Ireland and Bovine Tuberculosis

Bovine Tuberculosis (bTB) is a zoonotic disease affecting cattle, wildlife, and occasionally humans. It remains a persistent and complex challenge for Ireland’s agricultural sector, threatening the economic viability of farmers and the broader agri-food industry.

With herd infection incidence rates rising from 4.31% in 2022 to 6.04% in 2024 (a 36% increase) and reported projections by Irelands Farmers Journal estimating over 63,000 reactor (those diagnosed with the disease) cattle by early 2026, Ireland faces a critical juncture in its efforts to control and eradicate this disease.

The challenges for Ireland are deepened by the fact that historically there has been a major divergence between Ireland’s farming community and its Department of Agriculture, Food, the Marine and Fisheries, on the operational and cost aspects of the attempts to eliminate the disease; although at present a wide-ranging stakeholder engagement process to develop a new strategy is taking place, driven by the present Minister Martin Heydon.

This follows the launch of the previous iteration of the bovine TB eradication strategy in 2021 that was itself was preceded by a stakeholder discussion body, the TB Forum, that had been established in 2018 and which remains ongoing.

This strategy set out a number of actions to address not only cattle-to-cattle but crucially badger-to-cattle bTB transmission. This was vital as Ireland had experienced something of a resurgence of the disease with herd incidence reaching levels not seen since 2003. Some of this was also due in part to the significant growth in Irelands dairy herd numbers.

Criticisms have been raised however by both the Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) and the Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers’ Association (ICSA) regarding inadequate funding for the eradication programme.

Ireland’s bTB eradication program, aligned with EU directives, aims to reduce herd incidence and achieve “officially tuberculosis free” (OTF) status, a goal met by 17 EU countries with herd prevalence below 0.1% for six consecutive years.

However, Ireland’s current trajectory and herd incidence rates places it among seven EU member states reliant on eradication programs, alongside Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Hungary, Malta, and Romania. The disease’s persistence threatens Ireland’s €13 billion agri-food export market, particularly beef exports to OTF countries, which require stringent movement controls.

A primary challenge in Ireland’s bTB eradication efforts is the role of wildlife, particularly the Eurasian badger, as “a disease reservoir.”

Badgers are implicated in approximately 40% of herd breakdowns, transmitting bTB to cattle through direct contact or environmental contamination. Ireland’s wildlife management strategy includes targeted culling of badgers annually in high-risk areas, and a growing badger vaccination program using oral BCG vaccine.

Ireland’s previous Minister for Agriculture, Charlie McConalogue has outlined the historical dimension to this aspect of the crisis. He has stated in parliamentary replies for instance that the issue of wildlife badgers diagnosed as carriers of the bacterium that causes bovine tuberculosis was only first identified in Ireland in 1974, although it was accepted that its significance was not fully understood at that stage.

This was followed in the 1980’s with the East Offaly project that eventually provided definitive evidence of the role of badgers play in the epidemiology of TB. Following this a large-scale trial over a five-year period from 1997 to 2002 began in areas within Counties Donegal, Monaghan, Kilkenny, and Cork. Crucially this trial demonstrated that that there were significant reductions (from two-fold to four-fold) in the incidence of TB in areas where badgers were removed relative to areas where badgers were not removed.

Since 2018, vaccination has expanded to cover 30% of the program area, with plans to reduce culling of badgers from this year.

Despite these efforts, challenges persist. Badger culling, while effective in reducing herd incidence (as also evidenced by a 56% reduction in England’s high-risk areas from 2013–2021), faces ethical criticism and public opposition.

The Irish Wildlife Trust has been to the forefront of such ethical criticisms. It has repeatedly outlined its opposition to the use of badger culling as a technique for Bovine TB management in Ireland. The Trust maintains a position that badgers are not to blame for the bovine TB issue in the national herd and that factors such as farm biosecurity and cattle density are more significant.

Critics have also argued that the vaccination approach is overly complex, requiring trapping and administration across vast rural areas. There is also a view that scaling up vaccination to replace culling has remained far too slow a process, hindered by resource constraints and suggestions that other wildlife, such as deer, may also contribute to bTB transmission. But as their role is less studied, this has complicated comprehensive wildlife management.

Additional aspects of the problem in terms of reducing infection or reactor rates relates to Ireland’s historical reliance on the single intradermal comparative cervical tuberculin test (SICCT).

While the SICCT is mandated by EU regulations, it only has a sensitivity rate of 55–80%. This has contributed to testing missing latent infections and thereby allowing undetected transmission within herds. While there is an alternative test (the interferon-gamma (IFN-γ) assay) that can be used in high-risk herds, critics including farmers have pointed out that while it detects infections earlier it also produces higher false positives, leading to unnecessary culling.

That being said Ireland did participate in EU-funded research, such as the BovTB Horizon 2020 project with the aim of developing advanced diagnostic tests, but the resultant innovations are not yet widely implemented.

Countering TB rates in Ireland is also exacerbated by Ireland’s traditional and highly active cattle trade network. Such high movement rates, particularly through livestock marts and to the UK, have been implicated in enabling transmission from high-risk herds.

To address this Ireland’s Department of Agriculture and the EU proposed measures, such as a 30-day pre-movement test under the Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2020/689. This required farmers who wanted to maintain their herds TB Free Status and thus their ability to trade on the open market, to be TB tested either within the 30 days prior to movement (such as a mart sale) or within 30 days after movement into their herd.

This proposal was vociferously opposed by Irish farmer organisations such as the Irish Farmers Association who feared that the proposed introduction of a 30-day pre-movement test would “severely distort the marketing of animals and place an extra cost burden on the programme, while doing little or nothing to reduce TB.”

The IFA also strongly suggested that the additional testing requirements were driven more by financial gain that scientific necessity. Its spokesperson speaking in 2020 put it this way: “We need to address the real causes of TB, not put another wheel under the TB testing gravy train

While Ireland’s Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) is increasing funding for testing and compensation, farmers remain fearful that the current estimated cost to them of €150m (in terms of tests and lost product) will continue. Farmers remember all too well the decision of the TB Forum’s Financial Working Group when deferred discussions on additional payments in February 2023. This has left a lingering sense of economic uncertainty.

Ensuring that additional testing is fully state-funded is thereby seen by farmers and their representative organisations as critical to maintaining farmer support, particularly as economic viability is already strained by rising input costs and international market volatility.

There are many signs however that the Irish Government is taking these and other related concerns seriously.

It desperately wants to avoid a repeat of the situation similar to that which occurred in 2023 when beef shipments to China were suspended following the confirmation of an isolated case of atypical BSE in a cow.

The Bovine TB Stakeholders Forum and Minister Martin Heydon’s 2025 initiative to reset the TB program, following a stakeholder summit on May 8, emphasised science-based proposals to support TB-free herds, reduce wildlife transmission, enhance early detection, improve biosecurity, and manage high-risk animals. These efforts build on the TB Strategy outlined at www.bovinetb.ie, which integrates EU co-funding for training and compensation.

However, stakeholder tensions persist. Farmers demand guarantees against additional costs, while scientific and veterinary expertise pushes for robust measures to reverse rising incidence. Balancing these priorities requires leadership across the political spectrum, farm organisations, and private veterinary practitioners, who play a daily role in testing and advising farmers.

It is clear then that decisive action and collaborative leadership will be essential to protect farm families and secure the future of Ireland’s beef and agricultural economy.