By Debbie James

A FARMING union calculates that badgers in Wales are 17 times more likely to be carrying bovine TB than cattle.

The Farmers’ Union of Wales (FUW) says TB figures expose “flaws’’ in the Welsh government’s eradication policy, ignoring what it describes as a “massive disease reservoir’’ in the badger population.

The proportion of Welsh cattle which tested positive for TB in 2020 was 0.438 per cent – 0.00438 reactors per bovine animal tested.

According to figures it has sourced from the UK bTB Official Statistics, the FUW says this represents around one in every 230 cattle in Wales.

The union says the latest available figures for infection level in badgers show 7.3 per cent of ‘found dead’ badgers in Wales have tested positive for TB – around one in every 14.

Anglesey dairy farmer and FUW vice president Eifion Huws said that, based on these figures, badgers were 17 times more likely than cows to carry TB.

“Ignoring the scientific evidence and blaming farmers in order to cover up decades of flawed policies that have led to the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of cattle and widespread ecological damage does not help,’’ said Mr Huws.

Cattle TB rules in Wales are among the most stringent in the world, he added.

“Despite this, the number of cattle slaughtered due to TB has risen almost eightfold since the year 2000, and so far this century more than 160,000 Welsh cattle have been slaughtered due to the disease,’’ said Mr Huws.

A Welsh Government spokesperson said its TB eradication programme included an individual action plan for each persistent herd breakdown where all drivers of infection are considered, including the role badgers may play in disease persistency.

“The effectiveness of our flexible approach is evidenced by the fact there was a 48 per cent overall decrease in new TB herd incidents in Wales in 2020 compared to 2009 when the eradication programme was established.

“We saw the lowest number of annual new herd incidents in 2020 since 2002.’’

The latest government statistics for TB in Welsh herds have been published and show that in the first quarter of 2021 there were 179 new incidents in Wales with 2,981 reactors, while 159 incidents had closed therefore there had been an increase of 3 per cent.

In this time period, 94.5 per cent of herds in Wales were officially TB-free.

Wales is split into seven zones according to TB risk and each has its own rules and policies. Most TB breakdowns in Wales are in the high TB areas in the east and west of the country.

In the low TB area in north Wales, new and open incidents have increased since the beginning of 2020, with 23 new incidents during Q1 2021, driven in part by a cluster of incidents in the Denbigh and Conwy area.

In this area, there were 42 open incidents at the end of Q1 2021, which is 12 more than the previous quarter and the highest in the monitoring period, which extends back to Q1 2010.

However, these numbers are very low compared to the other TB areas in Wales with 98.5 per cent of herds in this area classed as TB free.

The figures also show that in this region incidence, prevalence and animal risk is consistently the lowest in Wales.