Wildlife infection threat to bovine TB eradication
He told the Oireachtas Committee on Communications, Natural Resources and Agriculture, “It was only in the 1990s it became apparent a wildlife reservoir was contributing to the disease. A lot of effort was made between the 1950s and 1990s to try to eradicate disease when infection was being fed back into cattle, and we were not aware of that.
“It was only when we carried out the east Offaly project in the 1990s that we demonstrated that, within Ireland, wildlife, in particular badgers, played a significant role in the perpetuation of disease in cattle. We hope that in 2014 we will be able to speak with greater certainty on when the ultimate objective of eradicating TB will be achievable,” said Mr Blake.
That is when hard data is expected from research on the vaccination of badgers — which is an alternative to their eradication, according to Mr Blake. “We have carried out much research in the past ten years in controlled environments and recently we took the experiments into the field and vaccinated badgers in the wild. We will assess the efficacy of vaccinating badgers in the context of the transmission of TB within the badger population and between badgers and cattle.”
“In one place we are capturing and orally vaccinating badgers, and in another we are capturing and injecting badgers with vaccine. It will be a couple of years before we have data which will tell us one way or another how successful is the approach, but it is our ambition and expectation that this will have an impact on the dynamic of disease passing between wildlife such as badgers and cattle.
“We are not necessarily saying badgers will not get infected but they will not be so infected that they will become infective and pass on the disease to another animal.”
He revealed that the Department of Agriculture spent about €11m last year on testing, and about €3m on the badger removal programme.
However, deer are not seen as a significant contributor to the perpetuation of disease in the environment.
“Deer become infected because cattle and badgers are infected,” said the chief veterinary officer. “Our focus would be on controlling the infection in badgers which will reduce the infection in deer.”
