RECENTLY the Secretary of State, Caroline Spelman, announced the Government's Bovine TB Eradication Programme for England.

Bovine TB is a huge problem for Britain's dairy and beef farmers and we in Devon have been hit worse than most.

The year 2009 saw 24,500 cattle culled because of Bovine TB, 15,770 of those cases were in the South West of England. This has cost the taxpayer £63 million and has destroyed livelihoods of many in the beef and dairy farming industry. Bovine TB will cost the taxpayer £1 billion over the next decade in England alone if action is not taken.

Despite annual cattle testing for the disease and tight controls on the movement of herds Bovine TB is continuing its upward trend and is still severely affecting farming communities.

Caroline Spelman, the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, announced a range of measures to tackle to disease including ongoing cattle measures and planned measures, including reducing compensation where TB tests are overdue and removing some exemptions to test animals before they move out of herds under annual and two-year routine testing as well as a £20 million investment over the next five years to develop effective cattle and oral badger vaccine.

The Secretary of State also set out the proposed way forward on controlling the disease in the badger population. A nine week consultation has been launched on plans to license groups of farmers and landowners to carry out controlled culls of badgers in specific areas.

This has proved to be a subject that has stoked passions on both sides of the argument.

What does concern me is that calm, measured debate is giving way to shriller, less rational argument. The scientific debate surrounding the control of Bovine TB is being stifled and proper scrutiny of the merits of a cull is going by the wayside.