Not over the top at all. And not trying to scaremonger. Multiple abscesses are a sign of serious infection. The lymph nodes are where the body is trying to fight the infection and major enlarging is serious infection.
There is one abscess in the original post. Multiple absences around the body indicates systemic infection. One major enlargement can mean the infection has been stopped right there, that's what lymph nodes are designed to do.
Washing yourself and clothes is just good hygiene. You have no real clue as to what the animal is infected with. It may or may not be infectious to man. But take a sample and sending it off. It may be a few days to get results. If it is something nasty may be a few days that lets infection take hold. I suppose you would by then know why you feeling ill.
Washing clothing should be done as a matter course, not because of possible bTB infection, but because you are dealing with a product that goes into the food chain.
Are you inferring bTB will make you ill within a few days of possible exposure? It's a chronic, not acute disease.
A fundamental basic rule is not to eat sick animals.
Pleurisy can be quite debilitating, so technically a 'sick' animal if present, but pleurisy can be stripped out and the carcass be passed for human consumption. The same goes with many, many conditions.
I have just read your previous post. Working as highly trained abbattoir technician you will be fully trained in checking animals for disease. And abbattoirs have onsite veterinary surgeons to provide additional insight. You will be in protective clothing with sterile gloves etc and your clothing would be washed regularly- end of each day I would suspect.
Yep, clothing washed every day, as normal hygiene when working with food. Gloves, yes, sterile, no.
What additional insight can you image a veterinary surgeon could give in an abattoir settting? Suspected bTB, detain and get it tested or if really badly infected, condemn.
Most on SD are not highly trained abbattoir technicians. Many will be novices seeking advice. Most stalkers often don’t wash their clothing from week to week.
Many novices may be seeking advice, but yours is alarmist and your information is not correct.
Most stalkers don't wash their clothing week to week? - and we wonder why supermarkets prefer to buy quality assured venison from New Zealand....
As for your comments on abattoir's in Africa - some are poor. But many of the commercial ones run to EU standards so that can meet export markets for their products.
I visited a cutting plant near Windhoek in Namibia some years ago. It was a very good premises, but my information about Africa came from a more generalised source.
In an abattoir you are dealing with domesticated farmed animals. Any animals that are doing poorly will be kept back from the abattoir. Cattle herds in particular are regularly subject to veterinary inspections, in particular for TB, and any herds suspected with or indeed infected will not go to slaughter.
When dealing with cows at the end of their milking life, we came across bTB infected animals, with other ills too. Not all by any means are caught beforehand. Younger steers and heifers for the beef trade are not generally detained, due mainly to age. Poorly animals are slaughtered at the end of the day. Positive bTB tested animals
do go through abattoirs.
Further, the cattle are breathing in close proximity to abattoir workers before being stunned, the carcass later is sawn in half with both creating aerosols, which is a major vector for infection. Neither of which applies to the deerstalker.
It is very very different when wild animals are concerned. The first inspection will be through binoculars or a scope from 100m plus or minus.
Ideally you will have observed how it behaves prior to shooting, but often this in minimal - its in season, on the cull plan, its safe shot, bang.
The first time anybody has looked closely at the animal will be the deer stalker.
Going back to the animal that is subject of this discussion, it was thin skinny, would have looked sick, dull eyes, ears down, probably running a temperature etc etc. If it had been a cow or a ewe it would have kept to one side. Possibly given antibiotics if it was of any value. But if it was an older animal if would have gone to the knacker man for disposal.
Of course 'best practice' is to observe before the shot, but many sick animals, with bTB too, show no outward signs of being ill, they just get on with life as best they can. I've posted some on here before with bTB, seemingly well before being shot, often pregnant, too.
Only once have I shot a fallow that was obviously ill in nearly 30 years of stalking. I can share the images of numerous, huge abscesses developed over a long period if interested.
I would repeat that bTB, if suspected, be reported to APHA and take their advice. You don't need to do anything over and above good basic hygiene. People here in the past have discussed bagging and incinerating clothing. It's not Anthrax or a Russian nerve agent, just be sensible.
