Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): I welcome to the meeting the Minister of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs, Mr Andrew Muir, and the Chief Veterinary Officer (CVO), Mr Brian Dooher. Minister, I believe that you have 45 minutes with us today. We want to get the most out of the time available. Is 10.50 am a hard stop for you?

Mr Muir (The Minister of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs): We can do up until about 11.00 am. I have to leave the Building at 11.15 am.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): We appreciate that, guys. That gives us around 55 minutes, so we want to make the best use of that time. With that in mind, I ask you give us your briefing, Minister. Thank you.

Mr Muir: Thank you very much, Chair and Committee members, for the opportunity to brief you on bovine tuberculosis (bTB) and on the recently completed review that was undertaken by the Chief Veterinary Officer, Brian Dooher, the report on which I have now received. Members received an embargoed copy of the report yesterday afternoon. I look forward to discussing its key proposals during our evidence session.

Let me put it on record that I very much welcome the CVO's report. I express my thanks and appreciation to Brian and to all those who engaged with him as he carried out that important assessment of our current approach to bovine TB in Northern Ireland. It is an excellent report. It is considered and well informed and should help us all to reframe the conversation around bovine TB, its impact and how we address it. It paints a clear, Northern Ireland-specific picture of the disease's characteristics and how it is spread. It also clearly identifies the impact of the disease on farm families, on our ability to trade, on animal welfare and on the public purse. The impact of bovine TB on farmers and their mental health weighs heavily on my mind. We must, and we can, do better when it comes to tackling the issue together.

The report articulates starkly the scale of the challenges involved and why they must be surmounted. Most importantly, however, it sets out in detail many of the barriers to progress, with proposals made on how those barriers might be overcome. The report states that there are three key measures to any approach to eradicating bTB and that any strategy must be based on them, with progress made on all three fronts: first, people, culture and behaviour; secondly, cattle interventions; and, thirdly, wildlife interventions. The report is also clear that, in recent years, we have lost ground. Although a new bovine TB eradication strategy was published in March 2022, legal challenges around wildlife, as well as the ongoing absence of Ministers, slowed its implementation, but the disease has not been prepared to wait, so the position has continued to worsen. I think that all of us in the room know that. Our understanding of science and evidence has continued to evolve, however. The report provides an opportunity to reset the debate around the actions that are needed to counter and eradicate bTB. I encourage all stakeholders to read the review report in full and not to shy away from discussing and debating its proposals.

For too long, the bovine TB debate has focused on the place of wildlife interventions in controlling and eradicating the disease. I am therefore conscious that there will be particular interest in what the report states about wildlife interventions. I want to provide an assurance to the Committee that I will undertake further consultation on possible wildlife interventions before reaching any decision on the way forward, taking into account the findings in the CVO's report plus other relevant information and evidence, current legislative provisions and the outcome of the judicial review of my Department's former wildlife policy. Wildlife interventions, however, is only one of three key measures that will help us achieve disease eradication. The importance of the other two measures should not be underestimated or ignored. People are the foundation of any successful endeavour. Brian's report acknowledges the need for shared ownership and proactive engagement by all stakeholders, who must actively commit and contribute to eradication measures in order for them to succeed. It is vital that we detect disease early and thus prevent further cattle-to-cattle spread. It is also crucial that we take the necessary measures to protect currently clear herds. I welcome Brian's cattle proposals with interest.

The report contains just under 40 proposals. They are Brian's proposals to me, so not all of them constitute departmental policy at this time. I am determined that they will be considered and worked through at pace. Those that reflect existing policy positions as set out in the 2022 strategy can be implemented more quickly, while others will require further assessment to determine their feasibility and affordability. That assessment, as with every other aspect of our work to eradicate bovine TB, will be best carried out through collaboration and partnership working. I am therefore moving immediately to confirm my acceptance of Brian's proposal that a new bovine TB partnership steering group be established, comprising representatives from farming, wildlife and veterinary communities. I intend to have the group set up by the start of January. Its first task will be to work through the proposals in the CVO's report with him in the spirit of co-design, with a particular focus on identifying the immediate priorities for action and the steps needed to put them in place. That cannot be a lengthy process, so I will be looking to receive a delivery plan from the group before the end of March, accompanied by a communications plan. In establishing the group, we will build on the learning from previous bTB eradication partnerships, including making sure that we have members who will not only bring to the group the right expertise but place a clear focus on delivering in the wider public interest.

I also intend to take forward Brian's proposal for increased intergovernmental working across the UK and Ireland. I will be writing to my ministerial counterparts in the coming days to seek their support for that. Brian has also highlighted the importance of strong and effective governance at all levels, and I am pleased to confirm that the Department's internal governance and programme management structures for tackling bovine TB will be reviewed to ensure that they are capable of providing the assurance needed. Eradicating bovine TB will require significant effort and investment across the sector, and it is important that we continue to make sure that we have our own house in order before asking other stakeholders to do the same.

