A SOUTHERN NSW university student with a fascination for animal health and epidemiology is making solid tracks towards ridding the beef industry of one of the more significant causes of wastage in its supply chain.
Charles Sturt University (CSU) PhD student Cara Wilson’s work has been tagged a ‘war of waste’ and it seems it could be the catalyst to deliver a solution to million-dollar-per-annum losses to the beef processing sector alone.
Ms Wilson, from the School of Animal and Veterinary Sciences, says hydatid disease is leading to contaminated offal being thrown out or, at the least, being downgraded to pet food.
It is caused by a tapeworm parasite which lives in the gut of dogs and produces thousands of eggs which are spread throughout the environment via dog faeces.
Cattle become infected by eating grass contaminated with that faeces and develop fluid-filled hydatid cysts.
Hydatid disease is rarely fatal in livestock and generally goes unnoticed until slaughter.
Ms Wilson roughly estimates more than 5000 tonnes of beef product per year could be condemned as a result of organs found to be infected with hydatid cysts at slaughter.
But the first part of her research will be to calculate just what it is costing the industry.
“In 2015, a pilot study found that single abattoir threw out more than 150 tonnes of beef product due just to hydatid cysts,” she said.
“Not only this but there is a less-evident form of waste happening here - reduced weights of infected animals and that impacts not only the abattoir but the prices paid to the farmer for their cattle.”
Ms Wilson aims to quantify the financial implications of the disease in the cattle industry in order to determine the financial viability of producing a vaccine.
She said a vaccine was currently in the pipeline for sheep and had shown some very encouraging results in tests in cattle.
Control strategies currently aim at preventing the hydatid parasite infecting dogs.
“Although we can control the parasite in domestic dogs, which definitely helps, we believe the main source of infection for cattle is due to a cycle occurring in wildlife, predominantly kangaroos and wallabies and dogs and dingoes,” Ms Wilson said.
By identifying where infected cattle are coming from, the main risk factors and the major losses being incurred, the industry will be able to target control strategies, she said.
Ms Wilson has just been named the CSU finalist in academic competition, the Three Minute Thesis for a presentation on her work called “War on waste: It’s not just plastic bags.”
She will go on to compete at the Asia Pacific level in Queensland in September.