final report - ARCHIVE: Defra

4 ENVIRONMENT AND EPIDEMIOLOGY
4.1 General points and current research
4.1.1 As part of this review, interviews were held with several scientists currently or previously involved
with bTB projects in the British Isles. There was general agreement that there is an urgent need to limit
the spread of bTB through integrating the knowledge we currently had available. This was as much a
priority as any single area of deterministic based research that may be desirable but inevitably would
result in delays. Our review indicated that, following the Krebs Report (Krebs et al., 1997), a wide
range of research, including epidemiological and environmental components, had been commissioned
by a range of funding bodies from a variety of research institutes. Examples of these projects are listed
below (proposed end date in parentheses):
SE3026 Bovine TB transmission in restocked herds: risk factors and dynamics. University of Warwick
(2006)
SE3032 The long-term intensive ecological and epidemiological investigation of badger populations
naturally infected with Mycobacterium bovis. CSL, York (2006)
SE3035 Estimating the badger density in Randomized Badger Control Trial proactive and control areas.
CSL, York (2007)
SE3040 A preliminary analysis of existing data to provide evidence of a genetic basis for resistance of
cattle to infection with M. bovis and for reactivity to currently used immunological diagnostic tests.
EBRC, Edinburgh (2009)
SE3117 Cost–benefit analysis of badger control. CSL (2007)
SE3119 An experiment to assess the cost effectiveness of farm husbandry manipulations to reduce
risks associated with farmyard contact between badgers and cattle. CSL, York (2009)
SE3229 Enhanced modelling and prediction of the spread of bovine tuberculosis in mainland Britain:
impacts of cattle movements, climate and spoligotype. VLA (2007)
SE4202 An evaluation of biases in the AMLS and CTS databases. University of Oxford (2007)
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