Dr. Damien Barrett:

Senator Daly has made a very valid point on vaccination. Our modelling suggests if we had a vaccine available, it would be the single most effective intervention we could make. We do not have a vaccine on the market. As the Senator is aware, work is being done by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, DEFRA, in the UK and we are liaising with it. The biggest research funder in TB in the world is the Gates foundation. It is also looking at vaccination. It is looking at it as a public health measure in the developing world.

There is a significant body of research on TB vaccination. TB, by its nature, is one of those diseases where it is proven that developing a vaccine for a microbacterium, which is the type of bacteria that TB is, is significantly more complex than developing one for a virus like Covid. All things are possible, however. The crunch point here, as Senator Daly rightly pointed out, is differentiating between vaccinated cattle and infected cattle. That is being worked on.

On the other side of this, there are very significant legislative and trade implications to vaccinating animals. As a nation which exports a volume of bovine-derived product, be that beef, dairy or whatever, that would have massive implications for the export of that product. That is another front which needs to be addressed.

In simple terms, a vaccine would make this far more straightforward from a disease control point of view. The logistics of achieving that are complicated and the trade implications are probably more complicated.