Blue tongue

I don't think I am particularly thick, but I do find it difficult to make sense of Defra's approach to this problem. News reports state that the infected animal has been culled to try and prevent the spread of the disease, and yet in the next breath we are told that the disease is not contagious, but is transmitted by the bite of midges carrying the virus. So does this make sense? There may have been other good reasons for slaughtering the animal - humanitarian perhaps - but it would seem that to have any effect on the probability of the disease spreading, it's the midges you need to target.