Of Bourne, badgers, and a bovine ‘TB alert’

The great badgers and bovine TB debate

“…Usually the first measure countries take when launching cattle TB schemes is a mandatory ban on unpasteurized milk, as in Ireland and Scotland. Such a ban has been thwarted politically in England and Wales up to now (Hancox 1998;Dormandy 1999). The last case from milk was in 1959 in schoolchildren in Yorkshire (Hardie & Watson 1992).…”

“…Models of culling, vaccination or fertility control are hence compromised. The validity of the Krebs/Bourne trial has been further compromised by non-cooperation of farmers, loss of 135 herds in trial areas to FMD, trap interference as in Sussex (Pritchard et al 1986) and the database swamped by FMD effects (Hancox 1998).…”

Cattle tuberculosis schemes: control or eradication?

“…The latter clearly showed the growth of primary contiguous herd clusters, spawning further secondary herd clusters, and the value of quarantine, and cordon sanitaires. TB is no different except that the lag of a year or two masks the nature of contiguous spread of ‘overt’ disease, so that badgers get blamed instead, and arbitrarily after 15 months these are ‘new’ breakdowns (Hancox 1998b). In Ulster, some 70% of TB herds were via contiguous spread, up to 30% to ‘bought‐in’ stock, i.e.…”

“…A vet strike in the mid‐1970s in Ireland allowed TB to reach 51 000 cases a year, but the present rise towards this figure would appear to be attributable to privatization of the testing regime, and more particularly to the abandoning of premovement tests, and in the UK whereas all 9 million cattle were tested annually into the early 1960s, going to longer herd test intervals meant fewer cattle tested so that now only some two out of 12 million cattle are tested each year (Zuckerman 1980; O'Connor 1986). Longer test intervals as a cost‐cutting measure from 1993 at the height of BSE also allowed TB to escape from containment, coupled with increased stock movement for BSE replacement, as well as the ending of veal calf exports and milk quota/dispersal sales factors (Hancox 1998b). Final eradication hence requires the removal of the very last actual M. bovis carrier.…”

“…Sadly, despite a previous warning of a cattle tuberculosis (TB) crisis (Hancox 1998a,b), there has been a steady worsening of the situation with a very real risk to public health. Bovine TB is now back to 1960s levels in Britain, from a low point in the mid‐1970s of 89 herds and 600 cases to 872 new herds and 7000 cases in 1999.…”