In a 2010 opinion piece in "Trends in Microbiology", Paul and David Torgerson argued that bovine tuberculosis is a negligible public-health problem in the UK, providing milk is pasteurized. Bovine TB is very rarely spread by aerosol from cattle to humans. Therefore, the bovine tuberculosis control programme in the UK in its present form is a misallocation of resources and provides no benefit to society. Indeed, very little evidence exists of a positive cost benefit to the livestock industry, as few studies have been undertaken on the direct costs of bovine TB to animal production. Milk pasteurisation was the single public health intervention that prevented the transmission of bovine TB to humans, and no justification for the present test and cull policy in the UK is seen.