Bovine TB

There was an important ministerial statement in Parliament recently — Caroline Spelman, Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs — on Bovine TB.

This scourge results in the slaughter of 25,000 cattle a year and the cost of this disease is £100-million a year. The consequences are far more than financial.

Our farmers sometimes face the destruction of entire herds and on a regular basis the disruption of routine testing and surveillance, pre-movement testing, movement restrictions (around 23% of farms in the South West were unable to move stock from their farms during 2010 as a consequence of Bovine TB) and of course, the removal and slaughter of infected animals.

The extraordinary work of the Farm Crisis Network in providing pastoral care to many farmers bears ample testimony to the dreadful hardship and depression that this situation visits on our farming community.

 The badger population is a frequent carrier of TB and this reservoir of infection in our wildlife promotes the spread of the disease. Bovine TB has not been successfully tackled anywhere in the world without addressing the reservoir of TB in the wildlife population and so the Government has announced that it will grant licences to trained farmers in two pilot areas (yet to be determined) of around 150 square kilometres within which badger culling (through open shooting) will be permitted.

The Holy Grail of course is an oral TB vaccine for badgers, something in which the government continues to invest. But we are unlikely to see this breakthrough soon. In the meantime, for the sake of our farmers and just as importantly for those cattle and badgers who suffer from this dreadful disease we must continue to show our resolve to get on top of TB.

Caroline Spelman should be commended for just that.