[Use of allergological diagnosis in the elimination of tuberculosis from poultry kept in a small flock]

The use of intradermal tuberculinization during the sanitation of TBC-infected small flocks of poultry with the application of the elimination method depends on the extent to which the flock is infected. The results suggest that the elimination method can be recommended for practical use in cases of 5% to 10% incidence of reactions to avian tuberculin. Thorough sanitation of the environment after the elimination of the infected birds is an essential part of the elimination method. When the incidence of reagents to tuberculin was up to 5%, two thirds of the small flocks were successfully sanitated by the elimination of positive reagents in a single operation. In flocks with a positive-reaction incidence from 5.1 to 10%, the elimination method was successful in 84.7% of the treated stocks; in some cases the tuberculinization had to be repeated three times before an infection-free state was obtained. When the rate of positive reactions was above 20%, better results were obtained from a radical method based on the elimination of the poultry and sanitation of the environment.