Truss reiterates Defra commitment to further badger cull roll out

Defra Secretary Liz Truss has offered fresh hope to farmers in England’s bovine TB hotspot areas that more badger cull licences will be issued next year.

There was frustration in many potential cull areas after Natural England issued only one new licence this year, in Dorset, where culling is now underway.

Mrs Truss said the Government was ‘very much committed to continuing’ with its 25-year TB strategy, including badger culling.

She revealed she had recently visited Devon, where farmers had a licence application rejected this year, to discuss the possible introduction of the policy next year.

“We were able to roll out to one additional area this year and we want to roll out in further areas this year,” she told an NFU fringe meeting at the Conservative Party Conference.

The past fortnight has seen the two sides of the debate dispute the evidence to emerge so far from pilot culls.

Last week, NFU president Meurig Raymond and his deputy Minette Batters predicted evidence due to be published later this year from the first two years of culling in Somerset and Gloucestershire would show a ‘huge reduction in bTB in cattle herds’.

They cited anecdotal evidence of herds in the cull area which had been under restriction for a long time, but had gone clear.

Opponents of culling, however, led by Brian May, said data published by the Animal Plant and Health Agency (APHA) from the first year of the culls showed the NFU and former Defra Secretary Owen Paterson, who had made similar claims, were ‘deliberately misleading the farming community’.

Too early

An APHA report said data showed the first year of culling had made no difference in TB levels in cattle, although it stressed it was too early to draw conclusions (see below).

APHA is due to publish from the second year of the pilots this autumn.

But Farming Minister George Eustice told the NFU meeting said it was ‘too early in the process to make a formal judgement’ on the success of the culls. "The incidence has come down slightly but it is too early to put that down to the culls," he said.

He said data published earlier this year showed the feared ‘perturbation effect’, where culling actually spreads disease, was ‘very limited’ around the pilots.

He highlighted anecdotal cases of farmers who had been under restriction for more than a decade who had tested clear since culling began in Gloucestershire.

Mr Eustice described bovine TB as ’an insidious, slow-growing, difficult-to-manage disease’, with efforts to control it hampered by imperfect diagnostics.

He said Defra had ramped up cattle controls and was trying to develop an oral badger vaccine but stressed vaccination was of little use in heavily infected areas.

"We also have to tackle the disease in the wildlife population. This is not a popular policy - I recognise that - but it is the right policy," he said, in response to a vocal critic of the cull in the audience, who claimed Defra was ignoring the prevailing science on the issue.

He added "The best scientists (on bovine GB) we have got in this country are in Defra and they advise me on a daily basis about this."

Quicker roll out