This is an important report. It contains analysis and proposals that we all need to consider carefully. As the CVO notes, its publication represents a new step forward on the path to controlling and eradicating the disease. Government will play its part, but we will make the progress that we all want to see only if we have buy-in from farmers and from the veterinary sector, industry and environmental NGOs for all three measures that Brian highlights, which, as I said, are people measures, including culture and behaviour, cattle measures and wildlife measures.

In conclusion, I am extremely grateful to Brian for his report, which was completed in a very short time. I urge everyone to consider it and digest the information therein. The status quo is not an option. Change over the short, medium and long term is essential. By all means, let us discuss and respectfully debate the report's proposals, but let us also please recognise that only by working together will we be able to tackle the issue firmly. It is my sincere hope and desire that we see the publication of the report as a turning point and as an impetus to put us on a trajectory to eradicating bovine TB.

Do you want to say a few words, Brian?

Mr Brian Dooher (Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs): Thank you, Minister, and good morning, members. As the Minister said, you have received a copy of the report, which, hopefully, you have had the chance to look through. I will give a brief overview of what it contains and of its findings, recommendations and proposals.

The review report is broken into three sections. Section 1 provides the background to what bovine TB is, based on the current epidemiology, and states why it is important to have a bTB programme in place, not just from a public health and animal health point of view but from a trade point of view. Our trade in cattle and cattle products is dependent on our having a functioning bTB programme. Section 2 outlines what I consider to be the key constraints, challenges and structural issues that we have to address if we are to tackle bTB effectively. Section 3 provides an assessment of the proposals that I suggest that we need to implement to address the barriers in section 2 if we want to tackle the problem and advance bTB control and eradication.

As the Minister outlined, to make the report easier to understand, I have built the recommendations around three measures, which are people, cattle and wildlife. The important thing to say is that it is a holistic package of measures. The three have to be integrated and advanced simultaneously. We have to address in all aspects where the sources of the disease are and where they persist. It is therefore important that that work be based on our taking a holistic, integrated approach. We cannot do bits and pieces.

Actions aimed at changing the culture and at advancing real industry and government partnership are critical. Government alone cannot do this. It has to be a true partnership, in every sense of the word, as we seek to control and eradicate bovine TB.

The work will be centred around the establishment of the bovine TB partnership steering group that the Minister has agreed to advance ASAP. Doing that will be key to moving things forward in the spirit of collaborative working and respect for everybody's views.

There are also recommendations on how we improve communications and education around the disease. For too long, bTB has been seen as a government problem. We need to make it visible again as the infectious zoonotic disease that it is, with the impact that it has on communities, farms and animals. We need to get that out there, and there is a vital piece of work being done on that. There is general apathy and fatigue out there. This has been going on for 70 years, so that is very understandable. We therefore need to change the situation. Science will underpin our policy and all the decisions that we take. We need to have good science in the background, and, in my report, I have touched on a proposal for doing that and also on related research.

Cattle interventions is the second measure, and I have divided that into three themes. One is disease surveillance and detection. Another is managing infected herds. The third, which we overlook, is protecting the herds that are clear. I have touched on disease surveillance and detection a few times. What can we do better? How can we look to enhance our testing strategies to make them better? That has to do with our private veterinary practitioner (PVP) engagement and getting the best testing out there done in the most effective and efficient way possible. Moreover, it looks at abattoir surveillance and at the tuberculin that we are using.

On the management of infected herds, I have looked at what we can do to eradicate and eliminate the disease in those herds as quickly and as efficiently as possible. A particular focus has been on the chronic breakdowns that are a serious factor in bTB spread. Certain herds have a propensity to develop prolonged and recurrent breakdowns, and those breakdowns are a substantial contributor to the problem that we have and to the numbers of reactors that we are finding. There is a special piece in the report on that, and I think that a chronic herd task force is needed to deal with the issue. I have also looked at purchasing policies, at the interferon gamma blood test and at alternative tests that are out there.

To protect clear herds, we really need to change the way in which we talk about bovine TB. Some 90% of our herds are free from TB. What are we doing to protect those herds to keep them free, thus building on that percentage? Rightly, our focus should be on eradicating and eliminating bTB from the 10% of herds that have problems, but we also need to focus on the 90% in order to keep them as they are and then increase the percentage. We have probably overlooked that. I have therefore looked at a few things. I have assessed informed purchasing and biosecurity. We have a lot of movement of animals in Northern Ireland, as we all know, because of our farming practices. How can we mitigate the risk associated with that movement in pre- and post-movement testing? We can build in biosecurity measures and good farming practices in order to help.

The third of the three big measures is wildlife interventions. The review report looks at all the available wildlife intervention options and has made a recommendation on the way forward that is founded and constructed on the test and vaccinate or remove (TVR) model but with bits added. The measure that gets a lot of attention currently is wildlife interventions, but it is just one of three measures. It is important to remember that there are two others.

