Iain Mcgill

Prion Group

Background: Since 2013, badger culling has been part of the UK Government's strategy for controlling bovine tuberculosis (bTB) within a high-risk area (HRA) in England. Government surveillance data now enables an examination of bTB herd incidence and prevalence, its headline indicators, within and outside cull areas over the period 2009-2020. Met...

Iain McGill and Mark Jones argue that recent data released by the APHA show that it is the prevalence or ‘infectivity’ of cattle that is sustaining bTB infection and driving transmission of Mycobacterium bovis to new herds.

There are risks from disease in undertaking wild animal reintroduction programmes. Methods of disease risk analysis have been advocated to assess and mitigate these risks, and post-release health and disease surveillance can be used to assess the effectiveness of the disease risk analysis, but results for a reintroduction programme have not to date...

IN their letter entitled ‘Bovine TB in the pilot badger cull zone in Gloucestershire’ (VR, February 21, 2015, vol 176, p 208), Blowey and others claim that data derived from veterinary practices serving some farmers within the pilot badger cull zone in Gloucestershire show significant declines in bovine TB reactors. They appear to suggest the pilot...

THE recently published short communication by Roberts and others (2014) describing an unusual cluster of cases of Mycobacterium bovis infection in domestic cats in Berkshire relates to events some 12 months ago, although because of the perceived risk to human health, the report has created something of a media storm. While we would not wish to und...

WE were very concerned to see the statement from the BVA on November 5 indicating its agreement with the Chief Veterinary Officer's (CVO's) advice to ministers justifying extensions to the pilot badger culls in Somerset and Gloucestershire. There is significant concern among scientists with considerable expertise in the impact of culling badgers o...

IN view of the controversial removal of Munhuwepasi Chikosi's name from the RCVS Register, for actions including the failure to attend to an injured animal for one hour, we would appreciate it if the RCVS could please issue clear and unequivocal guidance on the duration of suffering permitted in a wild animal as a result of veterinary neglect, befo...

THE letter from Ranald Munro ( VR , June 8, 2013, vol 172, p 617), chair of the Independent Expert Panel (IEP) charged with overseeing the development of humaneness assessment protocols for the pilot badger culls and ensuring the robustness of data collection and analysis, and information Defra has so far released, both …

Four of 17 cirl buntings (Emberiza cirlus) involved in a trial translocation in 2004 for conservation purposes died and were examined postmortem. Two of the cirl buntings showed intestinal and hepatic lesions, including necrotising enteritis, consistent with isosporoid coccidiosis, and a third had an intestinal infestation of isosporoid coccidia. S...

Detailed neuropathological findings in 222 cases of naturally occurring scrapie from Great Britain are described. The material consisted of formalin-fixed brain from eight breeds of sheep submitted between 1982 and 1991. Paraffin-embedded histological sections were made from several specified brain areas, including the medulla oblongata, cerebellum...

Neuropathological observations were made in 200 clinically suspected cases of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in which pathognomonic vacuolar changes were absent. Routine histological and immunocytochemical techniques were applied to formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded sections of the central nervous system. Significant neuropathological findi...

Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) and Gerstmann-Strüssler-Scheinker disease (GSSD) are transmissible spongiform encephalopathies or prion diseases affecting man. It has been reported that prion diseases may occur without the histological hallmarks of spongiform encephalopathies: vacuolation of the cerebral grey matter, neuronal loss and astrocytosis....

Since 1986, naturally occurring scrapie-like encephalopathies have been described in the United Kingdom in domestic cattle, in five species of captive exotic bovids and in domestic cats. The disease in domestic cattle, bovine spongiform encephalopathy, has been characterised by all currently available diagnostic criteria as a transmissible spongifo...

The occurrence of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), recognition that it is a new scrapie-like disease epidemic in domestic cattle in the United Kingdom and concern of a remote zoonotic potential has, in four years, produced a plethora of documented information. While much of this information has been communicated outwith the scientific litera...