Society warns scheme will have limited impact unless it is available in 'high-risk' areas

With the badger cull rumoured to start in the coming weeks, Humane Society International UK is urging Defra to expand its limited Badger Edge Vaccination Funding Scheme to high-risk areas in order to offer farmers a genuinely effective, humane and science-led alternative to culling.

The society argue that badger vaccination using the injectable BCG vaccine is a "viable alternative" to shooting badgers.  Defra is promoting public funding for vaccination in the area bordering the region worst affected by bovine TB in England. However, HSI UK warn that unless the scheme is available in 'high risk' bTB areas, and until Defra and the NFU actively counter their own anti-vaccination rhetoric, the scheme will have limited impact.

Mark Jones, veterinarian and executive director of HSI UK, said :

“We’re pleased that DEFRA has finally admitted that badger vaccination is a useful tool, but it will be too little too late unless ministers pull out all the stops to promote it to the very farmers they and the National Farmers Union have spent years trying to convince that badger vaccination is a waste of time.

"Ministers have downplayed the value of badger vaccination in recent years, in an attempt to boost support for a cull, and that negative messaging risks undermining the scheme even before it has begun. If DEFRA now wants to get buy-in from those same farmers for vaccination of badgers on their land, it needs to seriously change its rhetoric.

“But more than that, it needs to promote badger vaccination in the high-risk areas where it will actually make the greatest difference. Refusing to support vaccination in precisely those areas where bovine TB is most problematic is nonsensical. So farmers in these areas deserve a vaccination scheme or they’re being left high and dry."

In response to HSI, a spokesperson for Defra said:

“Vaccinating healthy badgers could play an important role in preventing the spread of bovine TB to new areas of the country. That is why we will shortly be launching a vaccination scheme to help create a buffer zone to stop the disease spreading.



“However, vaccination doesn’t cure infected badgers and stop them passing on TB. Overseas experience shows a comprehensive strategy that also includes cattle movement controls and continuing to cull badgers in areas where the disease is rife is likely to be most effective in moving to eradicate TB in England.”