There are two other, separate issues that I have touched on in the report. One is compensation. I have made a few suggestions about the current compensation regime to ensure that we can use it to encourage good practice. We have to think about how we can do that. The suggestion that I have made is to introduce table valuation. I have made one point on reducing compensation for animals that have been bought into herds and that go down in the same breakdown. There are figures in the paper that show that, over the past two years, we have bought back 2,500 cattle that had gone down with bTB having been bought into herds and that subsequently went down in the same breakdown. We need to do better there. We need to make sure that that risk is managed. Are we able to share that risk a bit better and encourage good practice? I understand and appreciate the need to maintain business viability, so it is important to get that balance right, because it needs to be got right. We cannot be adding fuel to the fire at times. The other issue concerns compensation contravening the programme rules.

One issue that has probably not been aired yet is the concept of regionalisation. No country has ever eradicated bTB unless it has followed that concept. Australia and New Zealand are the two main countries to have made advances there. We therefore have to do something different. We have to target our controls at areas and not have a one-size-fits-all approach but one that is bespoke — the most appropriate model — for dealing with the epidemiology in an area. We have to develop subpopulations with a high-health status and gradually use that as our launch pad for strategically advancing that model everywhere across Northern Ireland so that we can really make headway.

It is therefore about proof of concept, whereby we deploy a holistic package of measures in a subpopulation. That really is something that we need to take forward, and doing so allows for the focusing of resources. It gets good stakeholder engagement. That shows that eradication of bTB in an area can be achieved. It also gets buy-in, generates energy and provides the forward momentum that we sadly need.

It should be made clear that the report is, first and foremost, my review. It is my personal opinion on a lot of issues and contains proposals and recommendations that I have submitted to the Minister. It is not departmental policy yet. There still needs to be a significant amount of work done on policy development, financial assessments, legislative assessments and various impact assessments, and, ultimately, the Minister needs to give those consideration in the time ahead.

I am happy to take questions now and at any time afterwards. I am also happy to meet any of you to discuss the report in further detail. If we need more time to do so after today, I am free to discuss it. Thanks for your time.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): Thank you, Minister, and thank you, Brian. I did not deliver a preamble, because, since taking up this post, I have noticed that, outside of the departmental budget, bTB is absolutely the number-one topic that the farming community raises with me. From speaking to members this morning, however, I know that our receiving the report yesterday, although welcome, gave us very little time to prepare. I know that a lot of us stayed up late last night and were even up early this morning to get through it. Minister, I welcome the fact that you stated at the very start that you are open to having a conversation, and perhaps a robust conversation, but we need to see action.

Members, we literally have 40 minutes, so no one is going to get more than five minutes to ask questions. If someone runs over five minutes, I will have to move on in order to ensure that all members get a chance to ask questions. I will keep mine brief, but I will try to get in as many as possible.

Brian, you intimated that the review report is your own words. Did you get terms of reference from the Minister on the level to pitch it at?

Mr Dooher: The request was for me to do a review of bovine TB in Northern Ireland, assess the current situation and make suggestions for the way forward.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): OK. Minister, I am pretty sure that I know what you meant, and this is not to be naughty, but you said that delivery is planned by the end of March. You mean March 2025, I hope.

Mr Muir: Yes.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): OK. I ask only because, as politicians, we are really good at —.

Mr Muir: You are OK. It is important. Sometimes, we will have the discussion in Committee about the desire to take forward to drive down bTB, not just because of the cost to my Department but, more fundamentally, because of the cost to farming communities in Northern Ireland and the wider industry, not to mention the mental anguish that bTB is causing them. For us to be able to give people hope for the future, we have to do this together. The only way in which we are going to be able to eradicate bTB is by doing so collectively and through having a partnership model. We have a very short time frame. As I said, the partnership steering group will be established at the beginning of January, and it has until the middle of March to come back to me with a delivery plan. That is the way in which to go, however.

Chair, if people want to engage with me or Brian on the report and have further discussions, we are open to that. We are happy to facilitate informed discussion of the issues so that any concerns can be addressed and any clarifications that are required teased out.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): Thank you. My synopsis of the report is that it is a quantitative and qualitative report. The only thing that stood out for me was that I did not see too much in it that was not already known, except perhaps for the part on regionalisation. That is not necessarily a criticism, however, if new evidence has not been forthcoming. If the partnership steering group is set up and then reports by the end of March, what is the timeline for having boots on the ground and the action plan rolled out so that farmers notice a difference?

Mr Muir: I will let Brian come in on that, but, before I do, I will say that we have to consider our available resources and whether we need to consult on some other areas. We also need to consider legislative provisions. Some proposals will therefore be able to be moved on faster than others. The strategy from 2022 will provide the basis for potentially taking forward some proposals a bit faster than others.

Mr Dooher: That is right. The proposals that are already in the 2022 strategy can be advanced at a greater pace. Some, such as the new wildlife intervention strategy, will need to be developed and go through all the policy development processes. Work is ongoing in the background on advancing that strategy. Information will be gathered and presented to the Minister in due course.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): Thank you. The report contains three measures. I have questions on prevention and intervention. It is good to see that the preventative piece is in there, but I imagine that intervention will be our first step.

