Labour’s shadow environment secretary Rachel Maskell has pledged to end the badger cull if the Labour Party gain power. Maskell was making commitments at the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool on sunday.

She said a Labour government would focus on eradicating bovine TB, but would abandon the failed culling policy, which the Tory government expanded to five new areas of South-Western England this year.

The shadow Defra secretary said, “A Government that ignores scientists, academics, its own experts and many farmers too and instead turns its frustration on a badger, is giving false hope…When every shred of evidence says bovine TB will be beaten with better testing, vaccination, better biosecurity and animal husbandry.”

The Labour Party has promised to launch a major consultation on animal welfare, and Maskell said the plans for tackling bTB feed into this. She promised, “Labour will end the badger cull and prioritise ending bovine TB.”

As well as pledging to end the badger cull, the shadow secretary made commitments to reverse biodiversity losses, work towards a circular economy - “reducing our consumption, recycling and generating energy from our waste, not turning it over to landfill” - and develop a “Food framework” to reduce food waste, improve education and diet and improve jobs in food production. She also said Labour would expand the remit of the Grocery Code Adjudicator to offer protections throughout the supply chain and introduce an Agricultural Sector Council, to underpin all issues of employment standards, including wages, across the sector, replacing the Agricultural Wages Board, which was scrapped by the Lib Dem-Conservative coalition government.

She criticised the Conservative government as “inept”, slamming its record in the lead up to and aftermath of the EU referendum. Masked said, “Since 23 June, we’ve learnt that the Government made no analysis of the depth of its relationship with the EU, had no understanding of the capacity needed to re-negotiate hundreds of regulations protecting our food safety and wider environment, and has no plan for the future of the sector which employs three point nine million people and where 75 per cent of our food exports go to the EU.”