Hi, my name's Sarah Tomlinson, and I'm a veterinary consultant with King's Hay. But my main role is as the TB Advisory Service technical director. I've been a farm vet for over 20 years, and, in the last 5 years, TB seems to have become my specialist subject, through kind of really necessity, trying to understand the disease a lot better, so I could advise my clients.

So today I'm going to talk about how I think veterinary practises, the whole vet led team, so from sort of your admin staff, your ATTs, your vet techs through right through to the vets, can have a much better understanding of TB and how to help your farm clients deal with what is quite a devastating disease. So, what I'd like to cover today is a little bit around the policies that we have and some of the politics, because sometimes that is the biggest barrier to farmers engaging in TB advice. How we can approach TB in practise.

It's not just about the testing, how to advise clients on TB because it is just another infectious disease. Understanding what those risks are as an infectious disease, and what tools are there available to help farm vets. Understand the disease a little bit better and and help our farmers.

The tricky one, so how to approach the badger conversation on farm, we do know that badgers are part of the TB story. We have evidence for that and what farmers can do themselves, as well as some of the government control strategies, what other risks there are, and then a little bit about building resilience into that farm business, and then just a few minutes on what is next for TB control and what's coming through on the agenda. So kind of going right back to the beginning, you know, why do we control TB?

A lot of people say, you know, it's, it's not a zoonotic disease it is a zoonotic disease, but it's not a big public health issue anymore. The slide, the graph on the left shows that actually most human TB cases. Caused by mycobacteria bovis, so bovine TB actually appears in the elderly population, and that probably comes from pre-vaccination and pre-pasteurization.

Most human TB is now actually mycobacteria and tuberculosis, so actually human TB. The other reason that we do have notifiable diseases is obviously in animal welfare, avian influenza, foot and mouth, you know, is painful, it kills a lot of animals very quickly. So that's why we have laws around controlling them.

The biggest reason I think we still control TB is actually because we need it to trade, so that's not just nationally, but internationally, and a lot of bovine products. So we need our TB free status in order to, to have that, that opportunity. So that's why we need to control this disease even if on a farm level, it does seem sometimes very frustrating.

There are costs to TB, so England does have the highest level of bovine TB in Europe. That's for a few reasons. We use the comparative skin test, some other European countries just use bovine only.

Other European countries have controlled their wildlife reservoirs for a long time. In England we've only done that more recently. We're all taxpayers and the annual cost to us is over £100 million every year.

So that's another reason that the government does really want to get on top of bovine TB because it costs a lot of money. And importantly to me as a farm vet in England and Wales between 2021 and 2022, just under 32,500 cattle were slaughtered due to bovine TB. And anybody that is involved in testing cattle, I'd like you to probably agree with me that the majority of cattle that go are generally quite fit and healthy.

That is because we are taking them out before they become diseased, but actually that's got massive impacts on those farm businesses. And again, for me as a farm vet, that's why I want to get on top of TB. I personally have worked in the same area for for over 20 years and I have seen farm businesses suffer, and even give up farming, you know, and it's not just their business, often it is their home, it's where their families live, it's where generations of families have lived.

I've seen, you know, years and years of genetic improvement in herds be destroyed because of loss of cattle. And then the big one that, you know, thankfully, we are all now talking about a lot more are the mental health impacts that, that bovine TB can have, you know, not just for the farming industry, but for the veterinary profession as well. We don't go into this job to go and sort of shut down our businesses and, and call otherwise fit and healthy animals.

And then the other big thing that we're all talking about is sustainability and the environmental impact that our farms have. To me, as a farm vet, the easiest win is to manage endemic disease. We struggle to do that well, when we're losing cattle for bovine TB, you keep those Yoni's cows a bit longer, you keep that lame cow a bit longer, you keep that cow that hasn't quite gotten calf first time, and that is knocking the Efficiency and the productivity of those herds and ultimately the profitability and the environmental impacts too.

So again, as a farm vet talking to farmers, these are the key things that I think we can concentrate on to engage our farmers to want to try and do what they can to reduce their risk of TB. Thankfully, in England, we do have a 25 year eradication strategy, so there is a plan, . It started off by establishing 3 zones within England, because we have very different risk areas across England, so we've got the high risk area, the red area on that map.

The blue area is the low risk area where we have very, very little bovine TB and the orangey bit in the middle is the edge. And those different areas have different appropriate, plans in place to manage that disease. But the key part for me, for that strategy is that it is putting these measures in place whilst maintaining an economically sustainable livestock industry.

And I think sometimes as farmers and vets, and it doesn't feel like that. We could ban cattle movements from the high risk area into the low risk area, but actually the government know that that would destroy the livestock industry, because generally cattle move from the southwest into the northeast for for finishing. So that's why some control measures, seem to maybe not go far enough for some farmers, but, but it's always got to be proportionate to the risk.

In Wales, they have very similar policies, but it is devolved, so they have their own policy as does Scotland and Northern Ireland. They similarly have three zones, so they have the high TB area, low TB area and a bit in the middle of the intermediate. They have again different testing regimes for those different areas, and both England and Wales have pre-movement testing out of high risk areas into the lower and post-movement testing when animals move from those high risk areas into those lower areas.

And we all have obviously the slaughterhouse surveillance. So every animal that goes into a slaughterhouse, goes through a process to look for TB. So, coming back into the practise, you know, how do you approach TB in practise?

