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NEW DELHI, Sept. 9

PROGRAMMES for control of mastitis — a deadly cattle disease estimated to cause annual losses of over Rs 6,000 crore to the country's dairy sector — should focus more on prevention and detection at early `sub-clinical' stage, rather than treatment and indiscriminate administration of antibiotics at advanced `clinical' level.

According to Mr Pradip Burman, Chairman of Dabur Ayurvet Ltd, `clinical mastitis' (CM) affects roughly 10 per cent of the country's milch animal population — six crore cows and four crore she-buffaloes. In this form of mastitis, there is severe pathogenic infection of the animal's mammary glands or udders, often leading to total loss of milk production. Since the characteristic symptoms — inflammation and painful swelling of the udders — are clearly visible in this case, detection of CM is somewhat simple.

The annual economic loss on account of CM is reckoned at nearly Rs 1,700 crore. But Mr Burman emphasised that the yearly losses suffered by the dairy industry due to `sub-clinical mastitis' (SCM) is ever higher, at around Rs 4,400 crore. ``For each case of CM in a population, there are 15-40 sub-clinical cases, so much so that 45-50 per cent of our dairy herd is afflicted by SCM. The incidence is especially high among cross-bred and high-yielding indigenous cattle'', he noted.

Mr Burman pointed out that unlike CM, the symptoms of mastitis are not immediately obvious in SCM and, therefore, goes undetected. As a result, the current approach towards control of mastitis is centered largely around `treatment' at advanced, clinical stage. This, in turn, mainly involves administering broad-spectrum antibiotics, whether it is penicillins (Pen G, ampicillin, cloaxacillin), tetracyclines, cephalosporins and aminoglycosides (streptomycin, neomycin).

However, indiscriminate use of antimicrobials have led to diminishing effectiveness, particularly due to development of new strains of bacterial pathogens (mainly Staphylococci aureus and Streptococcus agalactiae) that have shown resistance not only to single, but multiple antibiotic drugs.

Moreover, the appearance of antibiotic residues in milk of treated cows has generated serious public health concerns. Such milk cannot also be used for starter propogation, which is necessary for manufacture of cheese, casein and other fermented dairy products. The failure of starter activity leads to delayed coagulation of milk and improper ripening. It is for this reason that milk produced from animals, which are administered antibiotics, is normally withheld for a certain period with concomitant economic losses.

All these concerns have prompted the World Health Organisation (WTO) to issue recommendations to try to reduce the use of antibiotics and it quite plausible that future regimes governing world dairy trade would place severe restrictions on antibiotic therapies for animals.

``The time has come for a shift in our approach from treatment of CM to early detection and control of mastitis at sub-clinical stage'', Mr Burman stated. Dabur Agrovet has developed an easy-to-use aid, Mastrip, that effectively detects mastitis even at sub-clinical stage through monitoring of somatic cell count (SCC) in milk.

According to him, the economic losses from SCM, though hidden, are huge. The milk having an SCC of up to 300,000 per ml is considered free of mastitis, with no production loss during lactation. But an SCC of 500,000 could lead to milk losses during lactation of up to six per cent, which climbs to 10 per cent, 16 per cent and 25 per cent for cell counts of one million, two million and four million, respectively.

The International Dairy Federation has set a standard of 500,000 cells per ml for the milk to have been considered as produced by a healthy cow, with the European Union fixing a lower limit of 4,00,000.

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