Figure 2.

Survival curves for the persistence of M bovis infection in theoretical medium-sized (276 head) US cattle herds with high replacement rates (0.33/y) managed via 3 different strategies. In the base model (dashed line), no test-based culling was performed. Under the current slaughterhouse detection-based testing and culling strategy (solid line), whole-herd tests were performed every 3 months after detection of M bovis infection in an animal via postmortem inspection. Under the constant testing strategy (dashed-and-dotted line), whole-herd tests were performed annually before detection of infection and every 3 months after detection. A herd was assumed to start with 275 susceptible cattle and 1 latently infected animal, and was followed for 10 years or until the infection was cleared from the herd, whichever timepoint occurred first.