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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, when his Department plans to publish an updated wildlife control policy in terms of (a) epidemiological-led culling and (b) wildlife monitoring.

There are no current plans to publish an updated bovine TB policy in terms of epidemiological-led culling of wildlife or wildlife monitoring. Our response in March 2020 to Professor Sir Charles Godfray’s review of government’s bovine tuberculosis eradication strategy set out plans to evolve badger control policy with increased support for badger vaccination, following the wide-scale deployment of effective, industry-led intensive badger culling.

We are now developing measures to make badger vaccination, combined with biosecurity, the focus of addressing risks from wildlife as an exit strategy from intensive culling. Our aim is to allow future badger culls only where the epidemiological evidence points to a reservoir of disease in badgers.

There is little evidence to suggest tuberculosis in other wildlife species is a significant problem that is driving the epidemic in cattle in England. There are no plans, therefore, to control other wildlife species.