New DAERA minister Edwin Poots is against a widespread cull of badgers in NI as a means of tackling the issue of TB, instead favouring a targeted cull in TB hotspot areas, alongside vaccination of badgers in the perimeter of a cull zone.

He outlined his thinking in a briefing for MLAs on the Stormont agriculture, environment and rural affairs committee last week, suggesting that this approach would lead to a healthier badger and bovine population.

“It is a nonsense we have been engaging in for a long period of time. To not do anything would be a huge waste of money,” he said.

However, a new approach to TB is also likely to come with some hard choices around paying for annual TB tests, and compensation for reactor animals.

Minister Poots also wants to weed out those who are trying to defraud the system. “A very small number are engaging in fraud, and we need to be much tougher on those individuals. I would prefer if they weren’t farming – what they are doing is grossly wrong.”

October spike

While the latest TB results on the DAERA website are a few months out of date, they do show that last October there were more new reactor herds, and more reactor animals removed off farms, than in any other month during 2019.

In general, throughout 2019 the number of new TB reactor cases has been less than in the last two years. Annual herd incidence (the number of new reactor herds divided by the total that tested) last October stood at 7.98%, compared to over 9% in both 2018 and 2017.

It should also be pointed out that the 177 new breakdown herds recorded last October is less than the same month in 2018 and 2017. But it is a significant increase on the 134 from September 2019, and resulted in 1,386 reactors being removed.

Read more

Study confirms badger role in TB

TB group wants targeted badger cull