South West farmers leading new badger vaccination project

A NEW project is underway in Cornwall to explore the "contribution, effectiveness and practicality" of professionally scaled-up, industry delivered badger vaccination as part of a comprehensive TB eradication strategy.

- WMN REPORTER

The three-year research project has been driven by farmers in the county who want to better understand the impact badger vaccination may have, both in preventing TB in the badger population and, critically, in cattle herds.

With a reduction in bovine TB in England over the past decade, farmers are looking to develop the tools needed to maintain this trajectory to reach TB eradication, especially as wildlife control licenses come to an end.

The National Farmers' Union (NFU) and ZSL (Zoological Society of London) successfully secured £1.4 million of Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) funding to enable this work to take place.

A previous study, implemented on a small scale by ZSL and the Cornwall Wildlife Trust, found that the number of badgers testing positive for exposure to TB dropped from 16% to 0% over four years of vaccination.