Cattle Owners, Watch this One: Theileria By Farmer Bob

Here is information from the US on a new tick disease, theileria, spread from the Asian longhorn tick. This disease is making inroads into cattle in the US. I did a search of the web to see if it has reached Australia yet, and was astonished to find that it has been here since 2012, and is so widespread it affects a quarter of all cattle. I am ashamed to say that I had previously never heard of it, having no problem at all with ticks. To deal with theileria, the trick is to control ticks, all ticks in cattle herds, by a combination of methods, including chemicals, pasture spelling and even the use of animals to eat the ticks, such as chickens and opossums.

https://parasitesandvectors.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13071-021-04659-9

https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/11/17/1063352/new-tick-borne-disease-killing-cattle-in-us/

“Livestock producers around the country are confronting this new and unfamiliar disease—if they can detect it in their herds at all—without much information. Researchers still don’t know how theileria will unfold in the United States, even as it quickly spreads west across the country. If states can’t get the disease under control, then nationwide production losses from sick cows could significantly damage both individual operations and the entire industry. 

Theileria, which is in the same family as malaria, is being transmitted largely through the Asian longhorned tick, an invasive species first discovered in the US in 2017. The tick is native to Korea, China, Russia, and Japan. As it has spread in the US, so has theileria; the disease has been found in cattle in West Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and Kansas. Some sale barns in Virginia saw the prevalence of theileria increase from two to 20 percent in just two years. 

Theileria can cause cows to abort their fetuses. It can also cause anemia so severe that a cow will die. In Australia, where the disease has been spreading since 2012 and now affects a quarter of the cattle, theileria costs the beef industry an estimated $19.6 million a year in reduced milk and meat yields, according to a 2021 paper. In Japan and Korea, the combined loss is an estimated $100 million annually. Kevin Lawrence, an associate professor at Massey University who studies theileria in New Zealand, says that country  has managed to avoid abortions because 95 percent of cows calve in the spring there, the same season he’s seen theileria infecting cows. In the US, however, calving season can be year-round. “I think in America, you’re going to see abortions,” he says. “You’re going to see deaths.” 

And yet, while the US livestock industry has acknowledged theileria’s presence and the threat it poses, it seems to want to blunt concern. In statements to MIT Technology Review, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, one of the largest cattle lobbying groups, said that occurrences of the disease remain rare in the United States. That contradicts the experience of McCall, the Granos’ veterinarian, who in 2020 encountered theileria in 40 of the Virginia farms she serves. “It’s going to cost a lot of economic loss for producers,” says McCall, “whether or not they know it.”