Bovine tuberculosis in cattle herds causes animal suffering, requires mass culling, and creates conflicts between farming communities and wildlife over disease transmission.
Bovine tuberculosis imposes welfare costs at multiple levels. Infected cattle experience progressive respiratory disease causing debilitation and suffering before slaughter. The mass culling of herds with TB reactors causes stress in individual animals and disrupts social bonds within herds. The badger culling programs implemented in response to wildlife transmission impose welfare costs on badger populations including inefficiency-related deaths and social disruption. Vaccination strategies for both cattle and wildlife offer a path toward disease control without the welfare costs of mass culling, though implementation timescales remain long.