SUN VALLEY — For 75 years, brucellosis has been on the minds of cattle producers and the federal agency charged with eradicating it.

“We talk about brucellosis every year,” said Bill Barton, an Idaho veterinarian, during the Idaho Cattle Association’s annual convention.

But the U.S. Department of Agriculture is proposing changes to the way it manages both brucellosis and tuberculosis.

“As disease changes, policy must change also,” Barton said.

Both brucellosis and tuberculosis were common diseases in cattle. The USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Services Veterinary Services began a tuberculosis eradication program in 1917 and a brucellosis eradication program in 1934. While the prevalence of both diseases have declined significantly over the years, completely eradicating either one has proven to be much more difficult.

That’s why Barton is pleased to see the federal agency alter its approach to focus on efforts that minimize transmission from wildlife and also to look at outbreaks on a case-by-case basis.

Elk and bison herds remain a reservoir of brucellosis infection for Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. All 50 states were brucellosis-free in February 2008, but Montana lost its class-free status in September after finding its second brucellosis infected herd in less than a year. One change within the proposal is to go from a state-based rating system to a national-based system.

That’s good news for producers in the three states known as the Greater Yellowstone Area. Finding brucellosis in two herds within one state near Yellowstone National Park triggers automatic testing requirements on all other producers within that state. Under the new proposal, the agency can look at the disease risk for a region rather than the entire state.

Another welcome change, especially for seed stock producers, is dropping the mandatory requirement that entire brucellosis infected herds be eradicated. The last brucellosis infections have occurred in herds with unique genetic traits that producers spent years developing. Those traits may be lost forever because of eradication mandates, Barton said.

APHIS is proposing that brucellosis positive herds be quarantined, treated and tested until the herd tests disease free. Bovine brucellosis is a highly contagious bacteria disease that causes late-term abortion and infertility in cattle. Abortion rates in herds can vary from 30 percent to 80 percent.

Barton has already seen positive results from the USDA’s release of its proposed action plan. Wildlife managers were included in the process and they are realizing the need to manage brucellosis in wildlife herds just like in cattle herds, he explained.

But, he said, the new approach will only work if there is cooperation between the federal government, states and producers.

“You have to keep doing the things you have been doing,” he said. That includes vaccinating calves against brucellosis, identifying animals by brand or brucellosis tag, importing only cattle that have been vaccinated for brucellosis or have tested disease-free.

“We’ve got to prove to our trading partners — who are the other forty-seven states — that we’re doing the job. They signed off on this. They said, ‘We’re trusting you guys, send us clean cattle,’” he said.