Bovine Tuberculosis: Disease Control

(asked on 4th February 2020) - View Source

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether her Department plans to continue expanding the boundary of the minimum infected area in Cumbria in the event that the Animal and Plant Health Agency continues finding badgers outside that area which are infected with TB; and if she will make a statement.


Answered by
George Eustice Portrait
George Eustice
This question was answered on 10th February 2020

In Area 32-Cumbria the cull area is made up of two parts, the minimum infected area and the outer cull area. The minimum infected area is based on:

  1. the location of the infected badgers, associated farms and contiguous breakdown areas, plus a radius of the estimated average social group territory based on main sett distribution; and

  1. the location of another farm with a TB breakdown very strongly suspected on epidemiological grounds to be badger related.

Therefore the boundary could be expanded if evidence shows that infected badgers are found outside the boundary, as it was in 2019.

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