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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what changes his Department has made to the testing system for bovine TB since August 2021.

Since August 2023, cattle brought into herds in the annual testing part of the Edge Area from higher-risk areas in England (and from Wales) have been subject to post-movement TB testing. This measure has strengthened the mandatory TB post-movement testing regime for cattle in England, originally introduced in April 2016 for animals joining herds in the Low Risk Area (LRA) of England from other parts of England or Wales.

Between September 2020 and July 2021, the default frequency of mandatory TB surveillance testing throughout the High Risk Area (HRA) of England was increased from annual to every six-months, with some exceptions for lower-risk cattle herds (whose owners would have the option to remain on annual TB testing). In March 2024, the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA) introduced two relatively minor changes to the process used to identify herds in the HRA that are eligible for annual TB testing:

• the regular review of the eligibility lists switched from six-monthly to quarterly.
• keepers of herds newly qualifying for annual testing were given the opportunity to delay their next scheduled TB tests as long as the window for completion of the next routine herd test had not started.