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Rural Industries Research & Development Corporation |
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Rural Industries Research & Development Corporation |
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Contact the editor, Dr Laurence Denholm, at: PO Box 1564, ORANGE NSW 2800 Phone/fax 02 6361 3268, Mobile 0418 641957, email: denholml@bigpond.com |
November 2000 |
Recent decisions from the Deer R&D Advisory Committee Other issues of this newsletter
Recent decisions from the Deer R&D Advisory Committee
The RIRDC Deer Advisory Committee met in Melbourne on 16th October 2000 to consider preliminary applications for RIRDC research funding in the 2000/2001 year.Chair of the committee, Ms Nola Anderson, welcomed members including Mr Guy Dockrill who was recently appointed to the committee by RIRDC, replacing Prof. John Thonard who retired from the committee after many years of invaluable service to the deer industry in this capacity. At his own request, Mr Dockrill tabled a declaration of conflict of interest statement.
Also attending her first meeting in her new capacity as Secretary of the committee was Ms Libby Dowler from RIRDC, who has replaced Ms Andrea Bryant. Mr Chris Tuckwell again attended the meeting as an observer. All members of the R&D committee (Ms Anderson, Mr Peter Core, Dr Laurence Denholm, Dr Paul Presidente and Mr Dockrill) were present at the meeting.
Mr Core told the committee that the Levies and Revenue Service had advised him that the additional $50,000 in levy payments in the 1999/2000 year was in fact money owing from previous years by a procesor no longer in business. Mr Core then summarised the financial situation of the Deer Industry Sub-Account at June 30th 2000 when the closing balance for 1999/00 was $342,636. Given advice on current slaughterings, Mr Core estimated that the sub-account would have a closing balance on June 30th 2001 of about $300,000. Accordingly, about $200,000 will be available for new projects in the 2000/2001 year. On this basis the Deer R&D Budget for 2000/2001 would be in line with the wishes of the industry in relation to the proposed scale of its R&D activities, as advised to RIRDC by Mr Jim Moir, President of the Deer Industry Association of Australia. The DIAA Annual General Meeting in Adelaide in August took the decision to reduce deer R&D levies to a level which would allow an ongoing R&D budget of about $200,000 per annum.
The committee considered fourteen preliminary applications for funding and recommended that five of these be accepted for progress to preparation of full proposals. The decision on a sixth preliminary proposal related to standards for Australian velvet antler was deferred until May 2001, pending receipt of the results from a related project that is currently in progress.
Proposals accepted for further development included projects to improve deer industry profitability, update the Quality Assurance program, evaluate relationships between condition score, carcase composition and consumer perception of venison quality, improve the uptake of research results and evaluate current diagnostic tests for Johne’s disease in deer.
Drinking water and deer production
Recently the Deer R&D Advisory Committee considered an application for a project to investigate the relationship between temperature of drinking water and deer production. Given the priorities for allocation of the limited funds available, the committee decided not to recommend funding of the project to RIRDC, particularly as there is some information on this subject from research in other species which can be used to advise deer farmers on the issue. However, the committee considered that this existing information might not be well known to deer farmers and recommended that it be publicised in the Newsletter.In general terms, feed intake and hence animal production areaffected by water intake. This is particularly true when the feed itself is low in water, such as dry grass-based pastures in summer and autumn. It is also particularly true at times when the water requirement of the animals is high, for example during lactation.
The general recommendation for maximum production is that all animals should have ad libitum (ie. free access to an unlimited quantity of) good quality cool water at all times. Of course, at certain times this may not occur, either as a result of access problems, the quantity available or quality of the water supplied.
If there are problems with the quality of water supplied ad lib, waterintake can be depressed and as a result growth and reproduction may be unsatisfactory. One factor shown to depress water intake is the temperature at which the water is supplied.
Although the voluntary intake of cold water may be depressed, this is not usually a problem because water content of pasture is high during winter. But if the water supplied in summer is warm, this can depress feed intake, lactation and calf growth.
Common causes of warm drinking water are passing water through above-ground pipes or using water from shallow dams or deep artesian bores. Always check the temperature on a hot day!
Oh, so silent… deer farmers, are you out there?
The RIRDC Deer Products R&D Newsletter is distributed free of any charge to all farmers and other participants in the Australian deer industry. We work hard to keep our mailing list up to date, but occasionally we hear that someone who should be getting the newsletter is not. If you know anyone who should be getting a copy of the publication but is not, please ask them to contact the Editor or the publisher and distributor of the newsletter, Mr Andrew Cowan (Tel. 03 57747489, Fax. 03 57747216).
