§ Mr. Jonathan EvansTo ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, pursuant to his answer to the hon. Member for Darlington (Mr. Milburn) of 8 December,Official Report, column 260, what progress has been made in introducing the test for tuberculosis in the live badger announced as part of a package of measures to address the problem of badger-related TB breakdowns in cattle.
§ Mr. BrowningWe have undertaken four pilot trials of the new badger control strategy based on the live test and have discussed these with the consultative panel on badgers and bovine tuberculosis. The original proposal envisaged three approaches: no action at all against badgers; the continuation of the existing interim strategy of trapping and killing badgers on the farm or part of the farm where the disease outbreak occurred; and finally the continuation of the interim strategy on the breakdown farm and an extension beyond the farm to apply the live test and to trap and test badgers on neighbouring farms. The trapping and testing would be carried out on a sett-by-sett basis; where a sett is found to contain one or more badgers positive to TB in the test, the positive badgers and any other badgers caught from that sett will be killed. Setts which test negative will not be disturbed.
On the basis of the views expressed by members of the consultative panel, Ministers have decided that, in cases where the live test is applied on neighbouring farms it would be more appropriate to apply the live test on the breakdown farm instead of the interim strategy. The live test will be used on the same basis as on the neighbouring farms and will result in fewer badgers being killed.
The other elements of the strategy will remain. In particular no action will be taken where there is no evidence to suggest that the original breakdown in the cattle herd was related to badgers, and the policy of not killing any lactating sows which are trapped because of the resulting impact on the cubs, which are dependent on her, will also remain. The strategy on the revised basis will start to apply from 1 November.