12 Oct TB Test arrangements and submission

Contacting farmers upon allocation

The contract that your practice has agreed with the XL Farmcare region obliges the practice to proactively attempt to contact all farmers who have work allocated in the practice work basket. At least three attempts must be made before the practice then passes the obligation over to the farmer by means of a written form of communication which lists the efforts that have been undertaken to make arrangements to carry out the test.

Legally it is certainly remains the farmer’s responsibility to book in their TB tests with their allocated practice. However, early contact is essential to highlight any issues associated with scheduled task. Examples might include problems with the details on SAM, the farmer having no stock to test or the farmer believing that they already have an arrangement in place with an alternate vet practice.

The earlier contact can be made with the farmer, then the earlier issues or concerns are apparent in relation to the test. Occasionally the work schedule needs to be moved to another practice and it is vital that we do this at the earliest opportunity so that all practices have sufficient time to plan their workload.

Submission instructions for unusual testing circumstances

We have received some additional advice from APHA that may be of some help for those practices that find themselves struggling with some of the more unusual situations that require them to close a particular testing task.

For instance there may have been an escapee at a test. You can no longer record these animals as simply untested so you may have submitted the bulk of animals as a part test. However, when it comes to making arrangements for a subsequent part test, with the intention of testing the recaptured escapees, the animals in question have been slaughtered.

Alternatively you may find that a proportion of animals listed for statutory testing have previously been subjected to a private pre-movement test for some reason.

When you have discovered that there are no animals to test because the animals in question have been tested recently, or there is any other reason that they are not to be tested, then the OV can close the test schedule in the following way.

They should use that day’s date as the TT2 date. This is because SAM won’t let you submit a test with a TT2 date in the future. They should then insert “000000” in the tuberculin batch number field. This apparently makes it clear to the APHA teams that no tuberculin has been used. OVs will also need to tick the warning box associated with the task.

If the reason is because the stock in question have recently been tested via an alternate route (eg private pre-movement tests) we have been asked NOT to submit the test as NES (no eligible stock) as technically there are eligible stock on the holding. It is just that they don’t need to be tested because they are within 60 days of being pre-movement tested.

Submitting a work schedule as ‘No eligible stock’

There may be a number of reasons that you may need submit a workbook as ‘No Eligible Stock’ For instance, the holding may only have calves under six weeks of age or the holding may be part of a RHT48 and be specifically exempted by APHA’s Regional Veterinary Lead.

To make the submission then please follow the following steps:

• Open up your workbook,
• go into ‘2.Test Details’,
• Click the circle that says ‘No Eligible Stock’ and a confirmation box will come up that says ‘Warning: Selecting No Eligible Stock will clear any data entry made against this test – Are you sure Y/N?’
• Please click ‘yes’.
• Go to ‘4.Summary & Sign-off’.
• At the bottom of the page is ‘’Test Ready to Sign”- Check that the data is complete and valid for submission’’
• Click the ‘Check data’ button and follow the steps to sign off.

Please be aware that you cannot submit a task as having ‘no eligible stock’ until the window of the work schedule is open. If submitted beforehand a new work schedule will be created and appear back in to your work basket.