I think about the jobs that I have had in the past, and one criticism has been that bad behaviour is sometimes repaid by bad management. Sometimes, bad management results in everybody being made to pay for the sins of a small number of people. That relates to points that I will get into about tapered compensation. From what I can identify, any poor management of cattle applies to a very small number of farmers. Is it fair to have a tapered compensation scheme that captures everybody, when perhaps only a small number of farmers operate in a rogue manner?

Mr Muir: I will say something briefly before Brian comes in. There is lot of good practice going on in the farming community. That is reflected in the fact that 90% of our herds are free from bovine TB, as Brian said. We want to encourage and incentivise good practice, be that through taking proactive measures such as communicating and engaging or through taking other measures. That is why the partnership steering group will be key. Through it, we will able to tease out what tools we have to ensure that those who are doing well continue to do well and that those who need encouragement, advice and support can get it.

Mr Dooher: That is right. Compensation is staying as it is. The only recommendation that I have made specifically on compensation is to look at herds in which animals have been bought in and placed in high-risk areas. How can we make sure that we are doing everything that we can to have farmers avoid bringing animals into a diseased environment and unnecessarily exposing them to disease while expecting the public purse to pick up the bill? There is nothing in the report that states that compensation will be reduced as such. There is no tapering. At this stage, if we do the right thing, there will be no issue.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): I will stick to my word. I will now bring in the Deputy Chair, but I am sticking to a five-minute limit for questions, members. You will be timed. If you use less time, that is fine.

Mr McAleer: I will not take more than five minutes, Chair.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): Good man. Thank you.

Mr McAleer: Thank you, Minister and Brian, for coming here. I commend you on the report, Brian. The topic has been researched, reviewed and reported on for years. We have received the latest review and report, and we will now have another consultation. The bTB eradication partnership previously produced a very comprehensive set of proposals. How will the new body that has been proposed differ from what we have already been doing for years?

Mr Muir: I will come in briefly on that. Brian and I have talked about the reviews that have been done. As someone who has looked back on the issue strategically in recent weeks, I consider one fundamental thing to have held us back, and it is our not having the ability to focus on having a holistic strategy for all three measures and then to work in partnership. There are other examples of genuine partnerships between industry and government. Where the approach has been a bit more holistic, progress has been able to be made. We have to learn that lesson.

Today, my plea, as Minister, is that we come together and work on the issues, because if we do not do that in a genuine spirit of partnership, we will probably continue to be stuck in the cycle that we are in. We are now in a critical cycle, because the levels of infection are sustainable for neither the farming community nor my Department. Brian, do you want to say a bit more?

Mr Dooher: That is right. We have talked about bovine TB for a long time, but, for one reason or another, things have started and then stopped. We have never advanced anything. The previous strategy's recommendations are all in my report. They all are good recommendations, and I have added a few more. All sectors need to come together to form a true partnership, however, because the Department is not going to do it on its own. Everybody needs to be involved. Doing that will be challenging, because hard decisions will be required, but we are ready to have the conversations. Things may need to be adjusted a bit, but we need to have discussions. There may be better ways in which to do things, so we are open to suggestions. Can we have those discussions? We have never really turned discussions into a proper delivery plan and then turned that delivery plan into action. We have got everything down on paper, but we need to apply the report to real life.

Mr McAleer: Thanks for that. I have not been able to read the report in sufficient detail yet, but I have glanced through it. It refers to TVR. You can correct me on this, but my understanding from the previous report is that TVR cannot work unless the number of badgers in hotspot areas is reduced. My understanding is that there is an area of the North — about 12%, although I could be wrong — where there are bTB hotspots but where badger numbers are so high that they need to be brought down before TVR would achieve any success. Your report seems to propose TVR without there being a cull. Is that doable?

Mr Muir: I will let Brian come in, but it is important that I say that no decisions have been taken on the wildlife issue. I am conscious not only of the outcome of the judicial review but of a concurrent piece of work that is under way that, when completed, will provide me with a full departmental assessment of the merits of the different wildlife intervention options.

Mr Dooher: Declan, with any wildlife intervention, we know that the three options are a cull, vaccination, and TVR, or a combination of the three. You are right when you say — this is my understanding of it — that, for vaccination to be successful, we need to have a method of population control. What I mean by "population control" is reducing the burden of infection in the badger population. You can do that selectively or non-selectively, so there are two options. TVR is the selective option, whereby only the infectious badgers are moved, before vaccinating the others. The non-selective option is an indiscriminate cull.

