Animal Health Office Contact Details

There are a number of Notifiable Diseases in the UK which apply to deer, see below. Most are extremely rare, some have never been reported in the UK ( with a * ) so may never be encountered.

The main disease that applies to us as deer stalkers is Bovine TB.

However in many areas APHA will not be interested in cultivating a sample and therefore visiting a location if confirmed. As of (at least) July ’18, they are only interested in captive deer with suspect bTB.

With wild deer, only interested in suspects from ‘bTB hotspots’, as I found out when I called the national contact number, 03000 200 301; they didn’t want to test my suspect muntjac from Berkshire.

Seems to me you still need to call APHA to cover yourself and to find out if a suspect wild deer was shot in an area of bTB interest, which then means sending in a sample.


Notifiable diseases applicable to deer

Anthrax
Bluetongue
Bovine TB
Chronic Wasting Disease*
Epizootic haemorrhagic disease*
Foot and Mouth Disease
Rabies
Warble fly (England and Scotland)

Taken from:
Notifiable diseases in animals
 
APHA in Preston area very interested in suspect TB (very low probability but rang them for advice anyway) despite not being a hotspot. They came and collected pluck and did a PM on it.

So reinforces the point that definitely worth calling them...
 
But as we know, it is compulsory to report any 'suspected' case of a notifiable disease, whether that person on the other end of the phone (correctly or incorrectly) says otherwise.
Going back a few years when I had a suspected case (later confirmed as TB) I knew more about the rules and regs than the person on the other end of the phone.
In your scenario I would get a name of the person on the other end of the phone to cover your own rear.
Cheers
Richard
 
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