Do you even do the TB testing for your farms, because when the contracts changed, and the veterinary delivery partnership was started, some practise practises did opt out. That's fair enough. But actually, do you have a route of communication with the people that are doing the testing?

Do you know the TB status of your farms? And if you are doing the testing for some of those orphan farms, again, do you proactively try and share that information and try and have that line of communication? When farmers are being booked in for TB tests, who does that communication?

Do you have a specific person in your admin team? And are they talking about preparing the farmers for a breakdown? Because once you find that reactor on farm and you say, I'm really sorry, this is the one that's gonna shut you down, you know, that is a massive, massive, emotional, situation to be in.

Whereas if you can start that conversation, you know, prepare for the worst but hope for the best. And there is a bit of a plan in place as to how to manage that breakdown. Hopefully, some of that stress and anxiety for both parties can be, reduced a little bit.

There's also some charities out there, so RABI can financially support farmers. FCN again can help, they've got, local people that can go and help and sit on farm and talk about, mental health issues, and again, just help them manage that process. The NFU again will help, if there's disputes or people just want a little bit more information about TB.

And then, of course, we've got the TB Advisory Service, and, which allows free farm vets to deliver free visits onto farm. We've got CES TB and there is the TB Hub, which is an amazing website with lots of information, how to stay TB free, but also support and what will happen when you have a TB breakdown. So just having that information on notice boards, going out with your TB notification letters, just increasing the level of understanding of the disease and what might happen once they have a breakdown, can be really, really valuable.

So just have a think about what happens in your practise. So, so what, I would like most practises to do is have that clear communication process. So, have someone that is responsible for making those phone calls, so they know what they're talking about, they're comfortable having these conversations, and, and take that kind of role of responsibility right through, through to the ATTs that are doing.

Some of the testing and the vets and have somebody that is, could be that point of contact. So if the admin staff are talking about, you know, what happens, talking to the farmer about, you know, have you thought about what might happen if you do have a breakdown, you could speak to one of our ATTs or one of our vets, to just help you plan a little bit better or even say, you know, what would happen if you, find reactors on farm, have a point of contact that the farmer can ring. And what would be even better is if actually there's a proactive process that, you know, on that Thursday, Friday, when that people are coming in and saying, I've just shut so and so down, I've just shut so and so down, that that actually gets communicated with somebody very specific, who can make sure, connect with that farmer, and make sure they are actually just OK.

And have they got any questions, and how can we help you in the next few weeks? Quite a lot of people doing the TB testing aren't necessarily the vet that's doing the health planning or the routine work on that farm. So is there a process of you as the routine vet, knowing your TB status, and again, especially if there is another practise that is actually doing the TB testing.

Not many, vets or ATTs or sort of the vet led team know that actually the invoices that UK Farm Care send out, to pay for the TB testing, they actually have attached to those, the any gamma test results, if the farmers had those, and also the postmortem results from any reactors going into slaughter. Obviously the invoices probably go to the accounts department, so just understanding that they're there and having a process where they are shared within the TB team or even just with the routine farm vets. So Understanding and having something written down, who is responsible for communicating with the farmers, making sure they understand the process.

Another key part is ensuring that the farmer gives permission for you to speak to APHA. I'm sure we've all been in a situation where you've rung APHA, you want to talk about a specific case and understand why certain things are happening, and APHA say they can't speak to you because of, of GDPR rules or, or for, you know, privacy. But if the farmer does give you, give APHA that permission, then you will be able to speak to them.

And then not forgetting the farms that actually passed their TB test, don't just ignore them. They too should get a follow up and say, this is brilliant, this is great, but how do we stay TB free and, and think about, you know, purchases, badgers, and all those things that we're gonna talk about, in the next few minutes. So hopefully that's covered a little bit about why we TB test, a little bit about the policies that we do have and how you as a vet led team within the practise can support farmers.

Now coming back to you as an individual farm advisor on farm talking about TB. Thankfully vets and farmers do work really well together to manage infectious disease. We're really good at health planning, putting standard operating procedures in process in place, and there's an awful lot of research out there that farmers do really trust what their vets say, .

And we, we go out on farm, we recommend tests. We might say, OK, we found some antibodies on your BVD You stock screen, we need to do some more tests to find out where that's maybe come from. We put treatment plans in place, we recommend culling, BVDPIs, for example, or Yoni's positive cattle, and we put plans in place by security plans to prevent that disease either spreading on farm or coming back in again.

And we, even if we're disease free. Part of the plan is to stay infection free. And we don't think about TB like that, and I think we should and we can.

For many years, I think I felt like I was just a TB tester. I went out on farm, and if I found reactors, APHA came in and did all the, the farm health planning and the management for TB. Whereas actually, we can do that.

We don't need their permission to do that, to talk about TB on our farms. And flipping TB totally to try and get farmers' mindset changing a little bit, that they're getting a free infectious disease screen. The government are paying for that.

All these other things they have to pay you to come out and test their animals. And actually, if they do find positive, those calls are compensated for. A BVDPI or a Yoni's positive animals are called at the farmer's own expense.

I appreciate there's some timing around that and farmers can do it when, you know, they're in charge of that. But just thinking about actually, moving on to 6 monthly testing in the high risk area, which we've had recently. That's an extra screening test.

If you've got TB, the sooner you find it, the better, because it won't spread and it won't be, hopefully find diseased animals in the long term. So trying to get that mindset changed that TB is just another infectious disease. So there's lots of tools out there for, vets to use to help their farmers, control TB.

