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 has taken to offer farmers badger vaccination in 2025 to tackle bTB in wildlife populations.

Badger vaccination is proven to significantly reduce the risk of infection and spread of disease within badger populations. The Government is committed to strengthening the evidence on how badger vaccination reduces TB in cattle. We know this is crucial for giving the wider farming industry confidence that participating in badger vaccination will have a positive effect on their cattle.

We are working with a range of organisations to continue the rollout of badger vaccination in England. This includes large-scale vaccination delivery by Animal and Plant Health (APHA) field teams, and an industry delivered vaccination approach in East Sussex. This work is demonstrating that large scale vaccination of badgers is practical, including in previously culled areas.

As part of the announcement of the start of work on a comprehensive new bovine TB strategy, the Government also outlined several actions it is taking immediately to underpin the policy with robust science and further increase badger vaccination at pace. This is available at the link below and includes:

• Surveying the badger population for the first time in a decade, to estimate badger abundance and population recovery. Surveys of eligible land started this February.
• Developing a new national wildlife surveillance programme, to unlock a data-driven approach that informs how and where TB vaccines and other eradication measures are deployed.
• Establishing a new Badger Vaccinator Field Force, to continue increasing delivery to create progressively healthier badger populations that are less susceptible to catching and transmitting TB.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-to-end-badger-cull-with-new-tb-eradication-strategy.