TVR allows us to bring down the burden of infection as the same time as vaccinating the population. It does both things together, whereas a cull does only one. By doing TVR, we mitigate risks of badger perturbation from surrounding areas. Using my suggestion of the traditional TVR model with bits added would allow us to identify badger population density and the prevalence of TB in badgers in a certain area. After a year, the data would be known. We have not got that data at the minute. We have data from the badger road traffic accident survey of TB prevalence in badgers, which is sitting at around 28%. Evidence from the Republic of Ireland suggests that it has hotspots where it could be at 50%. I am not saying that we have that prevalence or that we are any different: we just do not know. TVR would allow us to get that information, however.

We know from research that there is heterogeneity in badger density and disease prevalence across Northern Ireland. TVR would allow us to pick up that data in the first year of operation and to adjust our methodology if, for example, the prevalence of TB in badgers was so high that vaccination would not work and we therefore needed to go straight to a proactive cull. We know that vaccination of infected badgers is pointless. TVR therefore gives us a data set and a foundation on which to make a more informed decision, based on the epidemiology of the disease, in order to move forward. We can vaccinate or cull afterwards, or do both, or we can stay on the same track. TVR gives us the option of not ruling anything out.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): I am sorry, but I have to bring in other members. There is an 11.00 am hard stop for the Minister, and I want to give everybody a chance to ask questions. I know that we need to hear some detail, but I ask that we proceed.

Mr Muir: OK.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): Thank you.

Miss McIlveen: Thank you both for coming this morning. The report is really comprehensive — thank you for that — and it tells us about the state of the nation.

I am concerned that you have relied heavily over the past number of months on this report coming out, and it is about the sector's perception and expectation about what the report will deliver. The onus is on how you present the report to the sector. I am interested to know about the conversations that you have had to date with the sector about what is being recommended today. There will naturally be a concern that what it looks like on the surface is perhaps not a carrot-and-stick approach or a partnership approach, as you have suggested, but just a stick approach. I suggest that because the report suggests a reduction in herds and compensation and restricted movements. I appreciate that some of that will have to happen, but the wildlife issue, as has been indicated by Mr McAleer, will be on the longer finger. I am keen to know that you will introduce measures in parallel so that the industry does not feel that it is having to take all the burden while the Minister and the Department shy away from very difficult decisions, as I suggested in last week's debate.

Mr Muir: Thank you, Michelle. The only way that we can take this forward is by using a balanced approach, and that is the whole genesis of what the partnership has to be about. As I outlined, there is a requirement for the Department to do a consultation on wildlife interventions. There are aspects of the report that it will be absolutely critical to discuss within the partnership. The worst thing today would have been if I had taken the report and said, "These are the tablets of stone. This is what I as Minister say that we are doing", because that would defeat the purpose of what we want to achieve. We want a partnership model where we do this together, and that is absolutely critical. I do not see it as a carrot-and-stick approach at all. I see it as a really positive opportunity to move forward.

I will not shy away from difficult decisions on this and other issues because, in the past, our politics has failed where we have done that. We have to explain why we are looking at those issues, and that is why I am glad that the report is going to be published today, so that we can have an informed discussion around the issue. People can digest the report, and then we can move into the partnership model at the beginning of the new year to tease through some of these things. A number of these issues are for discussion within the partnership model. They are not a done deal, and it is for us to discuss the best way forward. We have our role to play, and the industry has a role to play as well.

Mr Dooher: First, it is important to get the suggestions and recommendations right. They have to be co-designed and developed. A lot of these things are progressive, graduated approaches. What is in the paper is not fit for today, it might be fit for 10 years' time when we are in a different picture, but we need to know where we are going and where we need to get to. There are different measures at different stages, and that is where the delivery plan will come in. Importantly, it has to be co-designed with the industry. If it is not, it is not their plan and it is not going to work.

I have not referred to reducing herd sizes in the report. I have highlighted that herd size is a significant risk factor. It is probably the main risk factor for TB. Our big herds are where the most significant burden of TB sits. We need to identify different ways of managing that and how we can help farmers to better manage the risk so that TB becomes less of a burden on them. It is about how we do things differently, it is not about reducing size. Surely reducing the size reduces risk, definitely, but there are other things that we can bring in that are touched on in the paper to help those farmers.

It is not restricting movements as such. We have a lot of movements. Can we identify the high-risk movements and mitigate the risk? I want to protect 90% of herds from infection. What can I do to tell those people that there is a risk associated with the move? How can we mitigate the risk in the best way possible? There are a lot of ways of doing it. I have some suggestions in the paper; there might be better suggestions. I am happy to take them on board. As somebody said, the science of TB is changing all the time, we are getting better and we know more, but there is also a lot of conflicting advice that we have to wade our way through.

This has to be done in partnership with industry. There will be hard decisions. It is not going to be easy on anyone: if it was easy, we would already have done it. That is why we are here. This is going to be a challenge. Critical decisions will have to be made to advance this, and we have to do that together.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): Thank you. Apologies, Michelle, that has been five minutes and 30 seconds, believe it or not.

Miss McIlveen: Has it?

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): Yes. Sorry, Michelle.

