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A total of 7,623 bovine TB reactor animals have been taken off farms in NI over the first six months of 2018.
The total is virtually unchanged from the same period in 2017, when 7,715 animals were removed, but is still up 41% on the equivalent figures from 2016, highlighting that TB remains a very costly issue for government in NI. Across all of 2017, compensation for reactor animals came to £23.4m, out of a total cost against the TB programme of £37.8m. The most recent DAERA figures for June 2018 show that 251 herds had at least one reactor at a test, and 123 of these herds were new breakdowns. Herd incidence (the number of new reactor herds out of the total that test) for the first six months of 2018 now stands at 6.28%. That figure started in January at 5.1% and has risen every month since then. However, it is still significantly behind the 9.61% incidence rate for 2017. In June 2018 just over 3,000 cattle herds in NI were under some form of TB movement restriction.
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