A programme of vaccinating badgers will begin in Wales next month in an attempt to curtail the spread of bovine tuberculosis, after the Welsh government elected to abandon a proposed badger cull in the country following a review of the scientific evidence and the introduction of cattle measures.

Meanwhile in England, Defra has announced the cattle measures that form part of the English government’s bovine TB eradication strategy, which includes the deeply controversial badger cull proposals currently subject to scrutiny in the High Court, following a successful legal challenge by the Badger Trust. The Trust believes cattle based measures alone will prove sufficient to tackle the disease.

The measures, which will come into force in July, include a moratorium on setting up or adding new land to Sole Occupancy Authorities (SOAs) and removing pre-movement testing exemption for movements within SOAs, removing pre-movement testing exemptions between high and low risk areas and alterations to compensation.

The department’s actions have been criticised by both the NFU, which said the changes were not adequately discussed with the union prior to their announcement, and the Badger Trust, which described the changes as “better late than never, but still not enough.” The Trust also posited that “Defra has only acted now that the European Commission has threatened to withhold £25 million of bovine TB funding.”

NFU livestock board chairman Charles Sercombe said of the new rules, "While the NFU fully agrees with the need to get on top of and eventually eradicate this disease, we believe any changes to the SOAs will just cause major problems for farmers in high risk areas."

Mr Sercombe said the union is lobbying Environment Minister Caroline Spelman to revisit the rules on SOAs.

However, Badger Trust spokesperson David Williams maintained that all of the new measures are essential. He stated, "These measures confirm that bovine TB is not a badger problem, but a menace sustained by the structure of the cattle industry. Cattle constitute a population with disease mixing freely throughout it.

"These latest controls are welcome, but farmers and tax payers have to ask themselves how many thousands of cattle have been infected by other cattle and slaughtered while Mr Paice sat on his hands and ignored these transmission routes. It is further evidence that he and his fellow farmers are more interested in killing badgers than in cleaning up their own industry."

Concerns have also been raised this week about the potential for camelids such as llamas and alpacas to be vectors of bovine TB. The disease affects these animals, along with a host of others including deer. There is currently a lack of adequate regulation on camelids, which are currently treated as “low risk” animals.

However, following cases in Sussex and the first known case of a human contracting bovine TB from alpacas in Cornwall, there have been calls to introduce compulsory testing for the animals. However, the testing method used on cattle does not deliver reliable results when used on camelids.

Following the incident in Sussex this week, an AHVLA spokesperson said, "We can confirm several hundred alpacas have been culled at a premises in Sussex after testing positive for TB. Every incident of TB is serious to the animal owner involved, and in each case it is important to take action to prevent the spread of the disease to other holdings."

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