Queen guitarist Sir Brian May believes that improving farm hygiene could help to provide a solution to the problem of bovine tuberculosis.
May, 77, has been campaigning against badger culling to tackle bTB for more than a decade, claiming the animal has been “brutally persecuted”.
Cattle are regularly tested and destroyed if the disease is found, with more than 50,000 slaughtered in the UK between April last year and March this year.
A leading vet said May’s findings could not be viewed in isolation, while a farmer who has lost 500 of his herd to the disease said badgers “do contribute” to the bTB problem.
A badger culling programme in England to combat bTB began 11 years ago. Widespread badger culling is not used in Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland.
In England, it remains a controversial weapon in the important battle to keep cows free of a disease that puts both them and humans at risk.
By next year, it is likely to have resulted in the deaths of 250,000 badgers, costing the UK taxpayer more than £100m.
Labour pledged before last month’s general election to look at new ways to tackle bTB spread “so that we can end the ineffective badger cull”.
In a new personally authored BBC documentary, after commissioned research which took more than 10 years, May has questioned the idea that badgers are a significant factor in the spread of bTB, suggesting that cattle could be passing it between themselves.
“At the root of it all there are certain principles which need to be followed which are really keeping the pathogen
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