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The Livestock Pathology Consultation Program (LPCP) is designed to assist private veterinary practitioners investigating herd or flock problems or unresolved health issues in Alberta’s livestock and poultry. It is one of the components of the Alberta Veterinary Surveillance Network (AVSN).
The LPCP partners private veterinary practitioners with Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development (ARD) pathologists. Investigations are done in cooperation with the private veterinary practitioner. ARD pathologists have expertise and experience in diagnostic laboratory settings and in livestock clinical practice. They provide service in a team atmosphere, ensuring the application of multifaceted expertise to each case. The LPCP team may call upon assistance from private diagnostic laboratories and/or from a wide range of experts, for example epidemiologists, toxicologists, theriogenologists, and other specialists, both internal and external to ARD (see the Livestock Disease Investigation Network).
Issues or concerns are usually identified by private veterinary practitioners and occasionally by provincial meat inspectors. Analysis of surveillance data from other sources may also identify issues. For example, data provided by private veterinary practitioners in the Veterinary Practice Surveillance (VPS) database may suggest unusual disease patterns that require further investigation.
The issues of concern must meet certain criteria to be investigated under this program:
- A private practitioner presenting the case must have completed an initial diagnostic workup.
- The case must involve an issue potentially affecting or involving food safety, market access, public health, provincially reportable disease, or be suggestive of an emerging disease.
- The LPCP may also provide service where there is an important herd or flock problem such as the occurrence of substantial morbidity/mortality, unusually high prevalence, or an unusual or worrying presentation.
- A diagnosis has not or can not be reached in the private sector.
Once these criteria are met, the LPCP will provide service (examples):
- Suspect provincially reportable diseases
- Salmonella spp.
- Infectious Laryngotracheitis
- Suspect emerging disease
- Bacillary Hemoglobinuria
- Congenital defects
- Disease threatening market access
- Non Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy neurological disease
- Vesicular Diseases
- Suspect food safety or public health issues
- Coxiella burnetti abortion in sheep and goats
- Clostridium difficile infection
- Herd or flock problems with an unusual presentation where diagnosis has not or can not be reached in the private sector
- Sudden high morbidity or mortality
- Gastrointestinal disease
 
Service in individual instances can range from telephone consultation through to laboratory necropsies and testing that may progress to a multidisciplinary investigation (see the Livestock Disease Investigation Network). LPCP pathologists also provide continuing education opportunities to individuals and groups.
More information and examples of recent cases investigated by the LPCP may be found in the Animal Health Forum newsletter.
Brochures
Alberta Veterinary Surveillance Network (AVSN)
Why Do Poultry Health Surveillance
Links
Alberta Veterinary Surveillance Network (AVSN)
Veterinary Practice Surveillance in Alberta
Food Safety Division
Agri-Food Systems Branch
Office of the Chief Provincial Veterinarian (OCPV)
Alberta Veterinary Medical Association
World Organization for Animal Health (OIE)
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA)
For more information on the Livestock Pathology Consultation Program, please contact Dr. Jan Bystrom |
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