Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 11 February 2014
508. Deputy Brendan Griffin asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine if his Department is engaged in the practice of culling badgers; his future plans for control of the badger population; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [6657/14]
View answerThe bovine Tuberculosis (TB) eradication programme, implemented by my Department, includes a wildlife strategy which involves the removal of badgers when an epidemiological investigation carried out by the Department’s Veterinary Inspectorate concludes that badgers are implicated in a serious outbreak of TB in cattle. This policy was introduced in light of research conducted over the years by the Department and others which demonstrated that the eradication of Bovine TB is not a practicable proposition until the issue of the reservoir of infection in badgers, which is seeding infection into the cattle population, is addressed.
Approximately 6,000 badgers are removed under the wildlife programme annually under licence issued by the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht. Badgers are captured by trained Farm Relief Service contractors, monitored and supervised by DAFM staff, particularly as regards animal welfare aspects.
There has been a very significant improvement in the TB situation in recent years and, in particular, since 2008: the number of reactors has declined by almost 50% from around 30,000 in 2008 to 15,600 last year, which represented a 15 % reduction on 2012 levels. This is a new record low since the commencement of the eradication programme in the 1950s and, for the first time since the programme was introduced in the 1950’s, eradication is now a practicable proposition. While it is difficult to quantify the precise impact of badger culling on the reduction in the incidence of TB in Ireland over the past 10 years or so, my Department believes that much of the improvement is in fact due to the badger removal programme. In this regard, it is noteworthy that a recent peer-reviewed study, Bovine tuberculosis trends in the UK and the Republic of Ireland, 1995–2010 (Abernethy et al., 2013), published in the Veterinary Record, found that, during the period studied, the animal incidence of TB increased by 380% in England, by 190% in Wales and by 74% in Northern Ireland. On the other hand, the animal incidence in Ireland fell by 32% in the same period (and by a further 20% since the study). Significantly, the removal of badgers is not practised in England, Wales or Northern Ireland.
My Department invests in extensive research in relation to badger ecology and vaccination programmes with the intention of developing a vaccination programme, with a view to replacing badger culling with vaccination when this is a practicable proposition. In this context, my Department has been collaborating for some years with the Centre for Veterinary Epidemiology and Risk Analysis (CVERA) in UCD and with DEFRA in the United Kingdom on research into a vaccine to control tuberculosis in badgers and to break the link of infection to cattle. Field trials are also being undertaken in several counties at present, involving the vaccination of several hundred badgers over 3 to 4 years, with continuous monitoring of the population to assess the impact of the vaccine on the incidence of disease in the vaccinated and non-vaccinated control badger populations. Success in the field trials is designed to eventually lead to implementation of a vaccination strategy as part of the national TB control programme. As it will be some years before the benefits of a vaccine can be seen, the targeted badger removals will continue in the medium term.