Mr Irwin: Thank you for coming along. This is a wide-ranging report. As I am sure most of us did, I glanced through the report last night. There is no point in telling you that I read it all, because I felt like going to bed at a certain time.

I have some concerns about pre-movement testing and whether it could affect livestock marts in the chain. In what context do you envisage pre-movement testing coming into play?

Mr Dooher: You are aware of the animal health law that applies here, which brings in a requirement for pre-movement testing. It also brings in a derogation. The requirement is that you pre-movement-test animals within 30 days before they go, but there is a derogation whereby any animal that has been tested in the past six months and has been in a herd that has been tested in the past six months does not have to be subjected to pre-movement testing. Pre-movement testing is about protecting herds. How do we bring it in? That is up for discussion. It is going to become a legislative requirement. It is in the legislation, so we cannot ignore it, but it is also a tool that we can use to our advantage. How can we use it best to mitigate risk? What I am really on about is protecting herds that are clear so that they know what they are getting, but it is a question of how we use it. We can talk about that and design it in the way that suits us best.

Mr Irwin: It could pose a problem for livestock marts, as it would create more difficulty for people.

Mr Dooher: It is a barrier. It creates a hurdle, and it is an expense.

Mr Irwin: It creates a hurdle and a barrier. The cost is going to be on the farmer, is that right?

Mr Dooher: It is an expense, yes. How do we do it? I will give an example. We brought in pre-movement testing for brucellosis, and that was probably one of the key factors in helping us to eradicate brucellosis. TB is a bit different, but this is a tool in the toolbox. The way that I look at it is that there is no silver bullet for TB; it is about doing a lot of small things well that are going to feed into a big holistic picture and integrate them.

Mr Irwin: Some farmers are saying, "I've had no TB for years. My herd is tested every year and has been clear for the past 10 years, so why should I have to pre-movement test?". You can understand that position.

Mr Dooher: You can understand that position, and we are happy to discuss it. It has become a legislative responsibility. We want to target our interventions where they will be most useful. We do not want to do things for the sake of doing them, because that would not serve anybody. At the minute, the incidence of TB is worrying.

Mr Irwin: Absolutely

Mr Dooher: We need to start taking action. We have talked for long enough, and we need to advance this.

Mr Irwin: I have no cause to say this to you, as you are fully aware of it, but there are different strains of TB. I have a large herd, and I have seen two or three animals of 800 go down, but you could go to another herd and find that 100 are down. Some strains of TB are more prevalent than others. Could those strains not be identified and homed in on?

Mr Dooher: Yes, and we are doing that. A lot of research will be focused on the strain types, where the spread is coming from and why some herds have those explosive outbreaks. Is it the farming practice or other things? We have a lot of work to do there. As a Department, we have to do better by helping farmers to do that, investigating it better, communicating better and really getting in there. We also need to work with private vets. There is a great opportunity to engage private vets more in this work and in the breakdowns. You are exactly right that work needs to be done there.

Mr Irwin: I think so. The different strains — if you have 800 cattle and two animals are down, but go to another herd and 150 animals are down, then something is badly wrong. There is a big difference between strains of TB. That is how it looks to me. Thank you.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): Thank you so much, William. You were definitely at the effective questioning session. That was excellent. Beat that, Nicola.

Miss Brogan: Thank you very much to the Minister and Brian for attending and for providing your report. I have a couple of questions; excuse me if the first is a little daft. You talked about the TVR approach. Will you explain how you vaccinate badgers? How time-consuming and costly is it?

Mr Dooher: As you say, it is labour-intensive and costly. I do not have the exact costs here. We can get them for you, will be based on our experience before. TVR is a fairly new approach. We had a trial in the Banbridge area a number of years ago. I will have to get you the figures, but you are exactly right: it is the most labour-intensive and most expensive method of wildlife intervention.

Miss Brogan: What do you actually do? That is what I am asking. It might be a daft question.

Mr Dooher: You have to catch the badger first, and then basically sedate it to get the blood sample to test. You then test there at the site. It is a bit similar to the COVID test. It gives you an instant result, and you then make a decision, based on that result, on whether the outcome should be vaccination or euthanasia. Any infected badger is euthanised, and any healthy badger is vaccinated.

Miss Brogan: Has that approach been used in any other country before?

Mr Dooher: No. As you know, we did a trial. France is deploying it at the minute. The Republic of Ireland is looking into it but has not deployed it yet. It has not been deployed anywhere yet, but France is the one country that is taking it ahead at the minute.

Miss Brogan: It is pioneering it now. OK. Thank you. Obviously, the discussion around bovine TB and the spread of it is always focused on badgers. In your report and in all the discussions, it is noted that deer can also carry TB. Are you aware of any other animals that carry it? What is your approach to tackling the spread of TB through the deer population?

