VACCINATING badgers against TB in Wales cost £825 a badger in 2015, a new report has revealed.

The Welsh Government spent £922,012 vaccinating 1,118 badgers in the Intensive Action Area (IAA) in west Wales last year – up nearly £120 a badger on 2014.

The main reason for this is that fewer badgers were trapped in 2015 compared with the previous year.

The 1,118 badgers vaccinated represent the lowest number in any single year since the initiative got underway.

The numbers vaccinated has fallen year on year – in 2012 a total of 1,413 received the vaccine, in 2013, 1,347, and in 2014, 1,314.

A report on the fourth year revealed that the bulk of the expenditure in 2015 - £625,111 – went on staff costs.

The IAA is approximately 288km² and is primarily located in north Pembrokeshire but includes small parts of Ceredigion and Carmarthenshire.

Last year, 651 landowners allowed vaccination teams access to their land. This amounted to 249km² (86% of the IAA) and contained 186 main badger setts.

These landowners included livestock farmer Brian Thomas, who sits on the local working group of the Welsh Assembly’s Bovine TB Intensive Action Area. He described the vaccination programme as a “waste of money’’.

“We are just not seeing any results from this huge expenditure,’’ insisted Mr Thomas, deputy president of the Farmers’ Union of Wales (FUW).

He said figures released to the FUW showed that in the 12 months to December 2015 there were 188 new herd incidences of TB in Pembrokeshire as a whole and 2,304 cattle slaughtered compared to 146 new herd incidences and 1,268 cattle slaughtered in the previous year.

Mr Thomas called on the government to test badgers on every farm affected by TB.

“There is no sense in trying to control the disease when we don’t know the levels of disease in wildlife. If only 5% are infected, then perhaps a vaccine will improve the situation over time but if 40% are infected then there is no hope of that happening.

"All we have had so far from this vaccination programme are statistics and figures, no improvements in disease levels.’’

For the second year, 16 landowners, covering 5.79 sq km, denied government workers permission to access their land.

The cost of delivering badger vaccination in the IAA over five years was estimated to be in the region of £5,760,000 but the programme has now been suspended ahead of the final year because the supply of BCG has been interrupted.

The one company which produces the vaccine halted its supply to the government while it tackled a backlog of demand for human TB vaccines.

According to the report, it is unlikely that suppliers will be able to honour the government’s vaccine order for 2016.

“The Deputy Minster commissioned APHA (Animal and Plant Health Agency) to undertake modelling work to understand the potential for taking the IAA vaccination project forward,’’ the report stated. “APHA’s conclusion is that despite not being able to complete the final year, four years of badger vaccination would achieve a reduction in prevalence of TB in badgers in the IAA.’’

Figures released by Defra in March showed 8,103 cattle were slaughtered as a result of the disease in Wales in 2015 – a 27% increase on 2014 when 6,378 TB-infected cattle were removed.