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Devon badger vaccination trial due in May

FARMERS GUARDIAN
20 April 2011

A four-year badger vaccination programme, which could pave the way to the widespread use of vaccination as a way of tackling bovine TB in cattle, will get underway next month on 18 farms on the National Trust’s Killerton estate in Devon.

Funded by the charity, which owns many farms in hot-spot areas, it is hoped the programme, costing £80,000 per year, will show vaccination as a viable alternative to culling as a means of controlling the disease in wildlife.

Mark Harold, director for the trust’s South West region, said: “In many areas of the UK there are clearly practical problems in implementing an effective cull of badgers to reduce bovine TB in cattle.

“In these instances, vaccination of badgers would appear to be the most effective way of controlling the wildlife reservoir of the disease, and with the advent of oral vaccines, this approach could be significantly cheaper too.

“This programme will show how badger vaccination can be deployed over a large area, and will pave the way for more widespread use of vaccination as an effective alternative to culling.

“While a vaccine for cattle is some way off, and there are wider regulatory issues making this difficult, giving the badgers a vaccine to stop the spread of bovine TB is a practical way forward and the recent evidence is it works and is effective.”

Mr Harold added: “The evidence to date suggests a vaccination for badgers should be one of the tools we use to tackle bovine TB. As it doesn’t result in the ‘perturbation’ effect it will not expose our tenants to the increased risk of bovine TB breakdown that comes with culling.”

The programme will last until 2015 and covers an area of 20sq km on the estate.

The administration of the vaccine to the badgers will be carried out by trained and licensed experts from the Food and Environment Research Agency.

Badgers will be caught in live traps, without being harmed, injected with the vaccine and then marked so they are not given the vaccine twice during a trapping operation.

The Badger Trust welcomed the announcement, although it said it’ regrets an earlier National Trust statement that it would not object to culls taking place in areas including its land, where it could be shown all other routes had been explored’.

The Badger Trust claimed vaccination was ‘the proven way forward rather than killing’, due to the risk of disease spreading to adjoining land through badger ‘perturbation’ when badgers are culled.

The Country Land and Business Association (CLA) also welcomed the announcement but warned that vaccination must not be seen as the ‘complete solution’

CLA president William Worsley said: “Nobody disputes the scale of bovine TB, so it is fantastic that a major landowner like the National Trust accepts that badgers are the main factor and is looking into solutions.

“However, vaccination is not a complete solution. The science still has some way to go and as the figures produced by the National Trust show, the costs involved are high and out of reach for ordinary working farmers.

“While it is true that no country has eradicated TB by culling alone, nowhere has eradicated it without any culling at all.”

Killerton

The Killerton estate is 2,590 hectares (6,400 acres).

The National Trust manages 250,000ha of land in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

80 per cent of its land is farmed and it has 2,000 tenant farm tenancies.

Vaccination

Research and development into oral bait-based vaccination is ongoing, and is likely to be easier and cheaper to apply.

Research on how to deliver oral bait to badgers in the most cost-effective way is also being carried out on the Killerton estate this year.

The Welsh Assembly Government and Defra in England are both currently considering options for how to best reduce the impact of bovine TB. They are expected to make an announcement on their respective decisions later this spring.

 

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