Farming Editor

A report that slams Government policy on bovine tuberculosis control has itself been dismissed as unrealistic and unworkable by farmer organisations.

Bovine TB – Time for a Rethink, states that one in five cattle condemned as "reactors" in England are victims of a dysfunctional testing regime, while another one in five of any potentially infected cattle are left in the herd.

The report is the work of an independent research group, Rethink Bovine TB, and is based largely on information provided by the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). It condemns the current bovine TB policy, which it claims is costing taxpayers around £100 million and "causing the slaughter of thousands of healthy cattle every year".

It states that the current policy of testing and culling will take at least another 20 years to achieve the aim of TB-free status.

Its publication comes a fortnight after the Government released controversial plans for a test cull of badgers in bovine TB hotspot areas, likely to begin next year, with one of the two trial areas located in the Westcountry.

Rethink Bovine TB spokesman, Michael Ritchie, said: "Farmers are being misled into thinking that badger culling, or vaccination, is a solution. It is just creating a smokescreen around the real problem, the long-term failure of the current test and cull policy. What is needed is a complete rethink of both objectives and methods."

He said bovine TB was not a risk to human health, with only 45 people a year contracting it in the UK, probably all due to infection acquired in the days before milk pasteurisation, or abroad.

The report proposes that Bovine TB should be handled like any other animal disease, and farmers should be free to choose the most suitable means of control for their farm. The top priority must be the licensing of the cattle vaccine and removal of European legal barriers to its use.

But Ian Johnson, South West spokesman for the National Farmers' Union, said: "The authors of this report seem to think we should just learn to live with TB, but we have international obligations to eradicate it. They have cherry-picked bits of Defra reports – but there is nothing new here. At best it's an interesting contribution to the debate, but it does nothing to reduce the problem."

He added: "If only the solution was as easy as this report makes out. If it were, it would have been solved years ago."

Michael Hart, a Cornish farmer and chairman of the Small and Family Farms Alliance, said the report was unrealistic, and wrong about the TB test used on cattle.

"When used properly it works perfectly well, as shown in the TB eradication programmes in Australia and New Zealand," he said.