THE bacterium that causes tuberculosis in cattle remains alive in the soil for up to four months. This finding means that after an outbreak on a farm, any healthy cattle could potentially pick up the disease from pasture that had previously been used by the infected animals.
Jamie Young and his colleagues at the University of Warwick added samples of Mycobacterium bovis—the bacterium that causes bovine TB—to boxes of soil in the lab. The soil was kept under conditions that mimicked those outdoors and was sampled at intervals for the presence of the bacteria. The researchers found that live bacteria…
