Environment, Food and Rural Affairs CommitteeWritten evidence submitted by the International Fund for Animal Welfare
1. At the end of 2012 the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee launched an inquiry into the issue of TB vaccination of badgers and/or cattle, as a solution to the problem of TB affecting the cattle industry in England. Due to the fact that there have been claims that badgers may be hosts of TB and help it to spread among cattle herds, and also the fact that several governments have proposed projects of culling badgers as an attempt to stop the spread of this disease that ended up being very controversial and in several instances withdrawn or postponed, the issue of vaccination of both cattle and badgers as a viable alternative to culling needs to be properly assessed and considered, and we welcome this consultation.
2. Founded in 1969, the International Fund for Animal Welfare was set up to save individual animals, animal populations and habitats all over the world. With projects in more than 40 countries, IFAW provides hands-on assistance to animals in need, including companion animals, wildlife and livestock, or rescuing animals in the wake of disasters. We also advocate saving populations from cruelty and depletion. Our work connects animal welfare and conservation, and therefore we are equally concerned with the wellbeing of badgers and cattle, and we have sufficient scientific expertise on both.
3. IFAW has opposed the badger cull trials planned by the Governments in Westminster and Wales, and welcomed the eventual cancelling of such plans by the Welsh Government and the postponement of plans in England.
4. IFAW’s opposition to the cull as a solution to the cattle TB problem is based on the following arguments: 1) reputable scientific studies have shown that the culling would be of little help in reducing bovine TB; 2) the culling could actually cause the disease to spread even more through the phenomenon known as perturbation; 3) there are serious animal welfare and wildlife conservation concerns about the proposed method used to cull badgers; 4) there are viable alternatives to the culling of badgers.
5. Notwithstanding the fact that it is not yet entirely clear what role badgers play in Bovine TB outbreaks, IFAW is of the opinion that vaccination of badgers can help to solve the Bovine TB problem by reducing the chances of badgers contracting TB, and therefore the chances of spreading it to other animals such as cattle. We agree that the vaccination route taken currently by the Welsh Government, which has already successfully caught and vaccinated over 1,400 badgers, is a good way to address the wildlife reservoir issue in the Bovine TB problem.
6. The vaccination of badgers with the BCG vaccine has already been proven to reduce the risk of a positive TB test in the animals by 54%, as shown in the four-year study by the Food and Environment Research Agency and university departments (Carter et al. 2012). IFAW believes this is a sufficiently high percentage to consider this vaccine as feasible. This study also found that unvaccinated cubs were less susceptible to the disease because there was less contact with diseased badgers.
7. Regarding the issue of using PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) tests on faeces to be undertaken in badger setts to determine whether their inhabitants are infected with bTB, which is based on the results of a study by Warwick University (Travers et al., 2011), we believe this, when fully developed, may help to estimate how widespread bTB is in a badger population, but it would not help to determine which badgers should be culled. This is because not all the badgers using one sett may necessarily be infected if the sett shows positive test results (as has been found in studies made in the Woodchester Park Research Station), and not all the badgers that may be infected may end up developing the clinical disease and be infectious to others, if the disease has not developed its infectious form. Therefore, such tests may be of some use to assess the effectiveness of a badger vaccination programme, but not to justify a selective culling.
8. We believe that from an animal welfare point of view it would be legitimate to euthanase infected badgers which have clinically developed the Tuberculosis disease in its most infected form, and are already in an incurable terminal stage of the disease (but this is quite different from the application of selective culling of badgers for containing TB antibodies, since such animals may never develop the disease clinically, and may never be infectious). Therefore, if through the process of caging animals for vaccination a terminally diseased individual is diagnosed by a qualified vet, we believe that euthanasing it may both reduce its suffering and the risk of infection to others. However, we must stress that the decision should be taken by qualified veterinarians with expertise on this disease.
9. Although injectable vaccines for badgers have been fully developed and have been applied since 2010 producing positive results, we acknowledge that there is a considerably high cost in their implementation, and also an animal welfare cost in terms of stress, due to the fact that animals need to be trapped. Therefore, we consider that an alternative oral vaccine should be developed, since this would reduce such cost. We understand that an oral vaccine suitable for deployment has already been developed in New Zealand for use in controlling the non-native possum population. In the case of the UK, we believe that such oral vaccine is in development, but not quite yet finalised, and that this research should be prioritised.
10. IFAW believes that although the vaccination of badgers may reduce the spread of Bovine TB, ultimately the disease will not be sufficiently controlled unless cattle are also vaccinated. Bovine TB being a disease for cattle, and the most common form of transmission of the disease being infection between cattle, rather than between cattle and other animals, the problem will not be solved until cattle become immune to the disease.
