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Bovine tuberculosis (bTB) remains a major endemic infectious disease in cattle worldwide and a seri-
ous zoonosis. It remains a source of economic loss in several countries, even in those that introduced
comprehensive control and eradication schemes many decades ago. In countries that do not cur-
rently have the infrastructure to introduce national control measures, zoonotic transmission of
infection continues to inflict morbidity and mortality in humans of all ages.
Despite the recent publication of a number of books covering bTB, these have emphasized the
diagnosis and epidemiology of Mycobacterium bovis in different countries (Thoen et al., 2006, ISBN-
13: Ib. 978-0813809199; 2014, ISBN: 978-1-118-47429-7), or include M. bovis amongst other
mycobacteria such as M. tuberculosis and M. leprae (Mukundan et al., 2015, ISBN-13: 978-
1780643960). We felt that there was need for a book covering all aspects of M. bovis biology and
infection: epidemiological, pathological, microbiological, genomic and immunological together with
a comparative approach to the different control schemes being undertaken in different countries.
Indeed, despite the well-known threat of M. bovis to human health, zoonotic tuberculosis in humans
has long been neglected. For this reason, in October 2017, a Zoonotic Tuberculosis Roadmap was
launched as a joint effort between the World Health Organization (WHO), The International Union
Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (The Union), the World Health Organization for Animal
Health (OIE), and the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) to address the prevention, control,
and treatment challenges faced by communities at higher risk of contracting zoonotic tuberculosis.
This roadmap recognizes ‘the interdependence of the health of people and animals, and the impor-
tance of a One Health approach to zoonotic TB, which draw on expertise and collaborative relation-
ships across different sectors and disciplines’. We therefore see the publication of this book as timely,
bringing together international experts to provide a current synthesis of the key issues facing us in
the control of bTB.
Huge progress has been made in controlling bTB in the last 100 years. In the late 19th century
and early years of the 20th century, comprehensive pathological and microbiological analysis of
bovine and human disease demonstrated that M. bovis could cause generalized disease in man. Ini-
tial control of zoonotic infection involved milk pasteurization. National control schemes were intro-
duced in the early 20th century in many European countries, North America and Australasia, which
resulted in ever-increasing areas within individual countries with ever-decreasing levels of infection.
Many developed countries are now ‘officially’ TB free. This has all been done through the use of the
tuberculin skin test, relying as it does on a relatively crude antigen preparation that is difficult to