 Hi, I'm Dr Mary Carr, Chief Veterinary Officer of South Australia and I'm pleased to welcome you to the Red Meat and Wool Growth Programme production brought to you by the Department of Primary Industries and Regions, Livestock SA, Animal Health Australia and the University of Adelaide. Today we are exploring the Enhanced Abattoir Surveillance Programme with a focus on pneumonia and pleurisy. Enhanced abattoir surveillance tracks the health conditions of sheep found at the abattoir. These findings are provided to producers to assist with planning around prevention and management of prevalent animal health conditions. Although pneumonia and pleurisy are related conditions, pleurisy is much more commonly found in South Australian abattoirs than pneumonia. This is explained by the transient nature of pneumonia, while pleurisy is probably found for the rest of the life in the animal. Over the last three years, one in every two properties submitted animals with pleurisy when only one in ten properties had cases of pneumonia. At the consignment level, one in four consignments had cases of pleurisy when one in twenty lines had cases of pneumonia. Although a lot of farms and mob are being affected, only one in every thirty slaughtered sheep would have pleurisy and one in every hundred sheep would have pneumonia. Pneumonia show a very strong peak of cases in summer 2017 but has been quickly decreasing since then with a historical low in 2020. For pleurisy, we see similar trends to a lesser extent with a decrease over the last three years. While pneumonia can be found equally in lambs and muttons, pleurisy is more likely to be found in muttons. The cases of pneumonia and pleurisy are spread across the states, in particular in the east and southeast of the states, with less cases being found or coming from the west. Although pneumonia is equally found in lambs and muttons, pleurisy is more likely to be found in muttons. Cases of pneumonia and pleurisy are found and spread across the states, in particular in the east and southeast regions, with less cases coming from the west. We observe a very strong seasonality in the detection of pneumonia cases at the abattoir. There's an apparent drop during the winter when we have an increase during the spring and summer. Although we can see that there is a strong seasonality in pleurisy in lambs in the first half of the year, there's apparently no seasonality in muttons. So pneumonia, as most people appreciate, similar to getting the flu, I suppose, is that you'll get causal organisms. Often it's a virus based initially. So some of the common viruses include mycoplasma. There are influenza viruses as well. Mycoplasma is actually far more significant cause of pneumonia and often an incurable pneumonia. So pneumonia is simply an infection of the lungs. So the main causes of pleurisy pneumonia often start out with a viral infection, often lead to a secondary bacterial infection. As a result of the secondary bacterial infections, often you'll get a pussy lesions in the lung as well. Cheesy gland that can also result in pneumonias. If it's not dealt with immediately, like a lot of pneumonias aren't, you'll get these effusions. In other words, you get serum seeping from the lungs, pleural cavity or the lung cavity, and results in scar tissue forming that basically causes the lungs to be affixed to the rib cage internally. And that's what we call pleurisy. So pleurisy is actually a chronic form of pneumonia. So pneumonia can affect sheep of all ages and goats for that matter. The conditions that pres are supposed to it is either hot, dusty conditions and often extremes in temperature, similar to what we're experiencing ourselves. So typically sheep often follow each other down dusty tracks and so that's an opportunity for infection to be acquired, especially if they've got their nose down near the ground, picking up the environmental contaminants, which most of these causal organisms are basically environmental contaminants. The other occasion is if people are mustering sheep in dusty conditions during the day, hot conditions also predisposes to infection. Pleurisy and pneumonia presents often the animals just doing poorly and so they're obviously smaller or skinnier, lots of condition. Heaving, in other words, they're actually breathing from the abdomen as opposed to the chest cavity. And sometimes you'll find that the chest cavity is not expanding and contracting like it should. And so the breathing is actually through movement in the abdominal cavity, which is quite abnormal. And so producers would normally pick up on animals with pneumonia and or pleurisy just by the fact that they are ill thrifty, poor condition. They may have snotty noses, mucus discharge from the noses. They may be coughing, but coughing is not necessarily a common sign. It's probably more the fact that the animals are just reluctant to move and not doing very