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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps he is taking to help farmers tackle the spread of bovine TB.

We are pursuing a wide range of interventions as part of the Government’s strategy to eradicate bovine TB in England by 2038, including strengthening cattle testing and movement controls, licensing badger control, and promoting biosecurity on farms to help farmers prevent the spread of Bovine TB. Sir Charles Godfray’s independent review (published in November 2018) is an important contribution that will inform next steps in the strategy.

In my Written Ministerial Statement of 20 June 2019, I announced plans to reinforce TB testing in the High Risk Area, invited applications for a third round of the Badger Edge Vaccination Scheme and confirmed the licensing and authorisation by Natural England of three supplementary badger control areas for 2019.

Our partnerships with other organisations have enabled the development of toolkits that support farmers to understand their role in the prevention and eradication of the disease, including the TB Hub, the iBTB website and the TB Advisory Service.