Vaccination 'has no hope of even controlling bovine TB'

Jim Paice, shadow farming Minister, remarked in a Commons debate that Defra's policies regarding bovine tuberculosis (TB) had "no prospect of controlling, let alone eradicating, disease".

Environment Secretary Hilary Benn has been increasingly under fire for

his refusal to order a cull of badgers, thought to be behind the spread of TB.

Instead he has favoured a vaccination project for badgers which he said offered a "way forward".

More than 150,000 cattle have been slaughtered after contracting the disease in the past decade, including in Yorkshire.

He asked Mr Benn: "Do you really believe that your current policies have any prospect whatsoever of controlling, let alone reducing or eradicating the disease?

"Because as you well know, until we have an oral

vaccine in four years' time, any work with vaccine is bound to be only of a trial nature.

"Nobody really envisages that an injectable vaccine, which is what you've been talking about, has any real significant prospect of deployment because you've got to catch all the badgers."

The Government has accepted the conclusions of an Independent Scientific Group report which found that badger culling would not make an effective contribution to the reduction of bovine TB in cattle. The report, however, has not been peer reviewed.

Mr Benn told Mr Paice he accepted the ISG's conclusions had not been "popular".

For the Lib Dems, Tim Farron said the Government had failed to take the "tough action needed" to tackle bovine TB – instead they had set up a new animal health body, the Bovine TB Partnership Group.