Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine Charlie McConalogue has said that trials on a bovine tuberculosis (TB) vaccine are moving to a new phase.
The minister said that the “main global body of research” on developing such a vaccine is being carried out by Department for Environment Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA) in the UK.
“To date the biggest issue with a vaccine for cattle has been the availability of a test that is capable of distinguishing between an animal that is truly infected and one that has been vaccinated,” he said.
In response to a parliamentary question from Fianna Fáil TD, Jackie Cahill, Minister McConalogue added that the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) is monitoring the research “very closely”.
Bovine TB vaccine
In previous studies, the vaccine which is the subject of the trails, CattleBCG, has been shown to reduce TB severity in cattle, but requires further field testing.
A DIVA (differentiating infected from vaccinated animals) skin test has been developed to distinguish between infected and vaccinated animals.
The minister said it is hoped this test, which still needs validation, will address the issue of false positives caused by BCG (bacille Calmette-Guerin) vaccination.
“Field trials are underway to evaluate the safety and performance of both this vaccine and the DIVA Test.
“Phase 1 assessed this test in unvaccinated cattle, while Phase 2 focused on safety in vaccinated cattle. Phase 3 will expand these tests to more herds,” he said.
He said that researchers have now moved to Phase 3 which aims to “gather more data on the DIVA test’s specificity and improve its performance”.
Minister McConalogue noted that even if the research is successful there are “a significant number of legal and international trade obstacles to be surmounted” before a vaccine could be used as part of our national bovine TB eradication programme.