Department defends stance on TB and badgers

Top Department of Agriculture officials defended the funds directed to bovine TB eradication efforts under the current 10-year programme, which is expected to see a combined €1bn of farmer and Department funds spent with the aim of wiping the disease out.

Strong concerns on the wildlife side of TB eradication were voiced on Thursday by TDs in the Committee of Public Accounts, which is responsible for overseeing the spending of public money.

The Department justified the shift in policy on dealing with the country’s 90,000 badgers away from culling and towards BCG vaccination, with deputy chief veterinary officer June Fanning saying the move is backed by science.

“It is a very complex disease, in that it is multifactorial, there are a number of different risk factors,” Fanning told the committee.

Figures given by the official suggest that only 13% of Ireland’s badgers were either vaccinated or culled last year.

“To take 2022 for example, there were just over 12,000 badgers involved in the wildlife programme - just over 7,000 of them would have been vaccinated and 5,000 of them culled.

“The most recent study was carried out by UCD in 2021, which estimated the badger population to be about just over 90,000.”

Protected species

Fanning stated that the wildlife element of TB control complicates eradication efforts in comparison to other diseases that have been stamped out of Ireland’s livestock populations in the past, such as brucellosis.

The official recognised that the prevalence of badgers in Ireland throws a spanner in TB control works.

“The wildlife component is the difficult piece in relation to TB. It has been eradicated elsewhere in the world, Australia for example, but they were able to deal with the wildlife species that was involved in a different way then we can with the badger.

“The badger is a protected species and while we do cull badgers as part of the TB eradication programme, we do recognise it is not a sustainable solution in the long term,” she said.

Deer and badger concerns

In response to deer concerns cited by Cork North-Central TD Colm Burke, Fanning explained that evidence suggests that deer populations differ in their TB prevalence.

“The overpopulation of deer has a lot problems outside of the TB area and our evidence has shown that outside of Wicklow, where the TB prevalence in deer is about 16%, it is much, much lower at around 2% in deer elsewhere in the country.”

Wexford Independent TD Verona Murphy raised concerns that if vaccination is favoured over culling, rural car drivers could face safety risks.

Murphy said that “hitting a badger is like hitting a cement block” and can cause “extensive damage”.

“But if we do not continue with culling, we will have an overrun of the badger population. They are going to pose an extreme road safety risk just like our deer are,” she told the committee.

“As someone who has hit a badger, I understand the damage it can do and that’s not from a speed perspective, that’s just the fact that the badger is just a particularly hard animal on the road.”

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