8. Will the Cabinet Secretary provide an estimate of the number of farms suffering from bovine TB that are able to remove and humanely kill infected badgers? OAQ(5)0159(ERA)

We will consider a test to remove intervention on the 50 to 60 farms that have a persistent TB breakdown after a full veterinary epidemiological investigation has shown that cattle measures have been fully applied, and that badgers are the probable source of infection.

I know those 50 to 60 farmers will appreciate that opportunity. Could the Cabinet Secretary say perhaps on what timescale they might be able to do that and whether she then expects there to be expansion of those numbers? And can she also confirm that it’s only infected badgers that will be humanely killed? Does she agree with me that that actually could be the humane thing to do for the badger, rather than letting it loose to die and suffer from TB?

On your latter point, yes, it will be only the infected badgers and I do think it will be good for the badger population. I think I made that very clear in my statement on bovine TB last week. In relation to the 50 to 60 farms, those are the farms that are in that chronic TB breakdown—some of them for 16 or 17 years—that will have these bespoke plans. So, at the current time, we have about 10 of those bespoke plans that are more or less completed, so they will then be able to start that process and have that veterinary assessment that I referred to in my initial answer. So, this is now ongoing; we are now rolling that out. From 1 October, we’ll be rolling out most of the refreshed eradication programme that we discussed in the Chamber last week.