After a TB infection is confirmed

What happens on your property

When TB is confirmed in your herd, one of our Disease Management vets will visit your property. We'll classify your herd as "Infected" and place it under movement restrictions with a 'Restricted Place Notice' (RPN). Any potential stock movements will be carefully managed.

We’ll let neighbours on the immediate boundary of your farm know about the infection to ensure herds are kept separate.

Investigating the source of infection

The Disease Management vet will start an investigation to find out where the infection came from, and where it may have spread to. They use animal movement records from NAIT to help work this out. We need to know how the herd might have been infected — it could be that:

• a TB-infected possum wandered onto the farm and spread the bacteria, or
• livestock brought on to the farm from another area infected your herd.

If the investigation suggests the disease moved onto the farm 'on the back of a truck', the infection can be contained and managed without affecting the wider community. But, if the infection has come from wildlife, neighbouring farms may be affected too, and we need to keep the community informed about the situation.

A TB infection has serious implications for:

• farm management
• confidence in work practices, and
• the value of livestock.

We’ll work with you to implement a farm-specific TB management plan, to help return your herd to TB-free status as soon as possible.

Clearing the infection

A herd will stay classified as 'infected' until your whole herd has had 2 clear TB tests, at least 6 months apart. Then it will be reclassified as 'clear'.

For each year your herd remains free of TB, a number is added to the ‘clear’ classification — C1 for the first year clear, C2 for the second year clear, and so on until the herd reaches C10 status.