Annex 2
RATIONAL BEHIND
PROTOCOL OF
INSET 23
1. M. bovis was a zoonosis as evidenced
by Scrofula and may also cause disease in humans by other routes
of infection, particulary as it is frequently found in the respiratory
tract of cattle. It should also be kept out of the food chain
by preventing infected cattle to be slaughtered for human consumption.
2. M. bovis in cattle was made notifiable
and the legislation encapsulated by Inset 23.
3. What were the premises on which Inset
23 was based?
4. M. tuberculosis was a serious and at
the time an ultimately fatal disease of the human respiratory
tract and as M. bovis was also found in the respiratory tract
of cattle it might cause a similar respiratory disease in humans.
5. Inset 23 therefore, was written primarily
on the assumption that M. bovis spread from cattle to cattle via
the respiratory tract just like M. tuberculosis in humans. This
led to the legislation being written some 60 years ago and left
unchanged and unchallenged to the present day. The result is that
within the farming industry of the 21st century this legislation
has become excessively restrictive and financially punitive to
farms with discovered cases of TB. In my view the original grounds
on which the legislation was based were, and still are, spurious
and should be challenged.
REASONS FOR
REJECTING VALIDITY
OF INSET
23 PROTOCOL
1. Assumption made in paragraph 4 above
is totally flawed for the following reasons:
a) Anectdotal evidence from cases I dealt
with on Powys farms in the early 90s, where despite close contact
between open cases and other susceptible animals, no infection
developed in respiratory tracts of any of the susceptible animals.
b) Accepting that infected badgers contaminate
grass of grazing cattle and cattle are primarily infected by ingestion
there is a very simple and satisfactory explanation why cattle
so often have infection in their respiratory tracts. It is due
to their idiosyncratic grooming behaviour. Cattle are the only
domestic species to push their tongues up their nostrils as part
of their grooming process. What better way to introduce infection
from the alimentary to the respiratory tract? An infected tongue
would act just like a bacterial swab.
c) Investigation of the records of human
TB infection notified over the decade preceding 1995 showed that
each year there were about 2000 cases of TB. Of these around 80%
were due to M. tuberculosis and around 18-19.5 % due to numerous
exotic species. Only 0.5-2% were caused by M. bovis. Further investigation
of this group revealed that most confirmed cases were found in
immigrants from countries where the consumption of non-pasteurised
milk was the norm.
PROBLEMS ASSOCIATED
WITH EFFECTING
CHANGE
1. Government policy is the distillation
of multifarious inputs, but in this sort of instance veterinary
advice from the State Veterinary Service would be weighed heavily.
2. Inset 23 is under the jurisdiction of
the State Veterinary Service within DEFRA and to advise change
would require a clinical veterinary approach rather than that
of dogma. In my extensive experience of veterinary surgeons in
the SVS they are not able to adopt a clinical approach, simply
because of minimal "hands on" clinical experience. They
are merely civil servants with a veterinary degree and as such
are a totally different animal. They would not be sympathetic
to any change in the dogma of Inset 23 without irrefutable evidence
that it is flawed. My experience is that such a clinically persuasive
and simple explanation for the specious grounds on which Inset
23 is based would be dismissed out of hand.
3. Acceptable irrefutable evidence to support
my clinically based hypothesis could only be obtained by suitable
research both at field level and also by looking critically at
the epidemiology of recorded outbreaks. Unfortunately, in the
present political climate funding for this type of research may
prove very hard to find.
4. Such research, I am sure, would turn
up enough confirmation of my theory to allow at least a "risk
analysis" approach to be applied to the protocol of Inset
23, rather than the draconian punitive measures that are employed
at present. In my opinion, provided there are adequate safeguards
retained to prevent the presentation of infected animals at slaughterhouses
the restrictive measures could be considerably eased to the enormous
benefit of large numbers of farmers present and future.
5. $64,000 question; how best could an official
reconsideration of the propriety of Inset 23 be effected? Is there
a route on which to build a successful lobby?
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