Mr Dooher: As is touched on in the paper, with deer, the science behind that is not robust. We are picking it up in deer. Are they a real factor in the epidemiology here in Northern Ireland? That is questionable, yet some people beside the forests might say that there is definitely a risk factor there. Wicklow is the area in the Republic of Ireland that has an issue. They are doing a lot of work on that at the minute to see how it is in epidemiology. It will be a real problem if it gets into the deer population, because you will then have two wildlife hosts. If we wait much longer and encounter that sort of situation, we will be in trouble and it will be difficult to manage. We are proposing to get a bit more ecology done on the deer population. What is happening there? What is the population of wild deer? What is the prevalence of TB there? That work has not really been taken forward here yet, but it needs to be taken forward. It is a very valid point. It can be found in other wildlife. It has been found in sheep, pigs and cats. TB is getting there.

The big thing is that we do not really regard TB as a clinical disease any more. Nobody has really seen a sick animal with TB. You have to go back to our parents' days; they might have seen it. It is that long ago. There is an issue there, because you do not see it like you see bovine viral diarrhoea, salmonella or any of the other diseases, and you do not relate to it as much because you see a healthy animal being lifted out. That does not help. The visibility of the disease needs to come back on to the radar again.

Miss Brogan: That is fair enough. I am very aware of time.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): You have one minute for a question and answer.

Miss Brogan: I want to ask about regionalisation. Is that contradictory to increased intergovernmental working? TB is an issue across the island of Ireland, and it is important that you are working with your counterparts in the South on that. Is regionalisation a contradiction to that, or can they work hand in hand?

Mr Dooher: They can work hand in hand, and that is our wish. We have a shared problem and a shared vision for advancing the solutions. There is a great opportunity there to work with our colleagues. They have done a lot more work than we have. We are well behind them, to be honest, but regionalisation really does offer us an opportunity to advance this. I see regionalisation as providing the evidence that this will work in an area, and this will work if we do it. You can advance that as a broader strategic approach. You can take whatever areas you want, but it is very important to choose your area carefully to make sure that you have the right boundaries. That is very important for regionalisation. I have done a bit of work in the background looking at areas where I think this could be deployed successfully. It would need big stakeholder engagement and commitment, but the TB eradication partnership, when established, would drive that forward with us.

Miss Brogan: Thank you.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): This is going to be our big test. Patsy, stick to your five minutes, please.

Mr McGlone: I will be sharp and quick. Brian, you emphasised at the very start that this document is a review undertaken by yourself. I want to get it clear in my mind, because I am unclear what the status of this document is as regards the Department.
Is it a discussion document? Is it a pending policy document? Is it going to be adopted in part, or in toto, by the Department? Otherwise, we are into hypothesis. Maybe that is a question for you, Minister, as opposed to Brian.

Mr Muir: No problem. This is the view of Brian, as Chief Veterinary Officer, on the issue. I have commissioned it. What we need is to do is step through, and I need to get advice about relevant aspects of it. I have already taken the view that I want to set up the stakeholder partnership, and I also want to strengthen the liaison between North/South and east-west, primarily between CVOs. That is the initial step that I have taken from the report. In the time ahead, then, we need to take out of the report the other aspects that I am going to ask for advice on, and then we will work through the partnership in relation to this. By the middle or the end of March, we will have a very clear idea what we are taking from this and what stuff we are taking as more medium or long term.

Mr McGlone: So, at this point, it is a discussion document?

Mr Muir: Clearly, it provides a discussion for us here.

Mr McGlone: A bit of work has gone into it, granted, but it is a discussion document.

Mr Muir: Yes. I think that it gives us a lot of really useful suggestions as to how we move forward to drive this down. That is absolutely key. It is also about being honest about being able to deal with this issue and the speed with which we need to do it. I put my best person onto it, and that is Brian, the CVO. It is a game changer in how we deal with these issues.

Mr McGlone: This leads me on to my next point. Has the previous strategy now been set aside —

Mr Muir: No.

Mr McGlone: — to be superseded by what is happening here, or what?

Mr Muir: The previous strategy stays. This review and report give us a clear impetus towards delivery, and not just upon areas within the strategy. Some aspects of the 2022 strategy have not been delivered or have been partially delivered, but also there are additional actions we can take out of that. These are actions we can take to turbocharge our drive to drive down TB.

Mr McGlone: You are all aware, and the people in this room are aware, of the cost to the public purse, the cost to families and, basically, people being bereft about the loss of their herds. We really do not want to get into the territory of reinventing the wheel.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): We are not back to it.

Mr Muir: There is a lot in previous reports that has not been progressed. There has been a very strong focus on one of the pillars of intervention — wildlife — but I am clear that we must take a holistic strategy going forward. I absolutely beg people to look at the report and for us to take a holistic strategy going forward. The only way we are going to achieve the eradication of bovine TB is through that holistic strategy and the three pillars that have been outlined by Brian. Otherwise we are going to be in the same situation year after year, and we will have more mental anguish in our farming communities. We owe them better than that.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): That is a gold star for you today, Patsy. Thank you so much.