There's CES TB. Check set standards for lots of different infectious disease, they can certify certain levels of disease or disease freedom, which is great for sales, but they all also are disease eradication tools. So, for TB there's two levels, so there's the entry level membership, which is, basically just really a biosecurity plan with different options on there for farm, which should suit most farm businesses, and the key part of the entry level is it it is just a tool to go on farm to start those discussions about where the risks are.

Then there is the full herd accreditation and you get a score, and that is 1 to 10 the number of years you've been TB free. Now the government do recognise these herds as lower risk because there's certain mandatory biosecurity rules for isolation and post-movement testing. There's also strict rules about removing resolved IRs.

So the government do use this to incentivize returning to annual testing, for example, in 6 month areas, you have to be checks accredited one, so just one year TB free. And also you, Gain full compensation for certain reactors in certain circumstances in England. So there are, there is recognition for being a lower risk her through being checks accredited.

Vets have to do a certain level of training to be able to sign off the CES TB scheme, and that's the BCVA TB accredited veterinary advisor training. So just a little bit around that, it is delivered by BCVA. It's online training, takes about 4 to 5 hours, very similar to the BVD and Yoni's accredited advisor training, goes through, similar things that I'm talking about today, but in quite a lot more detail, and, just hopefully hones in some of those, very specific skills to deal with TB.

There's also the TB Advisory Service, which is a DAFRA funded project, but delivered by hopefully the farmer's own private vet. The vet gets paid to deliver these visits, but it's free at the point of visits for farmers. They get 2 visits, an initial one, which is basically a risk assessment going through our bespoke app, and 4 recommendations are agreed at the end of it.

And then 3 to 6 months later, they have a follow-up visit to assess whether they have completed the recommendations. There's also paid for set surveys, badger set surveys, which can be really, really useful for the farmer just to assess where that badger activity is and where to put some proactive measures. We also at TBAS ask that vets have done the bat the training.

And then we do a run and also a virtual online session just to go through what the aims and objectives for TBAS is, what we're trying to achieve, and how we can achieve that. So we do go into some sort of behavioural insights and, and, how to get farmers to engage. So what are the risk factors on farm for TB?

They are really similar for most infectious diseases. So what is the farm unit history of that disease, you know, what TB have they had in the past? What's the local geo geographical TV history?

We know you're probably more likely to get TB in Devon than you are in Northumberland. What's the TB risk from purchases or incoming stock? What are the risks of pasture?

So that's not just badgers, but also what are your neighbours risk. Then the farmyard, so again, that's not just badgers coming in, but actually what visitors you have, what are the risks from slurry and farmyard manure. And then finally we sort of look at the risks for the business, and how can we, if you do, if the worst does happen, how can we help that business function better through a breakdown.

So there's two key things that, Sort of help me explain to farmers quite a lot of the risks from a cattle to cattle point of view with TB. So, the skin test, well, every test has a specificity and a sensitivity, and farmers often get this the wrong way round. They trust a clear pre-movement test is infection free, but they don't trust that a reactor on the skin test has TB.

So the specificity is the probability of correctly identifying an uninfected animal. So the higher it is, the fewer false positives we have. And the specificity for the TB skin test is 99.98%.

And as tests go, that is pretty, pretty good. And we need a high specificity because we slaughter all the positives, so we need to be confident they are genuinely infected animals. And actually, because we have been screening animals for many, many years, a very, a high proportion of our reactors have no visible lesions at slaughter.

And farmers again see that to mean that those animals didn't have TB. And the way I explain it to farmers is actually no visible lesions, if you say that back to yourself, doesn't mean there weren't lesions there, they just weren't visible at that point, you know, on the slaughter line, . At the at the slaughterhouse.

And if you have lesions the size of an apple, then that procedure where they feel the lungs cut into the lungs, they might find an apple. If you've got lesions the size of peas, very small lesions early in the disease, they probably will be missed. So we need to be confident when we're talking to farmers that a reactor on the skin test is infected with TB.

And actually no visible lesions mean it's it's good news because it's probably been caught early, less progressive disease, and hopefully less infectious to the rest of the herd. The other side of specificity is the sensitivity, and quite often you have high specificity, and that means you get a lower sensitivity, they sort of balance each other out. And the sensitivity is the probability of correctly identifying an infected animal.

So the higher this is, the fewer false negatives are found. And the downside of the skin test is it's moderate sensitivity, so on a good day, if the test is done well. It's about 80%.

So that means in practise, potentially 1 in 5 infected cattle are actually missed. They are testing negative, but they should be testing positive. So this is why farms are put under movement restrictions, and this is why we repeat the tests to get that two clear short interval tests to be more confident that we haven't left infected animals behind.

We also have severe interpretation, so that means we're less likely to move, leave, infection behind. We have the gamma blood test. That is more sensitive.

But for farmers, this has got big implications for buying in. So Help us explaining the, the specificity and sensitivity of the skin test are quite fundamental to farmers understanding that risk, so the longer a herd has been testing clear, the more you can trust that is genuinely a clear test. So for example the the Information I share with my farmers is that if you've had TB in the last 2 years, try and buy from farms that have had TB for less than 2 years, for more than 2, haven't had TB for more than 2 years because you're, you're buying a less risky animal.

