Agriculture Minister Jim Paice has confirmed that farmers and landowners from two carefully-selected areas are now able to apply for licences to trial new measures designed to tackle the devastating spread of bTB in the South West.  Two areas in West Gloucestershire and West Somerset have been selected from a shortlist of areas as being the most suitable to pilot the controlled cull of badgers in order to bring bTB under control.

Bovine TB forced the slaughter of 25,000 cattle in 2010 alone and will cost taxpayers around £1 billion over the next ten years if it is not effectively tackled. 

Jim Paice said "Bovine TB is a chronic and devastating disease.  It causes the slaughter of tens of thousands of cattle each year, and is taking a terrible toll on our families and rural communities.

"Nobody wants to cull badgers.  But no country in the world where wildlife carries TB has eradicated the disease in cattle without tackling it in wildlife too.

"These two pilots are just part of a wide range of activity on bovine TB.  We already have robust measures to control its spread amongst cattle, which we plan to strengthen further, and are continuing to work hard on the development of practical and usable vaccines.

"Natural England will now assess applications against a set of strict criteria.  If these are not met, licences will not be granted."

The pilots will allow the careful examination of how safe, humane and effective controlled shooting is and were announced, after public consultation on better tackling bovine TB, in December last year.