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A new long-term strategy to eradicate bovine TB will be brought forward this autumn, Agriculture Minister Edwin Poots has confirmed.
The new strategy is expected to include a cull of badgers in TB hotspot areas, and potentially also gradually phase in cuts to TB reactor compensation.
“It will not please everybody – there will be things you won’t like and things that you will” the Minister told UFU members at their annual general meeting (AGM) last Saturday.
Describing TB as a “disaster case” he said that it was the definition of madness to continue doing the same thing, and expecting a different result.
When asked specifically about a badger cull, the minister was clear that an eradication programme must involve tackling the issue in both cattle and wildlife.
Badgers
For those who want to protect badgers at all costs, he suggested it was an “act of cruelty” to have a situation where diseased badgers were spreading TB to others in their social group, and also to cattle. “We are going to have to take the appropriate steps, not just removing black and white cows, but removing little black and white furry creatures as well, that happen to be spreading TB,” he said.
Crucially, the Sinn Fein chair of the Stormont Agriculture committee Declan McAleer also seems to be on board. Joining Minister Poots on the stage at the AGM, he said that the wildlife intervention method used in the Republic of Ireland (targeted badger culling) was something his party has supported.
“The current budget [£36m annual cost to taxpayers] is not sustainable. Absolutely, we need to move on this swiftly” he told UFU members.
Plan
The most recent expert advice to DAERA comes from a TB Eradication Partnership set up in 2018. In its report published last year, the group recommended that DAERA should replicate the Republic of Ireland’s approach to targeted badger culling.
In addition, once there is a “significant change in approach to wildlife intervention” it also suggested that individual animal compensation is initially capped at £5,000, and that there is a 10% reduction to payments on the first five reactors in any 12-month period.
That is not as severe a compensation cut as set out in a DAERA report from 2017, which suggested that compensation is capped at £1,800 for pedigree and £1,500 for commercial animals. That report also recommended that farmers should pay for TB testing.
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