So I did mention the gamma test. Farmers are sometimes quite scared of the gamma test because they've heard that they will lose more reactors. Potentially they will, but there are reasons for this.

So it is more sensitive, so it finds more of those infected animals. It's 90% sensitive, so still will miss 1 in 10. And also, it finds animals slightly earlier in the infection process.

So the little graph on the left shows you the immune response, the gamma response, and where we pick up, the immune response on the skin test, and the skin test is generally about 6 weeks, which is why we have that 60 day, interval between testing, but the gamma test will pick up at about 3 weeks. The downside of the gamma test is that, and that's that balance again between sensitivity and specificity, is that it is less specific. So in theory, if we tested 100 animals that didn't have TB, potentially 4 of them would test positive and they would be false positives because the specificity is about 96%.

This is the reason we don't use it in officially TB free herds as a screening test, because we would find. Wrongly find TB. So it's only used in herds where we've identified infections, so these are the officially TB free withdrawn herds where they've had lesions at slaughter, culture positive, or now we've got PCR positives, or they've had a recurrent breakdown in the previous, an OTFW breakdown in the previous 3 years.

And this is because of the positive predictive value. So when you test, a group of animals that you think are more likely to put positive, the chance of those being false positives is less. So understanding the sensitivity and specificity of those diseases and understanding what level of infection might be in a herd, is quite fundamental to advising our farmers how to manage those cows, even if they are officially TB free after a breakdown.

So TB is a mycobacterium just like yoni. So, and we've already talked about you can have animals that test negative but are infected, so. Identifying potential cohorts of animals, so it might seem that reactors have left the herd at various different ages.

There is no pattern to them. But if you actually highlight those animals, they were all, a young stock cohort together. They might have grazed an infected paddock.

And if one or two of those animals are throwing up bovine reactions, they're passing the skin test, but if you ignore the avian lump. Then they would fail, and like I said earlier, a lot of other countries use that bovine only. They don't use the comparative skin test.

So that could be another reason that that animal goes onto a voluntary call list. She might be, slightly lame, she might be, Yoni's positive, she might be, have a high cell count. The bovine only lump is another reason for to remove them out of the herd.

The other thing is looking at what those cohorts are, if it is particularly that you're finding a lot of reactors in young stock or in older animals, how you manage those different groups, could reduce the, the spread within the herd. One breakdown, a colleague was involved in was, a lot of TB reactors in quite a young heifer group. And it was traced back to, water, and there was a cold cow group that was drinking out of a water trough, and the calf pens were the other side of that water trough, and the person in charge of the calves was using that water trough to fill the calf buckets.

And that is what spread the TB from some of those cold cows that probably had lesions, but testing negative and infected those, that, that group of young stock. The other thing is we know it's in saliva, so, managing shared feed, and and how we mix different age groups. Like I said, TB is a a mycobacterium, exactly the same as map that causes yonis.

So some of the things we do for yonis on farm absolutely will help reduce that cattle to cattle spread. So, separate carving pens, snatch carving, artificial lostrum, all those sort of standard operating procedures that we put in place for yonis can actually work for some of those bovine only reactions as well. So that's cattle to cattles spread within a herd, but there's obviously cattle to cattle spread outside into the herd.

So a lot of farmers will be quite negative about engaging with TB by security because they think there's no point because their neighbours buy a lot of risky animals and that's their biggest risk. My motto is control the controllable, we can't control what other people do, unfortunately, but we can control what risk they are to us. So make sure your cattle don't escape, or that their cattle don't get in with yours.

Ideally, that 3 metre gap to avoid nose to nose contact. But actually, you know, a big thick hedge will be enough to reduce that, TB spread. In Derbyshire where I am, we have a lot of dry stone walls, great for keeping cattle in and out, but actually not great to prevent nose to nose contact.

So simple things like just trying to pull an electric fence away from that wall, so cattle can't. Can't share those aerosols. And then the other biggest risk is those purchased animals.

So, again, helping farmers understand that moderate sensitivity and why it's important to ask, not when their last clear test was, but when was their last TB breakdown, and understanding what risks, those different animals will have for the, for the farm. So, do you know the TB history of the farm of origin? If there are specific animals your your clients do want to buy and they maybe are a little bit risky, you can ask to pre-movement test, even in the low risk area where it's not mandatory.

You can ask to post-movement test in the high risk area where again it's not mandatory. And you can actually do pre and post-movement private gamma testing, which is obviously more sensitive, so less likely to miss infected animals. So there are things we can advise and things farmers can do above and beyond government policy.

So just want to go through a few of those little tools that we can share with farmers to help them manage those purchasing risks. So these, these maps show the regions and the numbers that are associated with those reasons that fill in the UK number on an air tag. So that each of these numbers and on the ear tag will represent where those animals were born, the herd that they were born on, so.

Just if they are in a market situation or they're looking at a batch of calves that they think are coming from a low risk herd, actually understanding what these numbers mean might mean that they were born actually in a higher risk herd or a higher risk area. So I have a lady who is in Yorkshire, who buys in cattle to fatten and finish and she buys out of a local market in Yorkshire, but she knows. All of the Southwest, two first two digits of the UK ear tag, and she won't buy from batches with those animals in.

Now that's quite extreme, but that is, you know, that is how she's risk managing, those cattle coming in. So that is maybe not a very practical tool, but is, is something to, to look at. The other big tool that we have is a mapping tool called IBTB, and this is open access, really similar to Google Maps.

