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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many visits Natural England make to landholdings in cull zones to ensure that reasonable biosecurity controls are being applied as required under the terms of badger cull licences; and how many landholders have not met those biosecurity standards in each year for which information is available.

Natural England (NE) visits 5% of randomly selected cattle-keeping landholders within each Year 1 application area to sense-check biosecurity practices on the ground. These visits are supported by data available from visits conducted by the Animal and Plant Heath Agency (APHA). For 2018 Year 1 areas, between 30-55% of participants had been subject to an APHA visit in response to Bovine TB breakdowns from 2015 to early 2018.

Disease control recommendations are provided to cattle-keepers based on measures that are practicable, proportionate and appropriate for the particular circumstances; having regard to the Bovine TB Biosecurity Five-Point Plan. These recommendations are categorised into ‘Advisory’ or ‘Required’. Advisory recommendations can cover a number of aspects of the disease risk on a farm and are reflective of the discussion held with the cattle-keeper regarding ways of minimising this risk. For example, recommendations might cover future options to reduce disease risk should a cattle keeper be able to invest in infrastructure within the yard. As such, a high number of Advisory recommendations does not necessarily indicate that cattle keepers are not demonstrating that reasonable biosecurity measures are in place.

‘Required’ recommendations are provided for situations where badgers are presenting an immediate risk of disease spread to cattle and the resolution measure is practicable, proportionate and appropriate for the particular circumstances. An example of such a measure is securing feed stores to prevent them being accessible to badgers overnight.

Should a concerning biosecurity issue be identified during the 5% visits, NE would conduct additional visits to determine whether the issue was more widespread throughout the area and act accordingly.

A summary of the NE biosecurity visits and resulting recommendations from 2015 to 2018 is provided in the table below: