Danny Healy-Rae
Question:707. Deputy Danny Healy-Rae asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine to provide an update on TB testing for animals (details supplied); and if he will make a statement on the matter. [65426/25]
View answerTuesday, 25 November 2025
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There are two official tests for Bovine TB (bTB), the skin test and the gamma interferon blood test. While the specificity of the skin test is very high, (meaning it produces very few false positives), the sensitivity (the ability to detect truly infected cattle) is no more than 80%. In contrast, the blood test has a better sensitivity but lesser specificity.
Within the bovine TB eradication programme, blood testing is used primarily to augment the sensitivity of the skin test, to detect TB infected cattle which the skin test failed to detect, and to detect animals at an earlier stage in the disease process. The routine blood testing of animals already confirmed as reactors following a skin test would be of no benefit. The objective of deploying the blood test is to detect infection earlier, so that infected cattle can be removed quicker thereby shortening bTB breakdowns and reducing the risk of breakdown recurrence. This has the effect of lessening the impact of TB on farmers and their families.