Anlmal,Plant and Flsherles Quarantine and Inspection Agency

Brucellosis is a disease of cattle causing reproductive failure, most commonly abortion in females and sterility in males. For many countries, control measures for brucellosis include testing and removing of infected cattle, and milk ring test (MRT) is the preferred method for testing dairy cattle. In Korea, surveillance of dairy cattle consists of testing all lactating cattle every 2 months by testing pooled milk samples using MRT. In order to improve detection ability of the current system, either the frequency of testing needs to be increased or an improved diagnostic method would have to be used. Recently, the use of milk ELISA tests to replace MRT have been discussed but their benefits in a surveillance scheme have been in doubt. Here we describe a stochastic simulation model to assess surveillance of dairy cattle for brucellosis and to determine the ability to detect infected herds when different diagnostic tests are used.