Vaccinations introduce the body to weakened or inactive pathogens that could normally cause an illness. When the body detects the foreign substance, it reacts by producing antibodies to destroy the pathogen. These antibodies are exactly the tools needed to fight off a real pathogen. By administering vaccinations to calves, producers can give the animals the best fighting chance to survive future exposure to pathogens.
By preventing infections, vaccines can reduce the need to use antimicrobials to treat primary or secondary infections. They can also help rule out certain pathogens as the cause of a disease, which can allow for the use of more targeted, narrower-spectrum antimicrobials. By reducing disease pressures in the herd, vaccines can also help to decrease infections in animals that are not vaccinated, and may also have an effect on bacterial population densities and resistant gene exchange rates [1],[2].
Vaccine Development
The development of effective vaccines is a complex undertaking with many considerations and challenges.
Vaccine Delivery
Timing and methods of vaccine delivery that are user-friendly are easier for producers and veterinarians to implement.
Marker Vaccines
It is difficult to verify if a given vaccine is effective. Marker vaccines can be used distinguish between animals that have been vaccinated and those that have not. This can be used to verify if the animals that are sick have been vaccinated against the pathogen responsible.
External Resources
Beef Cattle Research Council Topic Page
FAAST (Farmed Animal Antimicrobial Stewardship Initiative) Topic Page
Vaccine usage in western Canadian cow-calf herds – Peer Reviewed Article
References
[1] K. Hoelzer et al., ‘Vaccines as alternatives to antibiotics for food producing animals. Part 1: challenges and needs’, Vet. Res., vol. 49, no. 1, p. 64, Jul. 2018, doi: 10.1186/s13567-018-0560-8.
[2] M. Lipsitch and G. R. Siber, ‘How Can Vaccines Contribute to Solving the Antimicrobial Resistance Problem?’, mBio, vol. 7, no. 3, pp. e00428-16, Jun. 2016, doi: 10.1128/mBio.00428-16.
