Proportion of TB infected herds in each county of Great Britain
The maps below show the proportions of herds in each county which were infected with bovine TB. First select the year from the dropdown at the top of the map and then hover your mouse over the centre of each county to get details for that county. Select a year in the second map to see how the distribution and intensity of the disease differs between the two years.Please note that TB levels fluctuate significantly from year to year which makes identification of the progression of the disease difficult unless the data is smoothed. The annual data shown in the maps below are not smoothed.
In the above maps the percentages of restricted herds in England were calculated by dividing the number of herds under TB movement restriction (non-OTF) by the total number of herds.
The total number of herds for 2009 and 2010 were calculated by extrapolation using the total number of herds in 1998 and in 2008 for all counties except for Cambridgeshire. In Cambridgeshire, the total number of herds in 2007 were used instead of the total number of herds in 2008.
The percentages of restricted herds in Wales were calculated by dividing the number of herds under TB movement restriction (non-OTF) by
- the total number of herds for years 1998 to 2008
- the total number of herds for years 2009
- the total number of herds for years 2010.
The percentages of restricted herds in Scotland were calculated by dividing the number of herds under TB movement restriction (non-OTF) by the total number of herds.
Regarding the availability of county data on the DEFRA web site, David Heath, the Minister of State for Agriculture and Food (current on 07Nov12) said the following in a reply dated 29Oct12 in Hansard Written Answers and Statements.
Quality assurance work is currently being carried out on historic country and county level bovine tuberculosis statistics, including the number slaughtered as a result of contracting tuberculosis, and these are not all currently available. These will be published during the next few months.
It is now 11 months (Date of edit: 20th Sep 2013) since David Heath made this announcement. Details regarding problems faced by DEFRA in extending historic county herd data are given here.
When/If the associated data subsequently becomes available on the DEFRA web site, such data will be smoothed and shown in the above maps together with data for the Republic of Ireland for which county data is available. Data for Northern Ireland will also be shown if NI are able to send to me the necessary data.
In summary, extension of these maps is planned as follows.
- Inclusion of data from the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland.
- Inclusion of cattle densities.
- Inclusion of badger densities (should such data become available for any year).
- Averaging of data over at least 5 years to take out any large annual fluctuations.