Dr. John Griffin:

Yes. We need to be really careful in how we define eradication. It is a really good question because there is legal eradication, which means below a certain level in the herd population at 0.2% of the population. That is not biological eradication. If there is still TB in the population, it can still rise if the foot is taken off the pedal. We are really looking for biological eradication where we actually completely get rid of the disease. That is ultimately the goal but it is important to distinguish between those two points.

On the other point about the regionalisation, I will briefly mention the role of my group. I am the head of the scientific working group in the TB forum. Basically we get questions from the TB forum itself or from the Department of agriculture to look at particular issues from a scientific point of view. We look at those, review all the science and we provide information. It is important to say that we are not advocating regionalisation or anything else that we are asked to look at. We just provide the information and then it is for the Department or for the forum to decide what to do with it. With regionalisation the idea is that one take a particular part of the country initially, works that and then moves on to other parts. This is how the eradication programme started in Ireland. In 1954 Sligo and Clare were the first counties identified for TB eradication and then it gradually spread to the western counties and then to the rest of the country to the point where in 1965, we declared ourselves legally free of tuberculosis. So a regional approach was used. If we look at other countries, most countries do use a regional approach in terms of-----