well. Pleurisy and pneumonia presents in a carcass always in the thorax. It can range from mild pleurisy to really acute pleurisy with systemic reaction and supuration, which would necessitate condemning the whole carcass. For the processor, with mild pleurisy or pneumonia, all the ribs get taken out. It goes from being a primal cut to bonus mutton. For the producer, if pleurisy and pneumonia could result in a lot less weight because of the heavy trimming in extreme cases, the whole carcass could be condemned. In milder cases after the trimming, the processor is going to pay them less for it. For pleurisy and pneumonia, the inspectors examine the thorax and the lungs on the viscera table. Any detection of these two diseases is sent straight to the retail and rail where the trimming takes place. In our finishing system over the last eight years, we've been seeing increasing numbers of lambs dying and being chronically ill as a result of something. We were unsure of what it was at the time, but after receiving the Abertor surveillance and doing some investigation into what was causing this, it's now been proven that the issue is the pneumonia and the pleurisy. We would be losing between 15, 25 lambs a year out of our terminal flock, but for me, probably the bigger loss was not knowing what the production loss was. So if I had dead ones, there had to be sick ones, and those sick ones wouldn't be growing at a growth rate acceptable to get lambs to market. At the time I received the enhanced Abertor surveillance feedback. I happened to be working with some other consultants in the animal health field, and so I was able to share my feedback with them and help come up with a bit of a targeted plan as to how we were going to look into my pneumonia pleurisy issue. The closer animals are to each other, especially during hot, humid, dusty conditions, you're going to get a much higher spread because a lot of the infection is spread just through droplets, through breathing, inhaling and exhaling. So where animals are congregated closely, even around water troughs, is enough to cause significant amount of spread of infection. If it was a human case, for example, you'd be using dexamethasone and some of the anti-inflammatory steroids to reduce the inflammation and discomfort and pain associated with breathing. But of course in animals, often they don't get that luxury, so it's a more case of antibiotics, but often it's too little, too late. So we really need to look at preventative programs. We received enhanced Abertor surveillance around pleurisy and pneumonia in lambs killed, and as a result of that, we've looked into both some simple and some more involved solutions to the problem. The way we handle our stock, the condition of our yards, whether they're dusty or not, we put in laneways, we could let them wander in at their own pace. So far, we haven't had much luck, and we are still in the process of chasing this problem to reduce the number of lambs that suffer here with pneumonia and pleurisy, and we hope in the future that we will find the magic bullet. Between 2007 and 2021, the Department of Primary Industries and Regions managed the enhanced Abertor surveillance program at Lobothall and Murray Bridge with funding from the state and national sheep industry funds and national industry funding from Meat and Livestock Australia. It was the EAS program that provided producers with the feedback discussed in this video. Although EAS monitoring has ceased, there are plans in place to transition to entering South Australian data into the national system. This national data can inform the development and funding of appropriate industry and government initiatives on the ground to better support South Australian producers to reduce losses caused by unnecessary carcass trimming and to take advantage of premium markets. To assist producers, Animal Health Australia has partnered with Persa to create the sheep health conditions carcass impacts tool, a 3D digital tool designed to show the industry what six common conditions look like on a carcass and give them an idea of how much trim may occur at the processor. Livestock SA encourages all producers to talk to their processors about what carcass and disease and condition data they can access from their consignments. Thanks for watching. We hope you have learned more about pneumonia and pleurisy and the importance of managing sheep health with the help of enhanced Abertor surveillance. To find out more or get support with your business, contact your local animal health advisor from the Department of Primary Industries and Regions or the South Australian Livestock Biosecurity Extension team through the Livestock SA office. The Red Meat and Wool Growth Program is an initiative of the Government of South Australia and supported by Meat and Livestock Australia, the South Australian sheep and cattle industry funds and Sheep Connect SA.