Oral Answers to Questions - Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
4 February 2010
James Paice, Shadow Minister Agriculture and Rural Affairs:
Does the Secretary of State really consider it to be a success that over the past 12 years, 150,000 head of cattle in the south-west alone have been slaughtered, and that the number continues to rise? Does he really believe that his current policies have any prospect whatever of controlling the disease, let alone of reducing or eradicating it? As he well knows, until we have an oral vaccine in four years' time, any work with vaccine is bound to be on a trial basis only-no one envisages that an injectable vaccine, which is involved in the trials that he was talking about, has any real significant prospect of deployment, because for that to happen one must catch all the badgers. When is he going to get a grip of this matter? He quotes the ISG regularly, but its conclusions were never peer reviewed, even if the evidence it gathered was. Will he accept that he is drawing sustenance from conclusions that were not peer reviewed?
Hilary Benn, Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
We set up the ISG, which did its work and came to its conclusions. It has responsibility for what it recommended, and I accepted its advice-I know that that was not popular and that not everybody agreed. The issue is not whether we need to tackle the reservoir in wildlife, but what the most effective way of doing that is. With the badger vaccine deployment project, once the vaccine is licensed-I take the hon. Gentleman's point about practicality, and the purpose of the deployment project is to see how it works-there will be nothing to stop others using the vaccine, in addition to the six projects that we will be running. Understandably, farmers are saying, "You say that culling does not work, but what other means do you have to help us?" We at least now have the beginning of hope, but I agree that an oral vaccine would be much more effective, and we are working very hard, and providing extra funding, to bring that about as soon as possible.
Click here to read more from Defra Questions, 4th February, 2010.