Bovine TB

I accept entirely the difficulty faced in Devon and other hot-spot areas, and I recognise the frustration that farmers feel because they think that culling is the way to deal with the problem. All that I can do is to draw attention to the experience of trying to respond by culling, which can be found in the RBCT report, and to the conclusions of Professor Bourne. That is not what people expected, but it is what was found, and I must act on that judgment. I recognise that it is very difficult. We know that badgers are infected and are a source of infection—no one argues about that. The question is what is the effective way of dealing with it, and the only way to do so currently is to seek to develop a vaccine. That is why one of the things that I want to do, working with the new partnership group, is to develop the vaccine deployment project. Perhaps that could be tried in Devon; I am open to suggestions.