The great Johne’s Disease debate - science,
Real improvements in our knowledge about the way the world works occur by a logical and systematic approach to development and testing of new ideas in the form of hypotheses. Whether any idea is reasonable and worth the cost of testing is determined by comparing the idea to existing knowledge.
sophism and smokescreensLittle is ever achieved by mere speculation, but nonetheless speculation is common, particularly speculation about the causes of serious problems that concern most people, such as disease.
In society today there is widespread public fear about where the rapid technological change that represents the fruits of our past scientific endeavours is taking us in a social sense. Unfortunately this has led to a decline in public support for science and even a rejection of the scientific method, with a rise in “anti-science” quackery. But modern technology represents no more than our past choices on how we use the scientific method. Too often we ignore the major achievements of science and focus on failures.
The fundamental difference between science and the anti-science of quackery is that quackery presents mere speculation as fact, even when that speculation is obviously contrary to a larger body of knowledge, whereas science sets out to systematically test any proposed (hypothetical) relationship between an action and effect in a logical way, accepting or rejecting the hypothesis on the basis of the results of observation in the light of existing knowledge.
Science accepts ideas as facts only when there is proof, whereas quackery promotes ideas as facts, even when there is proof to the contrary. This does not mean that science is never wrong, it just means that scientific “facts” are more reliable than alternatives.
But when the message from one source of information, science, is just too painful to bear, people often look for an alternative source of information that provides a more palatable story, a story more easy to bear - regardless of the real truth!
In the conflict between a few of the farmers affected by ovine Johne’s disease (JD) and other farmers and government agencies trying to prevent further spread of this infection, truth was an early casualty. In the October 2000 issue of Australian Deer Farmer there is an article on JD by Pat Coleby of Maldon, Vic. which presents some very surprising ideas about this disease. These ideas are similar to those Ms Coleby put in a submission to the recent Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry into ovine JD.
In these papers, Ms Coleby makes statements which cannot go unchallenged, particularly after several calls from deer farmers asking me to correct statements in her ADF paper.
The ideas that Ms Coleby has put forward in the ADF paper are:
1. That Crohn’s disease in man and by implication JD in animals can be cured by treatment with Vitamin C.
2. That JD will arise “spontaneously” if animals are deficient in copper and will not occur unless animals are copper deficient.
3. That JD can be prevented by feeding adequate copper.
4. That the Johne’s bacteria, Mycobacterium paratuberculosis, can be killed with large doses of multivitamins.
5. That animals contract JD when they are in “low condition” rather than JD causing this loss of body condition.
6. That we have poor pastures in Australia and this causes JD.
7. That copper is 100% inhibited by superphosphate and hence copper is unavailable on low pH (“acid”) pastures.
8. That a wide range of disease conditions in animals is “caused by a lack of copper” and this includes not only JD, but also all fungal diseases, footrot, scabby mouth, herpes virus infections, cowpox, worm infestations, flystrike and liver fluke.
It would take all the pages of this newsletter for the next ten years to present the existing scientific evidence that discredits these claims, several of which are contrary to current knowledge. Despite claims to the contrary by some JD affected producers, there is now a high level of scientific knowledge about JD.
For example, contrary to point 6, JD does not occur at all on many of the poorest pastures in Australia - in fact JD tends to be associated with good pastures where a high stocking density is possible. In many herds and flocks where copper deficiency has been demonstrated there is no history of JD ever occurring.
Equally true, there are herds and flocks in which JD is present but in which copper deficiency is not present, due to sufficient copper in the soil or regular copper supplementation. Many soils that are heavily fertilised with superphosphate are not deficient in copper. In controlled studies all around the world, JD has been shown to cause wasting. (When animals experimentally infected with the JD bacteria are run on the same pasture with uninfected animals, only the previously inoculated animals waste and die.)
Ms Coleby’s claims are simply inconsistent with the dominant scientific view based field and laboratory observations.
Dr Ian Sargeant, an expert in soil science and plant nutrition at Monash University was commissioned by the recent Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry to examine Ms Coleby’s claims about JD. He wrote in his report that “the main message that Ms Coleby seems to be trying to convey is a simple one - OJD, a bacterial disease, is linked to copper deficiency which in turn is linked to the use of high analysis fertilisers. She does not attempt to explore the mechanism for this linkage, except to say it exists. Her submission contains many factual errors as far as soil science and soil-plant interactions are concerned and none of her statements are referenced. It relies on emotive, folksy and pseudo-scientific language to get its anti-fertiliser message across. Nonetheless, it would appeal to those graziers looking wistfully back to the days when farming was a simple, down-to-earth activity, fertilisers were not needed and this disease was unknown. Unfortunately the “facts” she presents in her submission relating to soil and soil science lack foundation. Although the submission should be rejected on the basis of its [lack of] scientific merit, it should be noted as evidence that considerable misinformation is being circulated amongst the farming community on matters relating to soil and fertiliser requirements.”
