Open urgent review of TB controls, Department told minister

The Department of Agriculture has advised Minister for Agriculture Martin Heydon to open a review into the current TB eradication strategy “as a matter of urgency”, if rising disease trends are to be halted.

“Additional measures” must be put in place to prevent the bovine TB situation from worsening further on farms, the minister’s departmental briefing stated.

The briefing notes that the TB Strategy is “not set in stone” and “will be subject to ongoing revision in line with the trajectory of the disease”.

“The incidence of TB has increased across the main dairy regions in the country despite the full implementation of the current control programme,” it said.

“The current control measures are inadequate to bring the disease under control in these herds.”

Irish Farmers Journal records of historical Department TB data found that reactor numbers for 2024 were at peaks not witnessed since 1999.

There were over 41,500 cattle slaughtered on foot of TB test results last year – an increase of around 44% on the previous year.

This is just a decade after reactor numbers had been pushed to a historic low of 15,300 head in 2015.

The minister’s briefing suggests that the increase in TB can be put down to the “expansion of the dairy herd and the resulting increased levels of intensive cattle farming and the increased movement of cattle”.

It flagged measures and controls that have been examined by the TB Forum’s scientific working group, but not backed by farming organisations, as potential tools which could have helped reduce TB reactors.

“While more radical measures, such as informed purchasing, risk-based trading and increased restrictions on high risk-herds/animals, would be expected to lead to a sharper reduction in TB, these have not been supported by the farm organisation stakeholders,” officials said.

They also stated that the UK is pioneering research into cattle vaccinations effective against TB.

So far, a central issue has been developing a test capable of distinguishing between an animal that is truly infected and one that has just been vaccinated.

Even if an effective vaccine is developed, there remains a “significant number of legal and international trade obstacles to be surmounted” before it could be used in the eradication programme, the minister has been told.

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TB cannot continue for everyone's sake - Heydon

TB reactor numbers at their worst level since 1999