Speeches by Eagle.

“If there are things that you want to draw to my attention that would make it easier for farmers who access technology in that way to interact with our grants, I am more than happy to hear what you have to say about it.”

“Well, Apple already has that, but not when it comes to cows.”

“I might be very sceptical of somebody who said I could have one master database that would solve all my IT problems.”

“Yes, they are also in the mix.”

“It is a capacity issue in the Department and not an issue of negotiation with the EU, to be very frank with you.”

“It has to be trialled and accepted. It has to be proved scientifically before we can make it commercially available or think about how to deploy it. We are in third-stage trials, but there was a slightly odd result in the second stage, which was unexplainable, that might have set us back a while. This is the science. Y…”

“You will have to wait and see.”

“I do think, by the way, that there is an issue if we are talking about access to healthy food, particularly in very obvious areas of food deserts and deprivation. There is a real issue that we all have to think about around the positive correlation between poverty and obesity, which has come about as a result of the wa…”

“I have not seen any draft of it at the moment. We are looking to bear down on all these areas. You have the Godfray report in front of you. You can see which direction the professor thinks we should be going in. Some of our constraints are scientific; some of them involve trade and the trade-offs between vaccination an…”

“The Godfray report was very clear about that. We will not get there at the rate that we are going. He said we need to spend more money on it. The refresh will be an important part of seeing how we can bear down on this in different ways. Farmer management on farm is an important aspect of this, as is badger vaccination…”

“It is coming out before Christmas.”

“It would, as well as biosecurity and trading from high infected areas into low infected areas. There is a range of issues that you can look at in this area.”

“We are looking in the TB refresh at what we can do around all these issues to see how we can be more sophisticated, especially given that the vast majority of badger culls are coming to an end.”

“No.”

“Can you repeat your question? Sorry, I was still raising my eyes to the ceiling at your political comment and I forgot to concentrate on the actual question. Perhaps you could try me again.”

“There are various things that are happening, but the test that you are talking about—the SICCT test—is the internationally recognised test. Bovine TB is a notifiable disease, so we have to use that test. Professor Godfray’s final report on bovine TB eradication was published in September this year. The new APHA tests a…”

“It makes sense to think about how vaccination for turkeys, which is a very high-value area, might work. As I have just said with the French ducks example, it is not an absolute answer to the issue. We are happy to trial it and see whether it works and what the consequences of vaccinating a flock actually are.”

“It is not being snuck out on the last day before Christmas. It is not. There are a great number of reports across Government that have to be got out. There is the infamous No. 10 grid that you may remember from previous Administrations. We have to get the sequencing of all Government announcements right. I do not think…”

“Avian flu is now endemic in the wild bird population, which means we are getting waves. There is a kind of yo-yo effect. If you look at the costs for the last five years—it sounds like you have, since you have added them together—you will see that in 2022 it was around what it is now, and then there was a huge increase…”

“We try to foster those, with greater success in some contexts than others.”