Johne's Disease Working Group minutes: January 2025

Attendees and apologies

• Scottish Government officials
• Environmental Health and Trading Standards
• Moredun
• British Cattle Veterinary Association 
• Synergy Farm Health
• James Hutton Institute
• Scotland's Rural College
• Livestock Health Scotland
• National Farmers Union Scotland
• HiHealth Herdcare
• British Veterinary Association
• farmers
• vets

Items and actions

New Johne's Disease model pilot - Livestock Health Scotland

Livestock Health Scotland (LHS) is a not-for-profit organisation for farmers and farm vets to improve animal health and welfare. LHS work in partnership with farm vets and farmers to give tailored, attainable goals and meaningful outcomes. 

Update from Johne's conference in India

The International Colloquium on Paratuberculosis (ICP) is made up of around 100 delegates from around the world. This year the conference was held in India, with around 50 speakers representing 10 countries. Topics included:

• vaccination programmes
• biosecurity strategies
• a new vaccine
• a new PCR to detect between sheep and cattle strains

Action Johne's conference

Actions Johne's and the National Johne's Management Plan (NJMP) had 3000 farmers doing in person training over a three-year period. The NJMP is focused on reducing overall presence of Mycobacterium avium subspecies Paratuberculosis (Map) and actions are bespoke to the farmer. Around 3000 herds are testing four times a year to shape the Johne's control process. There is currently a large amount of data that will need to be conveted into environmental impact measures once the relevant experts have been identified to help in this area. 

Scottish Government funding landscape

The group discussed potential projects which could be taken forward and the funding process. 

Any other busines

The group will create a Terms of Reference document and explore potential projects that could be driven forward. A national Johne's programme would be beneficial but there's numerous steps before that could be achieved.