UK Chief Veterinary Officer’s advice on early termination of 2022 badger disease control areas
Published 11 June 2025
© Crown copyright 2025
This publication is licensed under the terms of the Open Government Licence v3.0 except where otherwise stated. To view this licence, visit nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3 or write to the Information Policy Team, The National Archives, Kew, London TW9 4DU, or email: psi@nationalarchives.gov.uk.
Where we have identified any third party copyright information you will need to obtain permission from the copyright holders concerned.
This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/bovine-tb-uk-chief-veterinary-officers-advice-on-early-termination-of-badger-disease-control-areas/uk-chief-veterinary-officers-advice-on-early-termination-of-2022-badger-disease-control-areas
In May 2021, the government issued a response to the bovine tuberculosis (bTB) consultation. This set out provision for the UK Chief Veterinary Officer (CVO) to recommend early termination for intensive cull licences issued in 2021 and 2022 after 2 or 3 years.
Cull Areas 62 to 72 inclusive began culling in September 2022, and all of them completed their third cull in late 2024. These areas are therefore eligible for consideration of early termination.
On review of the available data for these 11 areas, I considered early termination with an immediate change to badger vaccination in these areas. However, given the magnitude of vaccination scale-up operations required in the time available, it is highly unlikely effective vaccination operations could be established in 2025, even on a targeted basis in these areas. This would leave the 11 sites with no wildlife control for 2025, leaving a gap in control measures, which in my view would be detrimental to bTB disease control in cattle. Therefore, my advice is to not terminate any of those culls this year.
Christine Middlemiss CB, UK Chief Veterinary Officer
June 2025