So it's got a little, a magnifying glass in the top right-hand corner where you can search by CPH or postcode, you can zoom in and out, and every blue dot is a TB breakdown, and the history goes back 10 years. And then as you sort of zoom out, they coagulate into these bigger numbers. This is really, really useful for that pre-purchase information.

So if you've got farmers buying privately or from a catalogued sale, they can look these herds up and risk assess those, those purchases. So if you already have an agreement that you're only going to buy from herds that are 3 to 5 years TB free, they can use this to, to, you know, tick whether that, that, sale entry is worth them bidding for. It has when the farms were shut down and when they were opened up.

It's also quite useful if people want to rent ground to see what is happening in that local area or even bigger if they're thinking of buying a farm, relocating to the Southwest or, the Midlands, and they want to know the TV situation. And also, we do have farmers that buy in a lot of forage, and a lot of straw, they can have a look at those farms and see what the risk is, . The risk from forage and straw is mainly from when it's been stored.

So even if they're buying from a farm that has had TB in the past or or a TB heavy area, buying it straight out of the fields and storing it on your own farm and being in control of that is, is fine, but when the straws being stored on a farm that potentially has maybe infected badgers going onto it, there could be a risk that you'll bring TB in with it. The downside of IBTB is it doesn't have any Northern Irish data or Scottish data on it. So you would have to pick the phone up and ring and speak to their vets if you were taking in cattle from those countries.

So I just want to go through a little example of how I used IBTB on one of my farms. They were a flying dairy herd, and so they bought in regularly. And the herd they bought from was a local dairy farm.

They were BBT free, they were vaccinating a really good pedigree, Holstein herd. But actually, as you can see, they'd had problems with TB. So they were shut down in July 2016 and opened up in August 2018, so shut down for just over 2 years.

So we now know, understanding the test, even though that farm was officially TB free, they probably weren't infection free. They used that second clears short interval test as a pre-movement test, that is totally OK, and they sold some in calf heifers at a local market. They were probably overstocked, they probably could do with some cash flow, so again, they were doing what a lot of farmers do.

My farmer bought some of those in calf heifers. Now he'd never had a TB breakdown. And as you can see, the next picture shows that that original herd at their 6 month test went down with TB again.

And that is really not unusual for a herd that has had a history of TB because they were probably still had some infected cattle. That meant that all those heifers that got sold were traced, tracer tested, and that caused my client's first TV breakdown. When I went through this with him, you can imagine, he wasn't very pleased, and in hindsight, had he known this information would have stopped, wouldn't have bought those animals.

So I'm not saying we can prevent every TB breakdown, but in this situation that just that information on IBTB would have would have prevented his breakdown. So it can be really, really useful. In the last few years they've actually flipped that information that they present on IBTB and they now have the health status of the herd.

So this is instead of being the years they've had TB, this is the years that they've been TB free. So it's, it's a bit more positive way of presenting the information, but makes it slightly more useful if you are advising farmers to only buy from herds, for example, that have been free for 5 to 10 years. In the last few months, they've also, put on there an AFU finder, so these approved finishing units that can take TB restricted cattle, and you can, find the five nearest ones to you if you do have a breakdown and you want to, sell on some, some cattle.

So I hope that's helped understand a little bit about cattle to cattle risk, and actually how you as a private vet can, can have some conversations on farm to help, help farmers understand the risk and actually start to manage it. The next, big risk factor is obviously from wildlife, and in England and Wales, the biggest wildlife vector is the badger. So we do know badgers are a major part of the TB issue.

In these pie charts are from the government epidemiological reports on TB. The pie chart on the left is the high risk area, and the one on the right is the edge area. And whenever there is a breakdown, APHA vets go out and do a risk er a disease report form.

And they score the most likely route of entry onto that farm. Often it's not really obvious. Often there's lots of potential routes, so they get scored lower, but if they're more, conclusive, for instance, if there's cattle movement and actually the, spolier type is for a different area, then they can be quite, certain that that is a cattle movement.

In the high risk area, nearly 60% of breakdowns are attributed to badgers. In the edge area, nearly 50%. So there is no denying that badgers are part of this TV story.

So what is the role of, badgers and how do they transmit TB to cattle and what can we do about it? So, lot, all mammals, lots of mammals carry bovine TB, but the difference with badgers is they are super shedders. So we find TB bacteria in their urine, their faeces, their sputum, and in skin wounds, fight wounds, where they're, they're, seeping puss and, and fluids.

And actually, the biggest risk for badgers to infect cattle, and potentially vice versa is actually through indirect contact through so through them contaminating feed, water, bedding material, and just the environment. And we do know that TB can survive for quite long periods in different environments and can be a source of infection for quite a substantial amount of time. The beauty with badges is they tend to be creatures of habit.

So actually, if we can take away the opportunity, so for example, in this picture, if that gap was blocked, that badger potentially would stop visiting that farm. And there's been quite a lot of work done. In Gloucestershire area around a place called Woodchester Park, where they did exactly that, they they looked to see what the badges were coming on the farm for, stopped them having access to that feed or that silo clamp, and the badgers didn't just go elsewhere on the farm, they just stopped visiting.

So we do have evidence that stopping them having access to what they want will stop those visits. So like I said earlier, control the controllable when you are on farm, you know, go for the easy wins. You don't have to spend tens of thousands of pounds, putting up, badger proof fencing.

