This week, Wildlife Matters Investigates Badger Vaccination – The Facts.
In today’s world, vaccinations are more important than ever in preventing the spread of airborne viruses or bacteria. The UK government recognises Coronaviruses as a vast family of viruses, with some causing mild illnesses like the common cold, while others can lead to severe conditions like Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) or severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) coronaviruses. This includes the SARS-CoV2 coronavirus, commonly known as Covid-19.
Tuberculosis (TB) is an infection caused by a bacterium belonging to the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex, which includes M. tuberculosis, M. africanum, M. bovis, and some rare bacteria like M. microtia and M. pinnipedii, according to the UK Government. It is a notifiable disease in the UK.
Our primary focus is on M. Bovis, a highly contagious form of bovine tuberculosis that threatens cattle and other animals. This infectious disease is caused by Mycobacterium bovis (M. bovis) and can even affect humans, deer, goats, pigs, cats, dogs, and badgers. It is mainly a respiratory disease in cattle, but clinical signs are rare. Both Mycobacterium bovis and the human form Mycobacterium tuberculosis can cause TB in humans.
The Bacillus Calmette–Guérin vaccine, commonly known as BCG, is a crucial defence against tuberculosis (TB). Developed by Albert Calmette and Camille Guérin in 1921, it was widely administered to adults in the UK and worldwide during our secondary school years. The success of the BCG vaccination program led to the discontinuation of routine vaccinations for teenagers in the UK in 2005. Currently, the UK government recommends that all newborns receive the BCG vaccine within 28 days of birth to ensure their protection against TB.
The vaccination of badgers to stop the spread of bovine TB in cattle in the UK was first introduced in 2010. Vaccination can contribute to disease control by reducing the number of susceptible and infectious individuals in a population and thereby reducing the number of new infections. If badgers are an important source of bovine TB infection in cattle, reducing disease incidence in badgers should result in fewer new infections in livestock.
However, the actual impact of badger vaccination on cattle TB incidence remains a significant knowledge gap. The UK Government promised to fund the development of badger vaccines against bTB as ‘one of the tools in their box’ to control bTB. This resulted in approving the injectable BCG vaccine for badgers, which became UK legislation in 2010.
The Veterinary Surgery [Vaccination of Badgers Against Tuberculosis] Order of 2010 was enacted to allow suitably trained ‘lay vaccinators’ (i.e. non-veterinarians) to vaccinate badgers for disease control. Since 2010, the government has trained volunteers known as ‘Lay Vaccinators’ to vaccinate badgers.
In 2014, after the first pilot badger culls had started, DEFRA launched the ‘Badger Edge Vaccination Scheme’ (BEVS) that partly funded Voluntary Badger vaccination groups to vaccinate badgers but only within geographical areas between ‘High risk and ‘Low risk’ bovine TB areas, that were effectively the edge of the pilot or proposed badger cull zones. In 2015, the only company manufacturing the Badger BCG vaccine experienced supply problems, ending the supply of Badger vaccination and ultimately suspending the scheme in 2016.
The ‘Badger Edge Vaccination Scheme 2’ (BEVS 2) was relaunched in 2018. With DEFRA now funding badger vaccination projects and subsidising the cost of training lay vaccinator training
Injecting a wild animal is challenging because Badgers are nocturnal and stay underground throughout the day. A lay vaccinator is trained to carry out a process that starts with surveying for Badgers. The surveys record the location of badger setts and other areas of badger activity. This work is often done during the cold winter months with low vegetation. The maps and data are recorded and held, usually by the local badger group or NGO heading up the vaccination project.
Around two weeks before the lay vaccinator plans to vaccinate badgers, they begin ‘pre-baiting’ within a designated area; this will generally include bait points using peanuts and molasses before digging in the metal cage traps. The peanut treats soon attract hungry badgers to the unset cages. Having found the treats without becoming trapped, the badgers will enter the cages with less caution. The cages will be set for two consecutive nights at an agreed time. Any badgers caught in a trap must legally be vaccinated and released within a specific period. This is vital to minimise the stress and potential suffering of the trapped badger.
The trained vaccinator will perform several checks to ensure the badger is not injured from being in the cage and is in visible, overall good health. If all is OK, they will vaccinate the badger by intramuscular injection of BCG before ‘marking’ and releasing it.
