Bovine Tuberculosis: Disease Control

(asked on 9th March 2022) - View Source

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment his Department has made of the effectiveness of the badger control policy at (a) culling badgers infected with Bovine TB, (b) not culling badgers that have been vaccinated against Bovine TB and (c) not culling badgers which are not infected with Bovine TB.


Answered by
Jo Churchill Portrait
Jo Churchill
Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
This question was answered on 14th March 2022

A proactive, controlled cull of badgers has the potential to reduce bovine TB in cattle by reducing the number of infected badgers. There is a recognised reservoir of infection in badgers across the High Risk and Edge Area. The badger cull operations remove at least 70% of the badger population regardless of infection status due to the endemicity of these areas. Where badger vaccination is taking place in the Edge Area, vaccination licence holders can apply for a no-cull zone around qualifying areas of badger vaccination. No-cull zones provide an opportunity to manage the delivery of vaccination and culling on adjoining land in the Edge Area. This aims to strike a balance between reducing the risk of culling vaccinated badgers and ensuring that culling can proceed to ensure that progress is made towards disease eradication.

Badger control operations are assessed annually by the Chief Veterinary Officer and Natural England’s Chief Scientific Advisor. Their advice is that industry-led licensed badger culling continues to deliver the level of effectiveness required by the policy to be confident of achieving disease control benefits. This has been further substantiated by an independent study by Downs et al 2019 which demonstrated that the cull has resulted in significant reductions in the spread of the disease to cattle, showing reductions of 66% and 37% in the first two licensed cull areas.

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