And actually, is there such a thing as badger proof fencing? We probably won't ever eliminate badgers being able to get onto the farm. But we can stop badgers sharing water troughs.

We know TB can survive for up to 60 days in water, so if you've got a potentially infected badger sharing a water trough, there's a source of infection there for quite a long time for that whole cohort of animals in that field. So raise the water trough. Mineral licks, high molas content, badgers will, they're like sweet Easter badges, badgers will gnaw at them, share saliva.

So raise, again, raising the mineral licks out of the reach of the badgers. Simple things like shutting feed store doors at night, and making sure all the gaps are blocked for anything bigger than, 7.5 centimetres, because that is the gap that badges will get through.

Tidying just spills, so you might have your feed in a, a grain silo, you know, vermin proof, badger proof, but if there's constantly that little bit of spill underneath, that could be what's bringing the badger into your farmyard. And then then, as he's coming through the farmyard, he's also going into young stock shed and sharing their water. So just look at really, really easy wins, simple things, cost effective things that farmers can do to to prevent badgers accessing the yard and reducing the risk of that indirect transmission.

Farmers often say, you know, how, how high do I have to get my trough to eliminate badgers being able to get into it. This was some work that was done at Woodchester Park. You can see the badger trying to get into that trough, that they gradually raised to see what height would prevent access.

And the graph, on the left shows you that once you got to, Sort of 85, 90 centimetres, very few badgers could actually access that trough. There was one super badger that could get in at 1 metre 15, but that is quite rare, so. 80, 90, 100 centimetres and most badges won't be able to access them.

So the higher you can get it, the less risk you will have from those badges sharing your water trough. Get to know your badger signs. Once you can spot a badger paw print, they, you'll get really used to it and you'll see them everywhere.

So they're very distinctive prints to compared to a dog or a fox. So a badger has a kidney shaped pad, quite oval, and you will see 5 toes. And quite often the claw marks, as you can see on the photograph on the left, whereas a dog and a fox, you tend to see the four pads and quite a triangular pad shape.

So, coming into springtime's a really great time to go out and start looking, look in the mud, under hedge bottoms, going through gateways, and just see if you can see some of those badger paw prints. Finding badger sets, again, once you start looking for them, you'll probably start finding them everywhere. They tend to be a capital D on their side, so quite wide and low.

If an active set will have clean, fresh, open, entrance. An inactive set might have a bit more leaf cover, some twigs, and just not be as clean. This time of year, they start to spring clean, so you might see old grass, and bedding material that they pull out just to expose to the air to clean and get rid of some of the parasites and bugs that are in there.

And then badger latrines as well, are quite easy to spot once you, once you get your eye in. They tend to be along linear features, so hedgerows or fence posts. There's different types of latrines.

There's latrines for, for going to the toilet, and then there's sort of territory marking latrines. They, they'll dig little pits and then poo into those pits. And the poo that's in those pits can be quite interesting, because that can actually tell you quite a lot about where the badger is getting their food source from.

So quite often you might see maize kernels in there, if there's maize being grown, or actual wheat kernels if they're accessing a corn store. Autumn time, you might see damson, stones, they might be just very purple from eating a lot of blackberries. The faeces on the top right is very sloppy, that's when they're eating what they should be eating, which is earthworms, and then obviously the, the faeces at the bottom is when they're eating more hard feed.

Badger runs are quite distinctive as well. Again, getting into springtime with dew on the grass first thing in the morning, you can often see them very clear. They tend to go from A to B, unless there's food or water or a mineral lick for them to stop and access.

This photograph was taken by a colleague, and that is a badger run going to a water trough. No other reason that that badger is entering that field other than to access that water. So if we raise that water trough, that badger has no reason to go into that paddock, and you have eliminated the risk of that badger and cattle spreading TB.

This is one of my dairy farms, quite a lot of farmers have these solid concrete troughs. They are not quite 8090 centimetres. So we'd seen some marks on the trough that badgers were accessing, a sort of a smooth area at the top as they were wearing it.

And then claw marks at the bottom where they're trying to get purchased with their back feet. So we put some sleepers underneath it and raised it to, to, to, to over 1 metre. All the cattle can still access it.

So we had a problem and we solved it really simply. This was a badger and a creep feeder, so obviously you can't raise a creep feeder because we need calves to access it. But that badger is salivating, potentially defecating and urinating, if it's infected with TB or your young stock that are accessing that creep feed will be exposed to to TB bacteria.

So there are solutions to that, so you can get roller kits that you can quite easily put on to create feeders or troughs that are lower for young stock. Again, quite simple, cost effective ways to eliminate that risk. This was one of my farms, the guy had mineral licks on the floor, the other side of this shed was a big badger set in a little wood.

I said to the farmer we need to raise this mineral lick. He solved the solution he solved the problem himself, he raised the minerallic into the trough. None of this really is rocket science, it's just thinking about what the problem, what the risk could be, and finding simple solutions for them.

Badges can climb most things, but they can't jump. So actually, simple electric fencing at 1015, 20, and 30 centimetres is a really easy way to badger proof. This is one of my calf rearing AFUs, so they have to be badger proof.

And even though this looks really open, and you think badgers could access that, those badges can't access those calves or their bedding, or their feed because of this electric fencing. Rubber put onto barred gates to prevent badges getting into sheds, and again, cheap, simple ways of badger proofing troughs, so that was mesh, a bent bit of wire, bit of bala twine. It's clipped up in the daytime so the forage wagon can go up and down.

