What is liver fluke disease?
Liver fluke disease, or fasciolosis, is a parasitic disease in herbivorous animals caused by a flat worm (Fasciola hepatica). Animals are infected by ingesting the flat worm’s larvae, which penetrate the intestinal wall and migrate to the liver causing liver damage. The flukes reach the biliary system where they may live for years feeding from blood and producing thousands of eggs that are released with the bile into the small intestine and finally reach the pasture via the animal’s faeces. In the egg, a small larval stage develops. After leaving the egg it burrows its way into a snail (the so-called liver fluke snail). In the snail, the larva grows and multiplies asexually. Finally 500-1000 larval stages leave the snail and settle on the grass as encapsulated infective larvae.
