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

To ask His Majesty's Government how many cattle were slaughtered because of suspected bovine tuberculosis in 2024 and 2025; and of those cattle, how many were subsequently confirmed to have had tuberculosis.

The number of cattle slaughtered for TB control purposes in Great Britain in 2024 and 2025 were as follows:

The comparative format of the tuberculin skin test used in the UK is very specific (99.98% at the standard interpretation), so the probability of a false positive result is roughly 1 in 5,000 to 6,000 uninfected cattle tested. This means the department can be confident that the vast majority of skin test-positive cattle (i.e. test reactors) are truly infected with TB, irrespective of post-mortem and laboratory findings.

Bovine TB statistics are published on GOV.UK and can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/bovine-tb.