By Debbie James

Targeted badger removal in cattle herds with persistent bovine TB outbreaks could get underway in west Wales within weeks.

Pembrokeshire and parts of Ceredigion and Carmarthenshire have been categorised as high risk TB areas in the Welsh Government’s new regionalised approach to TB eradication.

In high TB areas, a localised cull of infected badgers is one of several new tactics described by Wales’s cabinet secretary for environment and rural affairs, Lesley Griffiths, as “appropriate and reasonable’’.

Badgers in herds with chronic breakdowns will be trapped and blood tested by government vets and support field operatives; if the animals test positive for TB, they will be humanely culled.

Those that test negative will be microchipped and released but if further laboratory testing confirms disease, they will be trapped again and culled.

A large-scale cull has been ruled out; badger removal will be limited to around 50-60 herds.

Although some of the new measures in the TB eradication programme require legislation and will therefore not be introduced until October 1, badger culling does not and could start immediately.

“We will be proceeding with this work as quickly but as carefully as we can. Initial discussions with farmers are underway,’’ said Wales’ chief veterinary officer, Dr Christianne Glossop.

The biggest change to the existing policy is the splitting of Wales into three regions based on the level of disease.

High TB areas like Pembrokeshire have more than two per cent of herds with TB breakdowns while low TB area Anglesey, Gwynedd and north west Clwyd has less than 0.2 per cent.

A third region, intermediate, includes mid Wales and parts of Clwyd.

For farmers in Pembrokeshire there will be:

•Expansion of Cymorth TB to provide free veterinary advice to all herds

•Appropriate interventions in wildlife

•Whole herd tests at six-monthly intervals for herds with a long history of TB

•More restrictive herd movement controls

•Removal of standard inconclusive reactors (IRs) in chronic herd breakdowns

The biggest concern of zoning is the impact it could have on trade for farmers in high TB areas. But Professor Glossop defended the move.

“People have viewed Wales as a country that must be riddled with TB because the whole country has annual testing. With zoning, we are hoping to demonstrate that we have areas of the country as clean as East Anglia, Yorkshire and Scotland.’’

The new controls have largely been welcomed by the farming industry.

Ceredigion dairy farmer Philip Reed, who has lost several cows to TB, was relieved when his herd tested clear last month.

His farm falls in the high TB area. He believes a controlled cull of badgers is the right approach.

“No farmer wants to kill all badgers but there are just too many of them. The badger is lucky in that it has no predators and because of that populations are thriving.’’

Mr Reed, who milks 500 Ayrshire near Cardigan, said without a cull, farmers with TB in their herds were “farming with handcuffs on’’.

But Dr Lizzie Wilberforce, conservation manager with The Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales, is disappointed with the decision.

She said the trust objected to localised badger control measures.

“We know from the £50m randomised badger culling trial that reactive, local badger culling has the greatest potential to significantly worsen bovine TB in the surrounding area, and that this is associated with changes in badger behaviour caused by culling. We do not believe that these risks can be adequately controlled, and that the proposal therefore carries the possibility of making the disease picture significantly worse.’’

Dr Wilberforce said she was concerned that, after several years of sound evidence-based policy in Wales, that progress was now in jeopardy.

“We are also worried about the precedent this might set,’’ she added.

“During its recent enquiry, the climate change, environment and rural affairs committee (CCERA) recommended that if this work went ahead, it be scientifically monitored and reviewed, and either adapted or stopped if it is shown not to be effective. We believe that this is essential, and that the results should be made public.’’

But, more generally, she said that the wildlife trusts in Wales were broadly supportive of the proposed new cattle management measures.

She commended the Welsh Government on the efforts it had made to investigate local drivers of the disease, and to study the causes of disease outbreak and persistence at a farm scale.

“This recognises that bovine TB is a very complex disease and that ‘one size fits all’ solutions are not likely to be effective.

“We also recognise that current TB data show a decline in the number of new incidents of the disease in Wales, and that the greater intensity of surveillance has resulted in more cattle testing positive and therefore being removed from the national herd. We believe that the proposed changes to cattle measures will further assist this progress, but we recognise that there is still a long way to go before achieving eradication."