Badger vaccination is an incredibly ‘labour-intensive’ process. Experienced vaccinators can vaccinate 25-30 individuals within 24 hours. In truth, very few vaccinators can vaccinate 50 badgers over a 48-hour trapping period.
One of the real ironies to me is that the badger cull companies go through the same process, with the obvious exception that they put a bullet through the badger’s head rather than vaccinating it. Surely, with a combined effort, thousands more badgers could have been vaccinated over the last eight years. Yet another reason why the badger culls are so tragic and pointless.
The following quote from Prof Rosie Woodroffe best explains why vaccinating badgers is far more effective than culling them. “Culling is intended to reduce transmission by removing infected animals, which can transmit disease and by removing susceptible animals, which can become infected.
By contrast, vaccination is intended to “remove” susceptible animals by making them immune. Although culling is generally designed to reduce disease transmission, badger culling is associated with increases in the proportion of badgers infected with Mycobacterium bovis (the pathogen which causes bovine tuberculosis. This increase in M. bovis transmission reflects changes in badger behaviour caused by culling. Such changes limit the extent to which culling can reduce the density of infected badgers. However, unless badger numbers are drastically reduced, badger culling increases the incidence of TB in cattle.
Prof Woodroffe’s conclusion; “Vaccination is likely to be less costly than culling because it is unlikely to require much policing. Costs can be reduced still further by involving volunteers in fieldwork.”
This directly relates to my point that if the UK Government were ‘serious’ about vaccinating badgers, they would help establish vaccinating contractors rather than allowing hired contract killers to shoot badgers.
We still need to look at Cattle vaccination. In 2012, Owen Paterson, the then Minister at DEFRA, said the UK government was working to develop a cattle vaccine. The truth was one that already existed. The BCG vaccine would effectively reduce transmission and protect vaccinated cows from BovineTB. However, it wouldn’t eradicate the disease.
The real issue that Paterson decided not to focus attention on was ‘testing’. The current SICCT tests cannot distinguish a cow with bovine TB from a cow that has been vaccinated. The BCG vaccine contains the live virus. For this reason, the EU banned the sale of meat from BCG-vaccinated cattle. However, Owen Paterson knew the National Farmers Union (NFU) would never accept market restrictions. So maybe it suited the UK government to make it look like the EU was causing the problem for Britain’s farmers.
Even in 2012, the truth was that so-called DIVA tests were available, which could differentiate between infected, infectious and vaccinated cattle. The DIVA tests were expensive, and again, our Government concluded that we couldn’t subject British farmers to these additional costs, and they would not subsidise them.
Prof Rosie Woodroffe, who was part of the Randomised Badger Cull Trials that took place through the 1990s, was clear on the benefits of vaccination over culling. She said, “There is a good reason to expect badger vaccination to reduce transmission to cattle,”
“Vaccination is often dismissed as a management option because it does not directly affect infected badgers. But this is based on a misinterpretation of the available evidence: culling does not prompt a rapid reduction in the numbers of infected badgers.” Woodroffe continued; The cull must kill at least 70% of badgers to ensure escaping animals do not spread TB further but must not kill them all, as local extinctions are illegal. “We know vaccinating badgers reduces transmission of bovine TB to other badgers, so there is good reason to expect it also to reduce transmission to cattle.”
Prof Woodroffe concluded that “Vaccination is also expected to reduce the proportion of infected badgers, rather than increase it as culling does.”
Many different forces are at play in the BovineTB issue. The National Farmers Union (NFU) has a firm hold on the UK government, shaping its policy. Although supported by science, wildlife is left to rely on the best efforts of volunteers, many of whom have given their own time to help save badgers for over eight years.
It is important to acknowledge that in 2013, Owen Paterson expressed great confidence in the Government’s badger cull policy, stating that it would effectively eliminate BovineTB by 2038. Additionally, he confidently asserted that badger culling would lead to a significant 16% reduction in the rise of BovineTB within a span of nine years. However, his plan has fallen short of its goals, yet the authorised badger killing remains until at least 2025.
As volunteers once again prepare to defend our native badgers, with another 75,000 licensed to be killed, it is clear that the badger cull policy has been a cruel and expensive failure that has killed 70% of badgers, a protected species whilst failing to reduce bovine TB in cattle.
Wildlife Matters calls on Ministers to ‘follow the science’ to establish an effective vaccination programme and end the cruel, expensive, ineffective badger culls.