Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what research her Department has commissioned to date into the spread of TB from hunting hounds to cattle.

Bovine TB is a notifiable disease in all farmed and pet mammal species, including dogs. The disease has only very rarely been diagnosed in dogs, in this country and elsewhere, and investigations into bovine TB breakdowns in cattle herds have never identified the source of a breakdown as an infected dog.