Report shows badger culling essential to tb control

A report published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - the United States' premier scientific journal - shows TB must be tackled in the badger population as well as in cattle if the disease is to be controlled, says the NFU

The report concludes that, in planning disease control policies, the spread of disease from both badgers to cattle and vice versa needs to be taken into account.

NFU Deputy President Meurig Raymond said: “We already have a rigorous system of testing and movement controls in place to detect TB in cattle and cull reactors to prevent further spread.

“The clear message from this report is that we need a similar regime in place to deal with spread of the disease from the badger population.

“We are never going to defeat TB if the Government is only prepared to address part of the problem.”

Mr Raymond said that, although there was a theoretical risk that cattle could pass TB to badgers, this risk had been largely eliminated by the cattle controls in place, and was in any case much lower than the risk of badgers spreading disease to cattle.

He added: “Cattle do not secrete huge numbers of TB bacilli in the way that badgers do unless they are in the final stages of infection, by which time the condition would have become painfully apparent to the farmer and his vet.

“The results of this survey will be extremely helpful in designing strategies for culling diseased badgers, but they also confirm once again that such strategies will be essential if TB is to be defeated.”