Important national and international diseases of cattle

This chapter discusses important national and international diseases of cattle. Some of the diseases discussed includes: rinderpest (‘cattle plague’), foot-and-mouth disease (FMD), Bovine brucellosis, Bovine neosporosis, Bovine tuberculosis, Bluetongue (BTV), Schmallenberg virus (SBV), and Bovine viral diarrhoea (BVD). BVD virus is subject to control programs in a number of countries and regions, and the disease has been successfully eradicated, most notably from Scandinavia and also, in recent times, probably from the Swiss dairy industry. The most recent prominent emergence of a novel disease in cattle was caused by the so-called SBV, named after a town in North-Rhine Westphalia in western Germany, where it was first described in the northern autumn of 2011. The clinical signs reported included fever, decreased milk yield and diarrhoea, but also abortions and stillbirths in cattle, sheep and goats.