11. Immunity in cattle to Bovine TB can effectively be achieved by a comprehensive cattle vaccination programme. We acknowledge that this is currently not possible due to the restrictions imposed by EU Directive 78/52/EEC and associated directives which set out the criteria for national plans for the “accelerated eradication” of bTB, but we know that this current status quo can be changed if there is enough political will to do so, and the reasons for such restrictions are addressed properly.
12. We acknowledge that the main obstacle for the use of bTB vaccination for cattle in Europe is the lack of an approved DIVA test, which is an alternative or ancillary test to the skin test, which could be used on animals that have been subjected to a sensitising vaccine to differentiate infected animals from vaccinated animals. Considering the information made public about it, we agree that the gamma interferon (IFN-γ) test currently developed by Professor Glyn Hewinson, of Animal Health and the Veterinary Laboratories Agency in Weybridge, Surrey, seems to be a valid DIVA test to differentiate vaccinated from infected cattle, and therefore there should no longer be a scientific obstacle for the lifting of the EU restrictions to TB vaccination programmes. However, we acknowledge that such test needs to be validated by the Organisation Internationale des Epizooties (OIE—World Organisation for Animal Health), before trials can start in the UK.
13. IFAW agrees with DEFRA that the BCG (Mycobacterium bovis Bacille Calmette-Guérin) is currently the most suitable cattle TB vaccine candidate. Experimental studies show that BCG vaccination reduces the progression, severity and excretion of TB in cattle and field studies show that it can reduce transmission of disease between animals. However, like in any vaccination programme, development of better vaccines, especially to address the issue of new strains of the disease emerging, should be an ongoing process.
14. IFAW believes that the effectiveness of the BCG proven to be between 56% and 68% in small-scale field studies carried out recently in Ethiopia and Mexico is sufficiently high enough to have the potential to be able to control bTB in the UK, since no vaccine is 100% effective and yet many have proven to be able to completely control diseases. This is because the effect of vaccines in reducing the spread of a disease is multiple: it can fully protect the individual vaccinated from being infected, but it can also reduce the severity of the disease in infected cattle, and therefore it can reduce the infectivity of the disease. Although vaccination has no positive effect on cattle that are already clinically showing the disease, it does not increase the risk of transmission from these individuals, nor does it have any other population effect that risks spreading the disease further (as the perturbance effect in the case of the badger culling option).
15. We believe that in order to maximise the effectiveness of a cattle vaccination programme it should be developed alongside comprehensive bio-security measures to prevent the transmission of the disease from cattle to cattle. This should include limiting contact between cattle and local wildlife, stringent application of cattle testing, improving hygiene in cattle husbandry, and perhaps most importantly eliminating the spread of bTB between herds by better control of cattle movements.
16. IFAW believes that the most effective method to solve the problem of bTB is cattle vaccination, and this should be the priority of all governments that are either suffering outbreaks of the disease, or are at risk of suffering from them. In addition to this, we consider that if at the same time a programme of vaccination of potential wildlife reservoirs (in this case badgers) for the disease is applied in parallel or preliminarily, the disease may be controlled faster. However, based on the evidence seen in other countries we are convinced that in no circumstances will outbreaks be stopped by addressing the wildlife reservoir transmission alone, nor will the disease be totally controlled without developing an immunity among cattle (which can be achieved by successful vaccination programmes for the current strains of TB, or any new strains that may appear in the future). We question the claims made by those defending wildlife culling that in other countries bTB has been eradicated because of control measures in wildlife reservoirs, since, first of all, the disease has persisted, and secondly these were not the only measures taken, and therefore it is entirely possible that the effect of the culling alone would not be very significant. Therefore, if there are financial limitations in addressing the problem from multiple fronts, resources should be channelled to cattle vaccination alone, since it has the potential to entirely solve the problem in the long term.
17. Considering the cost that any vaccination programme entails, cattle vaccination may not need to be applied across the whole of England but it could be used to reduce the level of infection in areas of concentrated disease. Vaccination could be applied either on a regional or zoned basis, or as a firewall to prevent further spread to adjacent areas, and still be effective.
18. In addition to vaccination, there are other methods to improve immunity to bTB in cattle. Several factors affect the immunity and susceptibility of both cattle and badgers to infection: nutrition, stress, housing, transportation and selective breeding may all be worthwhile factors to consider, so any measure that may address these factors may have a positive effect in boosting the cattle immune system and in fighting infection so it does not develop into a disease. For example, the farm trials carried out by Mr Dick Roper in Northleach, Gloucestershire and the farms treated by Mr Goodwin Jones of Trace Elements Services Ltd illustrate that there are significant benefits of improved immunity from the inclusion of trace elements in the diet of cattle.
January 2013