Bangs vaccine in short supply
North Dakota State Veterinarian Ethan Andress said a shortage of both EID tags and brucellosis (bangs) vaccine is creating a challenge, but the two are unrelated.
Andress said he e-mailed a production company with his concerns about the limited amount of vaccine, and he was told that a production problem, coupled with holiday shipping struggles has made for difficulty in meeting demand for the vaccine nationwide.
Andress said one of the vats of vaccine wasn’t immediately approved for sale, and this held up delivery for those who needed it.
“They only have so many vats to produce the vaccine. When you have something fail, ther eisn’t a backup plan until a new batch comes online. And they may not have the equipment, facilities and capability to respond to demand if a large batch isn’t approved.”
Andress aid the batch was eventually approved for sale, which should help get the product back in the pipeline fairly soon.
He thinks in the next couple of weeks, sufficient vaccine will be made available to most or all veterinarians.
He said a lot of vets and vet clinics order vaccine twice in the season – once in the fall and again mid-winter to re-stock their supply.
“Supposedly this is a short term problem,” he said. But Dr. Andress did acknowledge that some veterinarians have been without the vaccine and have had to re-schedule appointments to vaccinate heifers. Everyone was kind of running out around the time they needed their second order. We can’t blame the veterinarians, it was a widespread problem outside of their control,” he said.
“Andress said the short vaccine supply was unrelated to the ongoing problem of mandatory electronic identification tags being inaccessible to some veterinarians.
In his office, Andress said he was conservative from the get-go in filling orders from vets for EI tags, so he didn’t run out. However, he told TSLN a few weeks ago that many states had run out of EID tags because USDA had not garnered enough funding for the amount of EID tags needed.
The new animal ID rule, which went into effect Nov. 5, calls for all sexually intact cattle 18 months of age and older that move interstate AND all heifers that are bangs vaccinated to be fitted with a new EID tag. Congress only provided enough funding to USDA for the interstate movement tags needed, but did not provide funding for the bangs tags needed.
Traditionally, the orange metal tag was used to identify heifers that were bangs vaccinated, and the white metal clip tag identified sexually intact cattle that moved interstate.
The new EID tags also come in orange and white but the new rule doesn’t specify a certain use for either color.
Some veterinarians in TSLN’s readership area have had to postpone scheduled bangs vaccinations because EID tags were unavailable to them. In the rule, USDA says the tags will be free to producers as long as the funding remains available.
Andress said his office is conserving the white tags, as he only has enough to fill a few orders at this point. He has more orange ones on order, that he expects to be in soon.
