Study Highlights Effective Communication Strategies to Prevent Tick-Borne Diseases In Florida Cattle Industry?

By Meredith Bauer-Mitchell

If you’re working with the Florida cattle industry and you’re trying to spread information about tick-borne illnesses, the best way to get your message across is using prevention-focused messages, rather than fear. 

That’s the takeaway from a new study published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research by University of Florida researchers.  

Ticks, especially Asian longhorn ticks, present a unique threat to cattle in Florida. In addition to weakening cattle through anemia and weight loss, Asian longhorn ticks spread diseases like bovine theileriosis, an illness spread by a blood-borne parasite, which can have a wide death rate of between 1% to 50% of a herd, according to the USDA. 

While Asian longhorn ticks have been prevalent in the Northeast since 2017, they’ve been spreading more into the South in recent years, according to the USDA. 

Researchers have been looking at which online messages resonate with the cattle industry about tick prevention in order to help communicators tailor messages about this threat, said Lauri Baker, UF Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS) associate professor of agricultural communication.