Dr. Damien Barrett:

It is not. It has a sensitivity of over 90% and but it has a specificity of the same. The trouble is rolling that out over 7 million cattle will lead to an awful lot of false positives. The big issue with blood tests is the lack of specificity and false positives. If we deemed animals which fail blood tests to be reactors and if we carried out blood tests on a wide scale, it would mean reactor numbers would balloon.

On the removal of reactors, farmers are advised to isolate them. Reactor removal times, on average, are 15 days. It is two days from when all the agreements are signed off. It could be faster but it is relatively fast given the administrative issues to be addressed.

I am glad the Senator asked about the relative merits of cattle-to-cattle transmission versus badger-to-cattle transmission. One UK study showed cattle-to-cattle transmission is 17 times greater than badger-to-cattle transmission. It is well established that spread within species is far greater than spread between species.