Badger vaccination roll out after success of West Cornwall trial

First published 12:08 Wednesday 25 March 2015 in News

A project to vaccinate badgers against TB will be rolled out across west Cornwall after the success of a trial.

Andrew George MP, who who instigated the first community led badger vaccination programme in the UK, heralded the first pilot year of the badger vaccination programme, in partnership with the Zoological Society of London, a "great success".

Mr George and Zoological Society of London's Professor Rosie Woodroffe – acknowledged national badger ecologist – developed the project in response to concerns about the Government’s programme to eradicate bovine TB in cattle.

Both were concerned that the Government’s pilot badger cull ran the very high risk of making the problem of bovine TB significantly worse and, in any case, could not be rolled out in West Cornwall because previous experiments showed that landowner cooperation and disruption would render a cull unworkable.

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No badger cull in Cornwall as vaccination project shows 'good progress'

As the Government launches two “pilot” badger culls in Somerset and Gloucestershire, West Cornwall MP, Andrew George, announced good progress in the project to vaccinate badgers against Bovine TB across west Cornwall.

The Zoological Society of London will oversee the programme which will run for at least six years and extend to the whole of the Penwith peninsula. The Government has granted funds to the project to commence a small trial vaccination project in Penwith. This could commence later this year.

Mr George said: “It is highly unlikely that the Penwith area would ever succeed in securing Government support for a cull, even if it were proven to be a success because when the Government backed badger cull trial was undertaken in the Penwith area a decade ago, non-cooperation and disruption resulted in less than 50 per cent of the area being accessible for culling.

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