Badgers which have been found to spread bovine TB to cattle are to be given vaccine against the disease rather than being slaughtered.
Work is well advanced on devising an effective vaccine to control the disease in badgers. Minister of State for Agriculture John Browne has promised that vaccination will be a component of the bovine TB eradication scheme.
Opening a major international conference in Dublin Castle yesterday on bovine TB, Mr Browne said that infection from badgers was stopping the eradication of the disease in cattle.
The Four Areas Project, published last December, had confirmed the role of the transmission of infection from badgers to cattle in the four areas where high levels of the disease were found, Mr Browne told 300 delegates from 35 countries taking part.
"The project demonstrated that . . . Ireland will need to sustainably control tuberculosis in badgers, having regard to environmental considerations and the legal protection afforded to badgers under the Berne Convention," he said.
In the short term, the Department of Agriculture was implementing a strategic programme for wildlife control where wildlife was implicated in farm outbreaks of bovine TB. However, in the long term, it would implement badger vaccination as part of the eradication programme.
Details of the Four Areas Project, which involved killing hundreds of badgers under licence to establish their role in the spread of the disease, were given to the conference.
Scientists here have concluded that they can control the disease in cattle. However, they cannot eradicate it until the reservoir of infection in wildlife, mainly badgers and deer, is dealt with.
The level of the disease in the Republic has been reduced to .03 per cent of the cattle population and the testing of cattle has been producing three "reactor" animals per 1,000 tests.