Dear Editor

With regard to the alarming increase in bovine TB (bTB) reactor numbers, it is disappointing to hear the narrative in the media from senior department officials who blame the cause of the problem on everything from the expansion of the dairy herd to contract heifer rearing and even zero grazing, while at the same time playing down the true problem of it being widespread in a wildlife population with no natural predators.

The attempt in recent years to vaccinate a population of wild animals has been a dismal failure, where the policy seems to have been to vaccinate those that we can find and let them go forth and multiply.

This leads to a miniscule number actually achieving immunity.

This has led to a huge increase in restricted herds in these vaccination areas.

The proliferation of wildlife that are also bTB vectors is not sustainable.

In contrast, the measures put in place when reactor animals are removed from a herd, controls and disinfection are mandatory, yet infected earths are open to be inhabited by wildlife whose disease status is largely unknown.

In the last two months, I’ve lost 40% of my herd to a TB outbreak after being free for over 20 years, it has been a completely closed herd for over 15 years, no stock bull, no contract rearing, no contact with other cattle.

Having invested in trail cameras, it is evident that there is a large wildlife population entering the farm.

Until the powers that be accept that this is primarily a wildlife problem and stop wasting resources on distractions maybe then we can return to the level of progress that was achieved at the inception of the eradication programme in the 1950s and 1960s.