final report - ARCHIVE: Defra

Management tools
7.8 A systems approach to bTB control
Our assessment is that a single approach to the control of bTB is unlikely to be successful at this point
in time, because, as is evident from our review, all of the approaches proposed have potentially significant
limitations. For example, even new diagnostics based on g-IFN release are unlikely to be effective in identifying
latently infected animals and will only be used periodically; the use of diagnostics in cattle will not eliminate
environmental reservoirs of disease; vaccines for either badgers or cattle have limitations with respect to
their likely efficacy and, in the case of badgers, the degree of coverage of the population; culling may only
be effective in certain circumstances, for example where geographical barriers reduce the extent of the ‘edge
effect’; improved husbandry measures could have some impact on the frequency of disease, but the required
husbandry procedures are poorly defined and their impact is unquantified. Consequently, a combination
of approaches will be required to achieve significant control of bTB. This means that future models should
consider how different control measures would interact if implemented together, and how appropriate different
combinations of control measures would be to different areas defined either in terms of their geography or in
terms of their disease status.
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