UK minister warns TB could devastate cattle industry
27/08/2013
“Bovine TB is spreading across England and devastating our cattle and dairy industries,” the government said. It said more than 28,000 cattle were slaughtered in England in 2012 because of bovine TB, and the disease is continuing to spread across that part of the United Kingdom.
Minister in charge of the department, Owen Paterson, a former tanner, said: “Bovine TB is an infectious disease that is spreading across the country and devastating our cattle and dairy industries. We know that despite the strict controls we already have in place, we won’t get on top of this terrible disease until we start dealing with the infection in badgers as well as in cattle. That’s the clear lesson from Australia, New Zealand, the Republic of Ireland and the US. We have to use every tool in the box because TB is so difficult to eradicate and it is spreading rapidly.”
He told the BBC he recognised a cull of badgers was a controversial step to take but said there was evidence from Ireland that it can make a difference. He said work was ongoing in the European Union to find new vaccines for cattle and for badgers, but that these were years away from being ready and that immediate action was required to stop the TB problem from becoming worse.
Badger vaccine exists, but Mr Paterson argued that too many badgers were already ill and capable of spreading TB among cattle, so that it would only make sense to vaccinate badgers when the levels of infection go down. He said his department estimates that around 50% of cattle infection has been spread by badgers.
He said it could take 25 years for the UK cattle herd to be completely free of TB. He added: “Carting 305,000 healthy cattle off to the abattoir at the cost of £500 million, heading into a black hole of £1 billion over the next ten years, and possibly losing our cattle industry [would be] real failure.”
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