Whilst it is regrettable that the pages of Australian Deer Farmer were given over to such unfounded claims, there is a much more sinister aspect to this. What Ms Coleby is really saying to farmers is that “you don’t have to worry at all about Johne’s disease so long as you provide enough copper to your animals. Therefore you don’t have to worry about buying in JD infected animals because even if you do introduce the JD bacteria onto your property you won’t see the disease so long as you keep up copper levels in your pastures, and even if you do get cases of JD you can treat them easily and successfully with multivitamins and minerals.” This is really quite dangerous. Ms Coleby is promoting ideas that will hasten the spread of JD infection. Her claims should not be promoted by people who have any interest in seeing the spread of this serious disease of livestock controlled as quickly as possible.
Of course nobody can say with absolute certainty that copper has absolutely no effect in JD. Copper deficiency makes animals more susceptible to many diseases amd mortality from JD may be higher where copper deficiency is also present. But on the basis of our current knowledge, copper deficiency is not the cause of JD or even a major factor. Accordingly, any farmer who relies on the unfounded ideas presented by Ms Coleby is taking a great risk with the future well-being of his or her animals and livelihood.
Ms Coleby’s ideas are dangerous for another reason. The margin between deficiency and toxicity is relatively low for copper and serious dietary copper toxicity is quite easy to induce in animals. Any addition of large amounts of copper to pastures or animals in the absence of laboratory evidence of copper deficiency is hence quite risky. But this seems to be what Ms Coleby is promoting.
The Deer Industry Company report
Quality Assurance
A Victorian property was assessed for level-two accreditation during early November and is likely to achieve its accreditation soon.The Deer Industry QA program continues to evolve, as it must, to ensure that it remains relevant to the international and domestic communities that consume the industry’s products.
Key components of the Deer Industry QA program are food safety and animal welfare and the program expects that each person in the production chain takes responsibility for and documents, all activity that occurs during the stage of production that they control. Standards addressed by the Deer Industry QA programs cover a wide range of food safety risks and include consideration of issues including: antibiotic residues; broken needles; drug withholding periods; safety of supplementary feed and meat hygiene.
Animal welfare issues considered include provision of: adequate shelter; adequate feed; handling facilities; veterinary care; transport facilities and accredited velveting practices.
It is important to remember that the next person in the chain solely determines the quality or value of a good or service. This means that the activities of each person involved in the production, processing and marketing chain are determined by the final consumer of the good or service and so quality requirements must be determined from the end user back through the marketing, processing and production systems.
The program is managed by the Deer Industry Quality Assurance Board, which is chaired by Dr Tony English. The Board continually reviews all suggested amendments and other changes proposed by members of the Australian Deer Industry, people with specialist expertise in QA and client requirements.
Program manuals for farmers and transporters are currently being updated and a computer data base program is being written to ease the tedium associated with data recording required by the program. The program will be supplied at no cost to all those who seek quality assurance accreditation.
The Australian Consumer Control Commission is in the final stages of its assessment of five industry quality marks for deer farms, deer transports, venison, unprocessed velvet antler and processed velvet antler. Industry will be encouraged to use the marks to promote the fact that the product or service provided is guaranteed by industry to meet strict minimum standards of quality.
Venison sales
Average venison prices (across all species and weight ranges) continued to rise from an amended average price of $2.89 in August to $3.03 during September and to $3.34 in October. The average price for fallow deer venison (price per kg hot carcase weight, less the industry levy, delivered to the abattoir) rose from an amended average price of $2.50 in August 2000 to $2.86 (range $2.20 to $3.37) in September and to $3.01 (range $2.20 to $3.48) by the end of October 2000. During the same period, the average price for red and red hybrid venison (price per kg hot carcase weight, less the industry levy, delivered to the abattoir) rose from $3.08 during August to $3.13 (range $1.57 to $4.22) in September and to $3.64 per kg HCW (range $2.40 to $4.22) by the end of October.For the months of September and October 2000 a total of about 10,220 deer were processed by cooperating processors, while during the same period last year, about 17,120 were processed (approximately 40% decrease).
One processor has indicated that although the slaughter numbers have declined, a significant number of underweight stock, that in other years would have been processed, have been purchased and agisted. The stock will be processed when they achieve ideal slaughter weight.
Chris Tuckwell, Deer Industry Development Manager
Last updated: 18 December 2000
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