Contrary to how it looks, this is Sage's 'happy' face because Sage, along with his mother, two half sisters and a cousin once removed (or something like that), was today declared TB FREE!!!
Despite the fact we are low risk (albeit in a very high risk area): only 5 cows, very little on and off movements from our land, no cattle movements at all, no badgers, no cows in any neighbouring fields, pretty good bio-security (including double fencing and/or hedging on all boundaries and a 'collecting' area just off the road into our land), it is still always a worry!!!
Without wishing to get too controversial, it seems unlikely to us we will eradicate TB with the current system. We talked at length to the vet about it today. The skin test only picks out around 50% - 80% of animals with TB, the blood test is more (85% we think) but it is much more likely to pick out animals that DON'T have it, whilst the skin test is very unlikely to result in false positives. Is killing badgers helpful (unlikely), can we stop movements - no, does it cause huge emotional and financial devastation, yes.
TB incidences are less than 2% countrywide apparently (otherwise we would not have our TB-free status and be able to trade) but when TB is found in a herd, it averages out at being found in 10% of the animals. If you have 100, 200, 500 cows, that is a LOT of cows!!
(these figures came via our vets... but I have been fact checking some.)
Deep sigh because we have no answers (other than to try to follow as many of the 'low-risk' strategies mentioned above as possible).