Bluetongue test backlog raises disease surveillance fears

A backlog in bluetongue testing is leaving farmers waiting weeks for results, raising concerns over disease surveillance as BTV-3 spreads across Britain.

More than 2,200 suspected cases are currently under investigation, while farmers and vets report waiting two to three weeks for results.

See also: Bluetongue control zone imposed in south-west Scotland

UK deputy chief veterinary officer Ele Brown acknowledged laboratories were struggling with the surge.

“We are working very hard to get through the backlog on testing.

“We know that we’ve had a large surge of cases that have come through,” she told an NFU and NFU Cymru webinar on Monday 24 August.

Additional staff are being deployed to laboratories and reporting teams, but Dr Brown acknowledged confirmed figures were lagging behind reports from farms.

“Don’t be complacent by that confirmed map,” she warned.

As of 24 August, official government figures show 618 premises had been confirmed with BTV-3 during the 2026-27 season – 580 in England, 29 in Wales and nine in Scotland.

A further 2,236 potential cases were under investigation across Great Britain.

Disease vigilance

The backlog is also raising wider disease surveillance concerns, with some BTV symptoms potentially confused with other notifiable diseases.

Wales’ chief veterinary officer Richard Irvine warned farmers and vets against assuming illness was necessarily bluetongue virus sereotype 3 (BTV-3).

“We need to maintain that vigilance, not just for bluetongue, but so that we don’t miss any other diseases,” he said.

“We know in Europe, in the last year or two, foot-and-mouth disease has been present.

“We do not have foot-and-mouth disease in the UK, but nor would we want to inadvertently miss it.”

Farmer kept waiting

Exmoor beef and sheep farmer Richard Stanbury said he was still waiting for confirmation three weeks after reporting suspected BTV-3.

“I’m still none the wiser if we got BTV-3, and that’s really disappointing because I haven’t had the results back,” he said.

“If we were dealing with something else, this could be an absolute mess.”

Mr Stanbury, who remembers the 2001 foot-and-mouth outbreak, said some of the symptoms were similar and urged farmers to remain vigilant.

NFU president Tom Bradshaw said the union was pressing the Animal and Plant Health Agency (Apha) and Defra to streamline testing and wants reported cases published alongside confirmed outbreaks.

“We’d like an interactive map where they actually show the reported cases, rather than just the confirmed cases,” he said.

Mr Bradshaw said reported-case data could give farmers significantly earlier warning of where the virus was spreading, with the current confirmed map potentially lagging by almost three weeks.

The NFU is also seeking simpler batch reporting to ease pressure on farmers and vets dealing with the outbreak.

Capacity concerns

Speaking to Farmers Weekly, shadow Defra farming minister Robbie Moore said the delays meant official figures were failing to keep pace with the virus’s spread.

“There is obviously a capacity issue,” he said. “Otherwise, why are these test results taking so long to be turned around?” 

Mr Moore called for testing capacity to increase and the reporting system to be simplified.

“I don’t think that Defra are treating this as a national emergency, which it needs to be treated as at the moment,” he added.