Bovine Tuberculosis: Disease Control

(asked on 23rd March 2021) - 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 he has made of the effect of extending badger cull licences on the badger population in the UK.


Answered by
Victoria Prentis Portrait
Victoria Prentis
Attorney General
This question was answered on 31st March 2021

We recently consulted on the next phase of our bovine TB eradication strategy as part of our objective for TB-free status in England by 2038. The consultation, which closed on 24 March, included:

i) proposals to stop issuing intensive cull licences for new areas after 2022 and could see new four-year licences, after two-years of culling, be revoked after a progress evaluation by the Chief Veterinary Officer.

ii) proposals to restrict supplementary badger control licences to two years and to prohibit the issuing of new licences for areas licensed after 2020.

iii) proposals to reduce the duration of badger cull licenses, rather than extending them.

A Government response and next steps will be published in due course. Changes to the intensive and supplementary cull licences will be implemented by Natural England through revised guidance from Defra, which we also consulted on. Details can be found at https://consult.defra.gov.uk/bovine-tb-2020/eradication-of-btb-england/.

As part of the licensing criteria, for intensive and supplementary badger control, Natural England sets minimum and maximum numbers of badgers to be removed. This is to ensure the badger control operations deliver disease reduction benefits without endangering the local badger population.

Reticulating Splines