Com: Country : A well-respected retired academic was recently trampled to death by cattle while walking in Oxford. In 2012, my father was hospitalised after being attacked by cows while walking his dogs through a field next to his village. He picked up his dog and was pushed to the floor and trampled before escaping over a wall.

My colleague, Marie, meanwhile, is a keen cross-country runner, and regularly runs with her dog (or is chased) through fields where both dairy and beef cattle graze. These kinds of incident raise questions about the safety of the public near livestock. And we asked these same questions when we conducted research on this very topic.

There are about 9.7m cattle in the UK. Meanwhile, 3.6 billion people annually visit the countryside, with dog walking accounting for 51% of visits. This means that the general public are likely regularly to encounter livestock.