cattle found infected after December report

Sask. Cattle Association looking to curb bovine tuberculosis

Apr 23, 2025 | 6:05 AM

After an investigation from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) began in December, it’s been determined that a farm in southeast Saskatchewan was home to four cattle that had been infected with bovine tuberculosis, and a number of organizations are working together to curb the spread of the disease.

A coordinated effort from the Saskatchewan Cattle Association (SCA), the CFIA, and the Ministry of Agriculture have been working together to help monitor the affected animals and any others they may have come in contact with.

Christine Strube is the board member for the SCA representing District 9 out of Shellbrook, as well as a cattle producer on her own farm. She said that because of the nature of how tuberculosis spreads and how hard it is to detect, the first thing everyone is working on together is to track the animals.

“The important thing to remember, of course, is that producers have detailed records of their animal movement, which we call traceability. Though animal movement records are really important, making sure that your premises ID number is registered and updated. Producers should have their contact history, so if your cattle are grazing in community pastures or share fence lines, you want to have a good record of that and you want to make sure that your CCIA (Canadian Cattle Identification Agency) tags are current and up to date.”

Tuberculosis is a respiratory disease that can have a number of different affects on cattle including weight loss, fertility issues, loss of appetite, fevers, and a drop in overall health. Because there are so many respiratory diseases that can affect cattle, it makes it especially difficult to detect TB in cattle.

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“TB is very rare in bovines, there are no obvious signs. We can’t just send a sample to get testing. Only CFIA performs the tests. They are quite often tested at slaughter, every lung is searched for lesions, but just because there are lesions does not mean that it’s TB. It’s a very slow moving disease amongst animals, so that makes it harder to diagnose.”

If lesions are found after slaughter, then further tests are conducted on the animal’s blood to find out more information. Canada has been trying to eradicate the disease since 1923 and is considered free of the disease other than a few isolated cases, including an outbreak in Alberta in 2016.

When it comes to fighting the disease, cattle believed to be infected by the disease are slaughtered. As for trying to recognize cattle in your herd, Strube recommends keeping in close contact with your veterinarian because of how hard it can be to recognize symptoms.

“One of the important things is to have a really good relationship with your vet so that you can ask these questions and so that they can help you diagnose it if you do have it in your animals.”

Tuberculosis can travel and spread from cattle to other animals including humans, but it’s very rare because Canadian milk is pasteurized, and it can’t be spread through eating the meat. It can, however, spread to other animals through close contact if animals are interacting with each other in shared enclosures or fence lines.

Dealing with the threat of tuberculosis in cattle can be stressful for producers trying to keep their cattle healthy. Strube urged cattle producers to reach out to the many resources provided by the SCA to help manage the situation whether it be a problem directly related to an animal’s health, or if it’s an issue of personal stress.

“If any producers have any concerns, they can, and are welcome, to reach out to us in our office and we’re there to work as a liaison, to help them manage the situation. It’s a very stressful situation just having the concern, and we want people to know that there are supports that they can call.”

Strube continued, “SaskAgMatters offers counseling to deal with any stress related to agriculture, there’s the Farm Stress Line in Saskatchewan. All those things are available on our website and of course people in my district are welcome to call to me if they have questions and we will help direct people to give them the tools that they need to deal with concerns that they have.”

Strube also urged cattles producers in Saskatchewan to sign up for the Sask Cattle Times publication that SCA releases both in the mail and online.

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nick.nielsen@pattisonmedia.com