Bovine Tuberculosis: Disease Control

Question

Bovine TB (bTB) is one of the most difficult and intractable animal health challenges that England faces today. Tackling the reservoir of infection in wildlife, chiefly badgers, is an important element of Defra's bTB eradication strategy for England. Earlier this year, we published our response to the Godfray Review, which sets out the next phase of our strategy to combat bTB. Our response noted that while it is important to retain the ability to introduce new cull zones where epidemiological evidence points to a reservoir of disease in badgers, we envisage that any remaining areas would join the current cull programme in the next few years and that the badger cull phase of the strategy would then wind down by the mid to late 2020s. Culling would, however, remain an option thereafter where epidemiological assessment indicates that it is needed.

That plan to wind down the current badger culling programme has not changed. As noted in the Government response to the Godfray Review, it is unrealistic to switch immediately to badger vaccination but we are already doing a great deal to make sure the transition happens. In July, we announced that world-leading bTB cattle vaccination trials are set to get underway in England and Wales as a result of a major breakthrough by government scientists. These trials enable work to accelerate towards planned deployment of a cattle vaccine by 2025.