THE first tuberculosis vaccine for badgers has been approved for use in the Westcountry but farmers last night said the move was nothing more than a "sop" without a targeted cull to control the disease.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) is to introduce a five-year programme this summer in TB hotspots including parts of the Westcountry after the Veterinary Medicines Directorate granted authorisation for the vaccine – identical to the vaccine used to prevent TB in humans.

However, last night the region's farmers said the injection should be a "tool in the armoury" against TB combined with a cull of badgers similar to that planned for Wales.

Richard Haddock, who farms at Kingswear, South Devon, said vaccination alone would need five to ten years to take affect, by which time the Westcountry would be a "no go area" for meat sales because of the disease. He said: "This is a total sop to keep people happy and to keep farmers at bay. The quicker we are allowed to get on with a cull of sick animals in sick setts and sick areas, the better.

"This disease is now spreading way beyond control. It's in cats, dogs and llamas and alpacas, and there are no movement restrictions on them. Vaccination should be a tool in the armoury. We should be culling, and then vaccinating clean areas to keep them that way."

Many farmers regard a vaccine for badgers as too little, too late, probably ineffective on its own – and impractical to administer.

They fear it could serve to displace sick and startled animals, driving them further afield. And they have raised concerns about how officials will be able to identify those which have already been vaccinated.

Both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats have said they would allow a cull of sick badgers, to stop the relentless progress of the disease, which saw 40,000 cattle that had tested positive to TB destroyed last year, and thousands of farms placed under livestock movement restrictions.

Tory shadow ministers have promised a cull soon after being elected, using technology that identifies infected setts.

Defra plans to introduce the Badger BCG vaccine this summer as part of its Badger Vaccine Deployment Project, which would involve trapping and vaccinating badgers in six hot-spot areas in England most affected by TB.

Environment Secretary Hilary Benn, who has been heavily criticised for persistently refusing to allow a cull of diseased badgers, said: "This marketing authorisation reflects 10 years and £11 million of Defra-funded research and development."

Ian Johnson, the NFU spokesman for the South West region, said: "While we are supportive of the use of a badger vaccine as a long-term additional tool in the fight against bovine TB, we believe there is little benefit to be achieved by vaccinating infected badgers, and have always maintained that badger vaccines should be used to protect healthy badgers from becoming infected as part of a multi-faceted approach to disease control.

"While the NFU supports the overall work on the development of vaccines for bovine TB, we firmly believe that vaccination on its own will not lead to the eradication of bovine TB.

"It can only be seen as one of the tools in the box – a component of a much broader-based approach to stamping out the disease which is in the best welfare interests of livestock and wildlife alike."

Meanwhile, Jilly Greed, vice chairman of the National Beef Association in the South West, said that with a vaccine costing between £12 to £20 per badger, and with additional manpower costs in trapping, injecting and monitoring, the programme came with a hefty price tag of public money.

And there was little guarantee that the numbers of slaughtered cattle or the spill-over to other livestock, wildlife and pets, would reduce in the next five years.

David Williams, chairman of the Badger Trust, said: "Although the process of trapping badgers and injecting them is stressful, it is more likely to help disease control than killing the animals, which risks spreading TB between farms in the long term.

"Although the vaccine cannot cure badgers with the disease, it can protect healthy animals against infection. It will be much easier to assess the effectiveness of the vaccine in the field without the confusion that would arise if culling took place at the same time, as has been proposed in Wales."