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Animal health companies in Australia and New Zealand have been pioneers in the development of veterinary medicines for farm animals. Research with relatively few animals has brought huge benefit for all animals.
For example, before vaccines for diseases like tetanus and pulpy kidney were developed in the 1940s, many thousands of sheep and cattle used to die from these painful infections every year.
In the 1970s, vaccines were developed for leptospirosis - a diseases of farm animals which causes miscarriages in cows and pigs and which can cause blindness, headaches and extreme muscle pain in humans. By vaccinating dairy cattle, the diseases cycle can be broken. As a result, leptospirosis is no longer such a serious occupational disease.
Vaccines have also been developed in New Zealand to combat toxoplasmosis, a disease which can cause abortions in sheep and humans, and yersiniosis, a disease which kills farmed deer.