BVA issues new bTB policy position

The BVA has put forward 35 wide-ranging recommendations as part of a comprehensive approach to tackling bTB across the UK.

Launched today (28 July), the new bTB policy position brings together veterinary expertise in cattle and wildlife, and applies new and emerging evidence to set out a holistic road map to guide the efforts of vets, farmers, and the Government in bTB control and eradication.

Key recommendations

Key recommendations are:

• Setting up a framework for earned recognition to reward good biosecurity.
• Enhancing data sharing to support knowledge-based livestock trading and good decision-making on farm.
• Securing long-term funding for dedicated bTB advisory services.
• Simplifying and prioritising research priorities.
• Introducing systems to allow greater data sharing between government vets and private vets.
• Ensuring continued cooperation and collaboration on bTB between the four UK governments after Brexit.
• A supplementary paper also assesses the short, medium and longer-term impacts of COVID-19 on bTB control, and recommends steps to ensure that veterinary surveillance and controls continue across all species, with appropriate social distancing measures, to avoid undetected spread of disease.

Behavioural science

BVA junior vice-president James Russell said: “For the first time, we’re calling for behavioural science to be front and centre in the approach to bTB research and control.

“This means rewarding good biosecurity practices, providing vets and farmers with the tools and data they need to make evidence-based decisions, and recognising the human impact of this devastating disease.

“In developing our new position, our expert working group reviewed current evidence and engaged widely with a range of stakeholders to set out a road map that we hope will guide vets, farmers and the Government in ongoing efforts to tackle this disease.”

Research priority

The BVA’s new policy also identifies five key research priorities for the next five years, which include:

• a better understanding of the effects of badger vaccination on the incidence of bTB in cattle
• evidence to establish the role of cattle faeces in disease transmission
• better understanding of the causes of repeat breakdowns

The top research priority – the development and validation of a cattle vaccine and differentiating infected from vaccinated animals test – was given a boost last week (23 July) when Defra, the Welsh Government and the Scottish Government announced that cattle vaccination trials would soon get under way in England and Wales.