Exploring Bovine TB in The UK

Overview

Delving into the problem of Bovine TB in the UK is not something that we as a team took lightly. Bovine TB is a challenging disease that is hard to treat, easily transmitted and currently illegal to vaccinate against. Put these three factors together with the highly complex social, political and economical situation the UK faces with eradicating TB, it is clear that Bovine TB is a National problem that needs a solution.

Extremely early into our project we began to appreciate this. Therefore we agreed that during our project we wanted to make people more aware of the challenges farmers, vets and local communities face when dealing with Bovine TB.

Establishing relationships with various experts early on was extremely important. Not only have these relationships shaped certain areas of our project but also gave us an unprecedented look into the issue of Bovine TB in the UK. In the beginning these experts allowed us to understand everything to do with Bovine TB in the field and as our project has developed we have been able to integrate their experiences, suggestions and feedback into the science we are doing in the lab.

Our Beyond the Bench became as much of a lesson for us as a team as it did have an impact on our Ribonostic project. Vets, farmers, politicians, the NFU and DEFRA are just to name a few of the people/organisations highly involved with our project.

Richard Sibley

Right at the start of our project we wanted to understand everything to do with current TB testing. Understanding the Tuberculin skin test, how the test is implemented in the field and some of the current issues with testing are all things we needed to appreciate. To do this we met with Richard (Dick) Sibley, director of a veterinary practice in Devon. Dick has worked directly with Bovine TB, attending multiple Mycobacterium conferences and also focusing the work of his practice towards tackling Bovine TB.

Click below to read how Dick and his practice influenced our team right from day one.

Read more Phase 1: Understand everything to do with current TB testing.

Saved and Safe

A wide range of parties are involved with tackling TB in the UK. Important to our project was to really engage with those at the forefront of TB eradication. Central to this is a company called Saved and Safe and their director Michael Ross. Michael lives in New Zealand and was highly involved with the strategy that saw a decrease in TB incidence rate of 94% in just 10 years. With their 31 UK and international partners, Saved and Safe are taking a new and innovative approach in the fight against TB, something our test could offer great potential to.

Read more Phase 2: Look at what projects are at the forefront of tackling TB.

Phil Leighton

Read more Phase 3

The Public

Read more Phase 4

NFU

Meeting with them.

Read more Phase 5

George Eustice

Minister of State at DEFRA.

Phase 6