Environmental reservoirs of bovine tuberculosis in the European badger (Meles meles)

Four years after the implementation of the current bTB strategy (2014), bTB was responsible for the premature slaughter of 44,656 cattle and estimated to cost the taxpayers and dairy industry a combined ￡120 million. Badger culling is a key component of the strategy, with at least 32,601 badgers culled in England in 2019. Despite the decrease in the number of herds classified as OTF-W across England (- 4 %), this is not necessarily reflective of an improvement in circumstances, with incidents increasing by 13% in the EA and 37% in LRA in the year to May 2019. This increase is thought to be partly attributable to the breakdown of badger social group territories and the subsequent movement of infected badgers; however, the disease dynamics within badger populations typical of cattle farms are poorly understood and much is based on speculation. Furthermore, despite the knowledge that M. bovis is capable of long-term extra-host survival, there have been no persistence studies under UK conditions using methods with higher sensitives' than of culture, or studies conducted in naturally infected badger faeces -a hypothesised badger-to-cattle transmission mechanism. These knowledge gaps could result in errors in ... (continues)