Just to make things even clearer, the authors of the new research, Prof Keeling and Dr Brooks-Pollock, have made an announcement that the model was intended as a ‘dispassionate analysis of the information to date’. They stressed they were not criticising current control measures and were not advocating whole herd culling as a ‘viable policy option’. “Whole herd culling was investigated as one extreme but was never put forward as a viable policy option. Throughout we have stressed that any decision requires input from multiple sectors with scientific prediction only forming one element.” The research emphasises the complex routes of transmission and highlights the difficulties facing policymakers. The researchers concluded 84 per cent of new infections were caused by animal movements, with just 10 per cent of farms – labelled ‘superspreaders’ – responsible for virtually all these infections. One of the main causes of this spread is the “Imperfect cattle skin tests contribute to the spread by delaying the time until infected herds are detected for the first time and incorrectly identifying herds as clear of infection”... With this in mind, its good to see that (even more) progress has been made to the rapid test Ive been commenting on over the last few months... veterinaryrecord.bmj/content/174/13/314.1.extract
Posted on: Thu, 03 Jul 2014 08:44:25 +0000
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