Vaccination against bovine TB

Know about the book -

Vaccination against bovine TB is written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee and published by Stationery Office. It's available with International Standard Book Number or ISBN identification 0215058828 (ISBN 10) and 9780215058829 (ISBN 13).

The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee warns that vaccination against bovine TB is expensive, offers no guarantee of protection and will provide little benefit in the immediate future. More than £58 million has been invested in vaccine research and development since 1994. Deployment of the injectable badger vaccine will cost an estimated £2,000-£4,000 per km2. The cattle vaccine is expected to cost £5-6 per dose and the DIVA test (which differentiates between infected and vaccinated cattle) costs £25. Small-scale studies to test the efficacy of the vaccine in cattle overseas have shown the protective effect to be between 56-68%, a level of protection that won't immediately solve the problems of bovine TB in the cattle industry. The UK needs more reliable skin tests than the current one that could miss one in four infected cows. An injectable BCG vaccine for badgers is now available but it does not confer complete protection and has no discernible effect on animals already infected with TB. An oral baited vaccine that can be laid at setts is likely to be cheaper and more practical, but development and deployment of it will take several years to resolve. A variety of ongoing research projects could make a real difference to the eradication of bovine TB in the United Kingdom. These include: PCR testing to determine infected badger setts, a new type of test to identify bovine TB in cattle after slaughter, and work on a vaccine that does not interfere with the skin test.