A VACCINE for a sexually transmitted disease that renders cows infertile and triggers abortions is nearing completion.
Scientists at the Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation and the University of Queensland have been working on the
vaccine with a team led by Professor Ala Tabor.
Bovine trichomoniasis protozoa is passed from bull to cow during mating and the vaccine works against this happening.
Despite costing the Australian cattle industry millions of dollars, the vaccine is available overseas but not here.
“When you import a vaccine, it has to be quarantined and the animals treated with it aren’t allowed into the food chain, so it is more efficient and practical to manufacture the vaccine in Australia,” Professor Tabor said.
“If we can get local strains of the disease and develop them into a vaccine, it’s effective, safer and easier, there’s no quarantine and the animals can enter the food chain.”
Bovine venereal disease is caused by two pathogens.
“One is a bacteria that we already have a vaccine for called Vibrovax and the other is Trichomoniasis which is a protozoa, so it’s bigger than a bacteria,” she said.
Neither pathogens are viruses. Bulls carry the disease and then transmit it to the females during mating.
“After mating with an infected bull, the cow will either become infertile or go on to have an early abortion,” she said.
“The way things are managed within northern Australia and its extensive herds are if a cow doesn’t get pregnant it’s sent to the abattoir.
“There’s been the expectation that they should fall pregnant easily.

”Professor Tabor said many tests were being done for the disease and Univer