Last thing at night it's, it's put down. The picture on the right, the trough was welded to the gate, so they couldn't raise it, so he raised the sides. Really great badger proof trough, and actually the win for the farmer was, there was a lot less mess, the cows didn't push the feed over the edge.

So I hope that's kind of helped you think about what you could do on farm, really simple things, get confident about recognising some of those badger activities and go out with your farmers, get them confident recognising those activities and thinking about where those risks then are to put in proactive measures. I'd just like to go over the government badger control strategies, cos again this can be a bit of a contentious issue on farm, . As vets, we don't have to condone badger vaccination, badger culling, but I think it is our job to share some of the science and evidence we have around these strategies.

We have a current, culling policy, which actually has ended now, so the last licences were awarded last year. The pilot culls two areas were pilots in 2013. And then gradually over the last, few years we've, rolled out the cull licences in other areas, and now about 80% of the high risk area has got some badger culling going on on it.

The important bit, I think, is that the calls are paid for and organised by the farming industry, so there has been an awful lot of effort and buy-in from the farming industry. The calls are based on cage trapping and free shooting over a six week period, and there's very strict licencing requirements. So there is a minimum size of 100 square kilometres.

They have to get 70% of that land signed up in those areas, and Natural England award the licence and give farmers a maximum and minimum number of badges to remove. Every year, the Chief Veterinary Officer, looks at the data that we gather from these calls, and every year she does declare that they have been successful. For me, there is quite a bit of evidence that these calls have done what we wanted them to do.

So this is a graph, from the TB hub. So this is open access data showing England in the high risk area. And this is new herd breakdowns.

And as you can see, the years along the bottom go from sort of 2000 up to 2020. And last year we were at an all nearly a 20 year all-time low for bovine TB. You know, so in 20 years we haven't had as little TB, and the big policy change in the high risk area has been that 80% of land culling badgers.

The high risk area is only now going on 6 monthly testing where we're trying to get the disease out of the cattle herds, but I think it is quite important if farmers do ask us as vets that we do understand what the culls have achieved. We also have a peer-reviewed paper called the Downs Report that was published in Nature. And this is, comparescu areas with very, very similar areas that weren't culling and looked at their, the, the TB breakdown rates.

And as you can see on the left hand side in the first Gloucestershire area, after 4 years of culling, they reduced new breakdowns by 66%. So that's quite a significant drop in bovine TB. In Somerset, there wasn't quite the drop, it was nearly 40%.

But a key area is the right hand side of this information, where they looked at the areas around the calls. So there's a lot of talk about badger perturbation. So when you call bad call a badger set, others will move in and you cause a lot of movement, and that actually increases TB risk.

So people were quite concerned about the areas around these cull areas, but this actually showed that that that in Gloucestershire, that buffer area benefited from culling, and in Somerset, it didn't make it worse. So I think the way the licences are run and the way they are, the, the protocols that they have to follow, and the, the natural England auditing of them has actually made them successful and has reduced that level of perturbation. We have got a policy shift though that the calls are finishing.

You could say we've called where we needed to, and we're seeing the the the data show that they are working, but we're moving now to non-lethal methods of, of wildlife control and using badger vaccination. So we've got a licenced BCG vaccine. Badges are cage trapped and injected.

There were someEV schemes, so Badger Edge vaccination schemes that DEFRA funded 50% of that have been running for quite a few years in some of the edge counties. And now there are some small areas post coal, where vaccination is happening. There is quite a large project in East Sussex, which is being really successful, and this is doing badger vaccination in quite a different way.

It's actually being farmer led in a very similar way to the calls. The people vaccinating the badgers are trusted people within the community, that the farmer is nominated. And in 2022, they actually vaccinated 500 badgers, over a 200 square kilometres, so they are vaccinating a significant number of badgers.

A lot of farmers will ask, well, does it work? And is it safe? So the vaccine is safe.

BCG is not excreted, so there's no risk to cattle. And actually, we do have really good evidence that vaccinating badgers for TB does reduce TB in badges. So it reduces the severity and progression of an excretion of TB.

It won't cure already infected animals, but it will stop them spreading TB as much. And we know that vaccinated badgers are 76% less likely to become infected. And actually vaccinating the adults over a 4 year period reduces the infection rates in badger cubs.

So we know that vaccinating badgers reduces TB in badgers, and common sense says that should reduce the infection that they then spread to cattle and cattle back to badgers, but we don't have actually any data to support that. But hopefully with the Vespa project and actually as vaccination gets rolled out more, we will start to see that evidence. So very quickly, there are risks from slurry.

Thankfully, farmyard, well composted farmyard manure has very low risk. So, we think TB probably survives for up to 3 weeks. But in high liquid content slurry, we do know it can live for up to, 6 months.

And in a recent, DFA research project, one positive, PCR in reactors slaughtered at, Off farm, they found 1 PCR positive out of 72. And in experimentally infected cattle, there was 1 positive culture out of 12 animals. So we do find TB in the faeces of reactor cattle.

You have to have TB on your farm for it to be a risk, but actually, potentially it could be a risk from other TB infected farms coming onto yours. So, if you have got TB on your farm, think about where that slurry goes. Putting it onto arable land before you put it onto mowing grass, before you put it onto your grazing grass will reduce the risk.

