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

To ask Her Majesty's Government what recent steps they have taken to implement the recommendations of the report by Sir Charles Godfray A strategy for achieving Bovine Tuberculosis Free Status for England: 2018 Review, published on 13 November 2018.

In March 2020, the Government published its response to Professor Sir Charles Godfray’s 2018 review of England’s bovine TB (bTB) eradication strategy. Sir Charles’ review set out a number of potential options for the future.

The Government response sets out our top priorities for the next five years. The steps we have taken in 2020 to start to deliver this next phase of the strategy include:

• Accelerating our cattle vaccination work by appointing a Clinical Research Organisation to run cattle vaccination field trials. The aim of these trials is to support applications for UK marketing authorisations of the vaccine and a test to detect infected animals among vaccinated animals.

• Evolving our badger control policy, including tendering for a farmer-delivered project in East Sussex to vaccinate badgers against TB, and publishing a map showing the estimated distribution of TB infection in badgers in England’s bTB Edge Area.

• Improving our TB testing programme, through awarding £500,000 funding for innovative research to diagnose bTB more quickly, and starting to increase the default frequency of mandatory surveillance TB testing of cattle across England’s bTB High Risk Area from annual to every six-months, with some exceptions for lower risk herds.

• Evolving and strengthening partnership working though recruiting for a new Bovine TB Partnership to replace the existing Bovine TB Eradication Advisory Group for England.

Work is ongoing and we plan to announce further steps in due course.