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 end badger culling.

On 30 August, the Government announced the start of work on a comprehensive new strategy to drive down bovine TB rates to save cattle and farmers’ livelihoods and end the badger cull by the end of this parliament.

The Government will work with farmers, vets, scientists and conservationists to rapidly strengthen and deploy a range of disease control measures.

A key part of the strategy is the ongoing development of a cattle vaccine, which is at the forefront of innovative solutions to help eradicate this disease. Planning is advanced on the next stage of field trials which will assess cattleBCG vaccination and the companion DIVA skin test on a broader cohort of herds to further inform our collective planning for delivery. We are continuing to work at pace but will only deploy the vaccine and companion DIVA skin test when we have all the right steps in place.

The new strategy will mark a significant step-change in approach to tackling this devastating disease. It will consider a range of further measures including boosting cattle testing, reducing the spread of disease through cattle movements, and deploying badger vaccination on a wider, landscape scale. This will build on Professor Sir Charles Godfray’s 2018 independent strategy review.

Work to underpin the policy with robust science has begun immediately and includes a survey of the badger population for the first time in a decade, a wildlife surveillance programme, the launch of a Badger Vaccinator Field Force and a badger vaccination study to increase badger vaccination at pace to drive down TB rates and protect badgers.