We are urgently developing research requirements with other European laboratories to make sure we understand and the disease (Schmallenberg) better.
BOVINE TB is one of the biggest issues facing the industry today. A devisive issue among politicians, farmers and animal welfare groups, it is one the new Government has vowed to tackle. Find out more about bovine TB, it’s spread and what is being done to control its spread in the UK.
Bovine TB (bTB)
What is bovine TB?
Bovine TB is a disease of cattle and other mammals. It arises from infection by the bacteria Mycobacterium bovis.
Latest news
Click here for the latest news on Bovine TB from Farmers Guardian including live debate and the latest features and analysis.
How is it spread?
Bovine TB is spread primarily through the exchange of respiratory secretions between infected and uninfected animals. This transmission usually happens when animals are in close contact with each other.
The main sources of infection in cattle are other cattle or badgers.
How big a problem is it?
Around 36,000 cattle across Britain were slaughtered because of the disease in 2009, while just short of 40,000 were culled in 2008.
The disease has spread significantly over the past 10 years. In 1998 less than 6,000 cattle were slaughtered.
Over 8,000 cattle herds were under restriction at some point in 2009 because of a TB incident. Infection is most prevalent in the South West of England, parts of the Midlands and parts of Wales
Scotland remains relatively free of disease and in 2009 successfully applied for Officially Tuberculosis Free status.
What is being done to control the spread?
Policy for curbing the spread of bTB across Britain has focussed mainly on cattle controls. These include:
- Routine testing at 1 to 4-year intervals depending on the local level of disease in England.
- Annual testing across Wales.
- Slaughter of animals that react to the test and some dangerous contacts.
- Restrictions on cattle movements where TB reactors are found.
- Compulsory pre-movement testing from animals moving from high risk areas.
- Scotland also requires post-movement testing of some animals from England and Wales.
In May 2010, the Welsh Assembly Government was about to start a pilot badger cull, mainly in Pembrokeshire. It was to be accompanied by a further tightening of cattle controls.
In England, Defra Secretary Hilary Benn ruled out a badger cull in 2008, announcing instead that the Government was investing funds into developing badger and cattle vaccines.
More information
- Defra bTB website
- Welsh Assembly Tb website
- Report on 10 year badger culling trial
- Commons EFRA committee reports on bTB
- bTB blog
- bTB news summary
- Badger Trust
View results 10 per page | 20 per page
Readers' comments (11)
Anonymous | 17 September 2010 11:56 am
about time there was some control over badgers in infected areas
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
Charles Henry | 19 November 2010 5:04 pm
People often call Mycobacterium.bovis "The Cattle Strain". . That is one of the major problems. . M.bovis was first identified as the cause of TB in cattle, but as it first came from M.tuberculosis (The human strain); it most likely first came from other animals, vermin or the like that scavenged at man's "dustbins", latrines or graves; not cattle.
In a relatively recent report, researchers examined the ancient village of Atlit-Yam, which has been covered by water for the past several thousand years, and which has yielded skeletons and some of the earliest evidence for agriculture and for cattle domestication. According to one long-standing hypothesis, tuberculosis initially infected people who drank the milk of domesticated cattle that carried a unique strain of the TB bacterium. However, new DNA data from the two Atlit-Yam skeletons provides evidence that in a community with domesticated animals, but before dairying, the infecting strain of tuberculosis was actually the human pathogen.
The researchers estimate that human tuberculosis first evolved around 10,000 years ago, when agriculture’s emergence led to densely populated settlements that acted as petri dishes for infection. Tuberculosis may have infected small numbers of people before that, but the bacteria could not have spread widely in small bands of nomadic hunter-gatherers.
One of the pleasures of science is that nothing remains certain forever. The report can be found at the link below.
http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0003426
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
Charles Henry | 19 November 2010 5:36 pm
How TB jumps from humans to wildlife. . Vet seeks clues.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/02/090220-mongoose-tuberculosis-missions.html
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
Charles Henry | 21 November 2010 6:02 pm
Defra's interpretation and understanding of bTB as written in their links is completely specious and totally ignores much of the proven history of how bTB was, and has to be controlled. . It also concentrates totally on the
misinformation provided by the discredited Krebs Trials. . It is no wonder bTB policy is now a total 'car crash'.
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
Anonymous | 15 January 2011 4:46 pm
charles you are always the fountain of knowledge and always appreciated but i do know that we did as a country get rid of tb, but london as a example has had to jab babies for tb as a precaution in certain highly populated immagrant areas for years, and yet in areas of no immagrant population it is unheard of accept the standard teenage vaccination or dairy farmers children which screams humans and badgers are the main contributing factor in this problem and i definitly agree we have let the problem go to far as a country as we are now getting diseases in this country that we irradicated why and how needs to be asked and hopefully common sense prevails
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
jamesoriordan | 19 March 2011 7:48 pm
icannot submit email what is wrong
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
Charles Henry | 6 April 2011 7:55 pm
This short film will provide many answers about the history of TB and present problems..
http://www.bovinetb.info/videos/a_way_forward/index.php
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
Charles Henry | 9 April 2011 9:14 am
As I have been promoting the Video 'Bovine TB - A Way Forward', I would like to put on record that in my opinion, and probably most of those with any experience of bTB in animals that it is highly unlikely that West Devon beef farmer Bryan Hill would be able to distinguish whether or not a badger was clean, just by observing it, only with an obviously clinically sick badger. . . If you listen to Dr John Gallagher, the veterinary pathologist again as he explains how animals present with the disease and the infection in different ways. . It will be clearer why.
http://www.bovinetb.info/videos/a_way_forward/index.php
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
jamesoriordan | 17 April 2011 1:28 pm
why are not the consumers told about these 40000 T b cattle that enter the food chain every year.. why are not these cunts that carry on this blaguarding not jailed or executed ,, why is this scandalgoing unnoiticed ,,unadressed;;;;; if there is no accountability and no punishement for wrong doing... why do have a goverment to begin with
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
william Benstead | 5 December 2011 4:22 pm
why wont people listen to people that know about badgers not only the tb problem but the wildlife suffer from them as well they dig out bumble bee nests in big numbers the hover up every bird nest on the ground and in the hedgrow as well not only killing everything they can when young birds roost on the ground after harvest i know you all say gamekeepers are only out to kill everything but we dont.we manage the wildlife in our country better than anyone because we are there out in the field 24.7.you talk about the decline of birds ! IT doesnt take a rocket man to know why they are going down just sit for a few hours near a feed station and see what kills the birds
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment