The Vet Record COMMENT 17th April 2004 [1]
THE Government’s consultation document on preparing a new strategy for controlling bovine tuberculosis (TB) made depressing reading, and the latest documents to wing their way out of DEFRA on this subject will do nothing to dispel the gloom. The first, which was published just before Easter, is a report from an independent scientific panel, chaired by Professor Charles Godfray, director of the National Environment Research Council’s Centre for Population Biology at Imperial College London, on the progress of the randomised badger culling trial and associated epidemiological research, which has formed a central plank of the Government’s policy on the disease for the past six years. The panel was established by the then animal health minister, Mr Elliot Morley, in April last year, to review the progress of the trial and to advise DEFRA on the prospects of the experiment achieving its objectives and the likely timescales involved. As such, it was intended to provide an independent audit of the trial, which was set up following the recommendations of the Krebs report of 1997 and is already being overseen by an independent scientific group (ISG) under the chairmanship of Professor John Bourne.
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