Mr Blair: Thank you, Minister and Brian, for being here, and thank you, Brian, for the report. When we have these conversations, I am always reminded that the history of this debate and issue has always focused on cattle versus badgers. The report helps in pointing out that it is a much wider issue than that. I will come to the biosecurity thing in a minute. Before I do, I want to highlight another important issue, which is that there are a wide range of views across society, particularly on the wildlife piece. The Committee and the Department also have a remit for wildlife, although, thus far, we may not have spent as much time on that, and nature recovery etc, as we have on other things. However, all these things are related.

So there are two things with that backdrop. The biosecurity piece. Given the importance of public confidence in that wider society that I mentioned a moment ago — that includes consumers, of course — the report states clearly that the biosecurity issue:

Then it goes on to say, and this is regrettable, of course:

in Northern Ireland. In that regard, what can we do in the context of the report to make that better? Does that not strengthen the argument for there to be some sort of penalty available if people are not stepping up to whatever measure is put in place around biosecurity? The second question — I will put two in together, if you do not mind — is on the TVR issue. TVR was trialled in Northern Ireland in 2014 and 2015, and it focused mainly around an area of County Down. As far as I am concerned, it was regarded as being successful, although never rolled out. Will the examination and review of the issue that is going to take place with the new group look at the history of that trial and take it on board?

Mr Muir: I will let Brian come back on most of that. Biosecurity is a key component of how we will be able to drive down bovine TB, but it is not everything; it is one of the tools in our toolbox. However, the scale of the problem that we have here is such that we need to use every tool that is in our toolbox to drive it down. We cannot cast aside one thing because it is too difficult; we have got to do it all. This is about incentives for good practice. There is lots of good practice that is going on, and we want to ensure that that is recognised and that we encourage it. It is about incentivisation rather than penalties. That is my entire focus. I know the situation that we have here — I am very aware of it. I am aware of our herd sizes. I do not seek to reduce those, but I seek a sustainable way forward. The current situation is not sustainable for the farming community or my Department. That is where our focus is.

Mr Dooher: I have a couple of points on compensation for biosecurity. I would rather reward good practice. That would get much more from a social science and human behavioural point of view. Let us incentivise good practice — that is what we want — and let us encourage and support it, as opposed to the corollary of that. What was the objective of the TVR that was done? It was really only to see if we could vaccinate badgers. That is what it was broadly around. It did not really go into looking at what impact that had on the TB in the surrounding area. We hit COVID just at the end of it too: that did not help. There were a few complicating factors, but it was a start. It showed that it can be done, and it showed that it can reduce the prevalence of TB in badgers, but it also showed that there is more work to do.

Mr Blair: Chair, I should clarify that I asked the question around biosecurity and potential penalties because, as I am sure the Minister and Brian will agree, if those who engage in bad behaviour continue to do so, it could have a very negative impact on those who are pursuing good behaviour and setting a good example, particularly when we know the impact of the issue on the well-being of our farming community, first of all, and on the finances of farms and the Department. My worry is that if bad practice continues —.

Mr Muir: This is the key, John: we need to do this together, because it is a collective problem. It is not just government; it is not just farming; it is not individual farmers. We are all affected by this. It affects the wider industry. Speak to the processors around it all. If this report and today do not provide an opportunity for a reset, I do not know what will.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): That is bang on five minutes, John, if you are content.

Mr Blair: I am content.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): Members, thank you for your forbearance, but I wanted to bring everybody in. I just want to mention that Declan was alive to Áine, and she got asking a question through Declan, so she has been part of the conversation. Minister, if you do not mind, I will ask one question of Brian before you go. I know that you need to go. You talked about the vaccination of badgers, which we have talked about. The paper mentions two things. You said that it does not mention herd size, but it does talk about herd concentration. There is one other thing about the vaccination of cattle perhaps being part of prevention in the future. Do you want to add anything in that regard?

Mr Muir: The report outlines the intensification that has occurred with regard to herd sizes, particularly in Derry. I am aware of that, and people are very aware of that as an issue. We need to work towards finding solutions and doing things sustainably. Hopefully, that is the message that you are getting from us. That is what we are focused on; we are working in partnership to give us a bit of hope. You will know that there were recent announcements from DEFRA on the vaccination of cattle. It is not going to come in at any time soon, but it is something that we are monitoring quite closely.

Mr Dooher: We work closely with our colleagues in England, Wales and Scotland. As you will know, they have a big research trial on getting the vaccinations. Vaccination is prohibited for TB in EU law because we cannot differentiate vaccinated animals from infected animals. Basically, we are looking for a test that will make that distinction. That is where the research is focused. That is a number of years away. Good progress is being made, and we can get you updates, if you would like us to. However, it is not going to happen today or tomorrow, so we cannot wait for that as the solution.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): I appreciate that you gave us a little bit of extra time, Minister. On behalf of the Committee, I thank you. I am sure that we will — I will not say lock horns — discuss this further in the Chamber and at Committee.

Mr Muir: Thank you very much.