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<p>The Government remains committed to the goal of achieving Officially Free bovine
TB status for the whole of England by 2038.</p><p> </p><p>On 5 March 2020, the Government
published its response to Professor Sir Charles Godfray's 2018 review of England's
bovine TB eradication strategy, setting out the priorities for the next phase of the
strategy around three key priorities.</p><p> </p><p>We will provide funding to accelerate
the research and trial work necessary to authorise the BCG vaccine for use in cattle
alongside a test that can differentiate between vaccinated cattle and those with the
disease. Our aim is to have a deployable cattle vaccine within the next five years.
Vaccination will never provide full protection but could significantly reduce the
spread of the disease both between cattle and between cattle herds and wildlife. The
UK can harness its world-leading science in developing solutions such as vaccination
that would also be valuable to other countries.</p><p> </p><p>Secondly, we will also
begin an exit strategy from intensive badger culling, while ensuring that wildlife
control remains an option where the epidemiological evidence supports it (i.e. areas
where badgers pose a significant source of TB infection). We intend to pilot government-funded
badger vaccination in at least one area where the four-year cull cycle has concluded,
with simultaneous surveillance of disease. We envisage that any remaining areas would
join the current cull programme in the next few years and that the badger cull phase
of the strategy would then wind down by the mid to late 2020s.</p><p> </p><p>We will
continue to support badger vaccination projects in areas where the prevalence of disease
is low. We will also investigate the potential for projects where adjacent vaccination
and culling could complement each other in controlling disease. Changes to our guidance
to Natural England on licensing badger control will be subject to consultation.</p><p>
</p><p>Thirdly, we will invest in the deployment of better, more frequent, and more
diverse cattle testing, so that we are able to detect the presence of the disease
earlier and remove it from cattle herds faster. The frequency of mandatory surveillance
testing in two high risk area counties – Shropshire and Staffordshire – will increase
from annual to six-monthly as soon as the COVID-19 situation allows. We expect this
to be extended across the high risk area from 2021.</p><p> </p><p>There is no single
answer to tackling the scourge of bovine TB but by deploying a range of policy interventions,
we can turn the tide on this terrible disease and achieve our long-term objective
of eradicating it by 2038.</p>
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