Prevalence of Bovine Tuberculosis Using Abattoir Meat Inspection in Cattle Slaughtered at Gondar Elfora Abattoir, North Ethiopia

Bovine tuberculosis (BTB) is endemic in Ethiopia and like other developing countries in Africa. Ethiopia has limited laboratory and other diagnostic facilities. Therefore, abattoir inspection still remains the only option for monitoring BTB prevalence in domestic animals. A cross-sectional type of study was conducted at Gondar ELFORA abattoir from October, 2009 to April, 2010 to assess the prevalence of BTB slaughtered cattle. During this time, a total of 500 animals under gone on ante mortem and detailed post mortem inspections and 43(8.6%) of the animals were found to be with tuberculous lesions. About 84.8% of the tuberculous lesions were found in the lymph nodes of the thoracic cavity (mediastinal and bronchial), followed by 11.6% in the lymph nodes of the abdominal cavity (mesenteric) and the remaining 4.65% in the lymph nodes of the head (retropharyngeal). From the 43 cattle samples that were suspicious to contain tuberculous lesions, samples of lymph nodes were cultured on Lowenstein-Jensen media and growth of Mycobacterium was observed on 5/43(11.6%) samples. In this study, age (χ 2=3.351, p value=0.187) and breed (χ 2=1.087, p value=0.29) have not shown any association with post mortem results whereas origin (χ 2=147.179, p value=0.0252), anatomical sites (χ 2=468.814, p value=0.00), sex χ 2=23.688, p value=0.011), body condition score (χ 2=17.342, p value=0.00) and culture results (χ 2=121.48, p value=0.00) have shown associations with post mortem result. Based on this study, it is recommended that integrated preventive approaches involving enhanced surveillance of the disease through establishment of standardized abattoirs well-equipped with laboratory facilities.