Beneficial crisis?

Most crises create casualties by the lorry load, but also beneficiaries - if you are cute enough to jump onto that particular bandwagon.  'Bovine' TB or zoonotic Tuberculosis as we prefer to label it, is no exception.
Hard on the heels of those reams of 'research' which we spoke about in this post - [link] comes a new initiative from animal health screening lab, BioBest.

 With a little help from Danielle Gunn-Moore, BioBest now advertise a screening test - [link] for Canine and Feline TB. Their sales sheet explains:

The interferon gamma test is intended to assist in the diagnosis of suspected canine and feline TB cases. The interferon gamma test can be useful in categorising cats and dogs with suggestive lesions. This in turn can inform decisions as to whether treatment is appropriate and whether it is necessary to report the case to AHVLA (Suspected Bovine TB is a notifiable disease in all mammals).

There is also some evidence that the test can be used to monitor treatment, with responses falling in cats in remission. The test has been developed in collaboration with Professor Danielle Gunn-Moore of the University of Edinburgh and with the technical support of colleagues from AHVLA.

It is to be hoped that the use of GammaIfn is somewhat more specific to zTB when used on cats and dogs, than its use has proved to be in cattle. False positives in that species are well documented.
And is 'treatment' of zTB, an often fatal zoonotic pathogen, in a companion animal, likely to be sharing air space, if not its owner's bed, a good idea?

But we digress..

We came across Professor Gunn-Moore in 2013, when she published articles giving a link to infected badgers and an increase in felines with TB. - [link] We remarked then, that with a veterinary post mortem on a cat costing in the region of £100, digging a hole may be cheaper.

 And we are also reminded of the genetic predictions made concerning feline encepalopothies in the 90s, when it was thought that Siamese / Burmese cats may be more susceptible. Until it was realised that the value of these animals made veterinary investigations more likely.

 BioBest say:

The test will initially be performed on the 1st and 3rd Thursdays of each month at a cost of £200 per sample.

That £200 per sample, would buy a truck load of cats. And it is unlikely that many owners taking up BioBest's offer of screening, will have offered unpasteurised milk to their pets..