July 22, 2020

expert reaction to announcement by DEFRA that bovine TB vaccine trials have been given approval to start in England and Wales

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) has announced that approval has been given for bovine TB vaccine trials to begin in England and Wales.

Prof James Wood, Head of Department of Veterinary Medicine, University of Cambridge, said:

“Bovine TB is the most intractable disease challenge faced by British farming and all possible tools in the armoury will be needed to tackle it effectively. The prevalence of disease, overall, is finally starting to reduce more than five years after the publication of the 25 year national strategy for the disease and cattle vaccination can be an important addition to what is already envisaged, although it is unlikely to be effective as a replacement for all other controls. Cattle vaccination is described in the Government’s response to the Godfray report published earlier in 2020. This field trial is a necessary step for allowing cattle vaccination to be licensed.”

Prof Lord John Krebs FRS FMedSci, Emeritus Professor of Zoology, University of Oxford, said:

“If the vaccine, combined with a DIVA (Differentiating Infected from Vaccinated Animals) test, proves to be effective, this will be a major breakthrough for TB control. In my 1997 Report, I said, ‘In the long run, the best prospect for control of bovine TB is to develop a vaccine for cattle. This is a long term (more than 10 years) strategy and success cannot be guaranteed’.

“23 years on, we may be nearing that goal and APHA is to be congratulated. A vaccine would end the need for badger culling.”

Prof Rowland Kao, Sir Timothy O’Shea Professor of Veterinary Epidemiology and Data Science, University of Edinburgh, said:

“This news is extremely welcome, as an effective cattle vaccine against bovine TB could have a transformative effect on the impact of bovine TB on individual farmers, especially for those whose farms suffer from TB-related restrictions almost continually. It is possible that a sufficiently effective vaccine would be able to break the cycles of infection that include both cattle and badgers in many parts of Britain and Ireland, resulting in eradication. However, this is unlikely to be known until a vaccine is fully deployed, and results may also vary considerably in different regions. If this is not the case, then the problem of badger TB and badgers infecting cattle will remain, implying that such a vaccine would have to be administered to control TB in cattle, with no expectation of TB being entirely eradicated unless other measures such as badger-related controls (e.g. culling or vaccination, or heightened farm biosecurity) are deployed. If this is the case, then vaccination would require an ongoing effort and cost to farmers and/or public finances; how that is paid for will be an important question in evaluating the potential usefulness of a putative successful vaccine.”

Approval statement not yet online, issued at 10:46, Wednesday 22^nd July

All our previous output on this subject can be seen at this weblink:

https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/tag/bovine-tb/

Declared interests

None received.