And the more specific, Techniques you can use sort of injecting the slurry into the grass, into the soil is a lot less risky than obviously umbilical cords and splash plating where you're contaminating the grass and potentially producing aerosols that could travel. So again, thinking about what risks that slurry can have on farm. And then Slurry can obviously get onto equipment, so visitors, any contractors you've got, any shared equipment, hauliers, or could be a risk.

So thinking about where they travel through your farmyard, having a visitor plan, vets coming onto farm, making sure people do clean and disinfect is really, really important, as much for other infectious diseases as for TB. And for us, you know, lead by example, have clean waterproof and wellies, have a clean vehicle and visibly show farmers that you are conscientiously disinfecting onto farm as well as off farm. And then final risk is about the business, and this could be a whole kind of, webinar in itself, understanding all the rules and regulations to move stock off farm and where they can go.

But encouraging your farmer to sit down and think, right, what part of my business would be most disrupted by a TB breakdown? Is it that they've got heifers being reared away from home and they come back just before calving? What would happen if that heifer unit had a reactor?

Do you sell pedigree or breeding stock, and is it your reputation that would be put at risk? Do you sell store cattle? You know, you're a suckler herd, you sell all your weaned cattle once a year.

That pays your rent, that pays your bills. All of a sudden you can't sell those animals. Maybe you're a dairy farm and actually anything that isn't a dairy heifer leaves the farm before 6 weeks of age.

If those can't leave the farm, how would you manage the health and welfare, bedding them, feeding them? Maybe you're a flying herd, a lot of farmers realise they can't sell animals when they're under TB restrictions, but quite a lot don't realise they can't move animals on unless under licence. How would your loss of milk production affect your milk contract?

Maybe you're a beef finisher and you can't buy in for a period, so how would that affect your, your outputs at the other end? So just sitting down and thinking how, how these movement restrictions would impact your cash flow, health and welfare, and, and staffing on farm. And putting a plan in place, you know, making that plan for the worst.

So, where are the approved finishing units? What type of stock do they take, what price do they pay? Similarly with red and orange markets, what day of the week are they, ring the auctioneer, find out what the buyers want, what age they want, what breeds they want.

Could you set up an isolation unit? So these are single source units that can, can take TB restricted cattle off a farm. And if you are wanting to replace those cattle that you've lost, you know, encourage the farmer not to forget about all the other infectious diseases that you've spent quite a lot of hard work and effort to eradicate, such as BVD yonies.

Could you alter your breeding plan so you don't need to buy any replacement cattle? Could you start breeding your own replacements? Could you think about pre-movement testing and getting rid of, all your young stock that you don't want to keep over winter before you have your main herd TB test?

And then thinking about the checks TB, you know, that is a certificate to say I am reaching a certain level of biosecurity if you are selling those high value animals. And then finally, you know, what does the future look like? We have got more sensitive tests coming through.

I'm sure most of you've heard of the IDEX test and Mplex test. These are quite different to the skin test and the gamma test. So they're looking for antibodies.

This little graph shows you that potentially, those antibodies do start to rise, as animals have increasing pathology and are more infectious. There's a school of thought now that actually we get a peak of antibody rise at the beginning of, of the infection process, quite similar to what we understand now with Yoni. So thinking about where we use these antibodies tests, that we need policy to keep up with what farmers and vets want, and including the private vet in some of the decision making around what, what tests do get used on farms.

We've also got the cattle vaccination coming through, so it's the BCG same vaccination we put into ourselves and into badgers. It's not a great vaccine, but quite a lot of vaccines aren't perfect. A third of cattle will get some immunity, 1/3 of cattle will get no immunity, and 1/3 of cattle will get good immunity.

And that's kind of been through experimental conditions. In New Zealand, when they actually used it in the field, they did get an efficacy of about 80%, but that was, in a, a background of sort of 4% of herds shut down with TB, which we, we're not quite there yet. The downside of vaccinating cattle is that all the cattle would test positive to our conventional skin test.

So, we need a diva test to be able to tell the difference between infected animals so we can still call them out, but not take out the vaccinated ones. A couple of years ago, the government, started doing field trials on the Diva test, and it's now at stage phase two. Phase one was testing the test, the sensitivity and specificity, and now they are actually using it with the BCG vaccine.

But again, we need to think about how this policy will be introduced, which farms will be vaccinated, how that implicates trade going forward, and also one of the issues might be it does have quite a long meat withdrawal. So how does that fit into management plans? Do we put it into fattening cattle?

What, how much choice do farmers get, whether it's mandatory, who delivers it, APHA, private vets, farmers, these are all questions that we've got to answer, and hopefully the government will be consulting with, the public and the veterinary profession, the farming industry to, to find out how, how we want to use this vaccine. So, thank you for listening. My final message is that, you know, governments alone can't control TB and I think for quite a few years we've relied on them and their policies, and I think it's time as veterinary profession and the farming industry, we do start to control what we can.

We can't control all the risks. We can't do that in life, we can't do that with bovine TB, but it, it shouldn't stop farmers and vets engaging in the things we can do to either eliminate or reduce risk. So change the things you can and ultimately control, control the controllable.

Just some resources, the TB hub is a really great website. The IBTB map, that graph that I showed with the high risk area, in data is on the bovine TB interactive dashboard. There's some great epidemi epidemiology reports out there that the government produce, they're quite interesting reading.

There's some county level ones and there's the national ones, and then there's the TB Advisory Service, which offer these free visits to farmers.