Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask His Majesty's Government what trials they intend to conduct and publish on the efficacy of vaccinating badgers in the wild against bovine tuberculosis, and its impact on transmission to cattle, before transitioning from culling to vaccination.

There is already a significant evidence base which underpins the use of badger vaccination as a tool for the control of bovine tuberculosis (TB). Trials on captive badgers, modelling studies and field studies on wild badgers all indicate that badger vaccination will significantly reduce the risk of infection and spread of disease within badger populations. Logically, as badgers cause a proportion of cattle breakdowns each year, and since badger vaccination has been proven to reduce the disease burden in the badger population, vaccination should result in a reduction in TB incidence in cattle where badgers are the source of infection. This has also been demonstrated by large scale field trials in Ireland which found that badger vaccination is not inferior to badger culling at controlling TB in cattle. Vaccination would also play a role in protecting healthy badgers, preventing the spread of TB from cattle to badgers.

On 30 August, the Government announced the start of work to refresh the Bovine TB strategy for England, to end the badger cull by the end of this parliament and drive down disease to save cattle and farmers’ livelihoods. This includes establishing a new Badger Vaccinator Field Force to increase badger vaccination delivery to drive down TB rates and protect badgers.

Wider deployment of badger vaccination will increase opportunities for further research on its effect in badgers and cattle, by creating the large and contiguous areas of vaccination needed to be able to detect an effect. Accordingly, as part of this recent announcement, the Government has committed to rapidly analyse the effect of badger vaccination on the incidence of TB in cattle, to encourage farmers to take part and provide greater confidence that doing so will have a positive effect on their cattle. This will build on the analytical work that is already underway in the Animal and Plant Health Agency using a “herd-level” analysis of historic badger vaccination data.