Badger Culling and Bovine Tuberculosis

In a recent Commons ,
question on testing cattle for TB, Paddy Tipping encouraged the examination of other options to culling badgers (who carry the disease).

Bovine tuberculosis is an increasingly serious and costly problem. The focus so far has been on badger culling, but does the Minister accept that better farm biosecurity has an important role to play in reducing the incidence of the disease?

Badger culling is a very controversial issue and there is disagreement over its effectiveness. Many argue that only complete extermination (which would be very difficult, expensive and ethically dubious), would be effective, as partial culls can increase the spread of the disease by dispersing the surviving badgers.