Next week, thousands of people will gather at the Royal Welsh Show to celebrate the very best of Welsh agriculture.

The event brings together not just the farming community but every aspect of rural life. It is also an appropriate time to talk about bovine TB. This persistent disease continues to affect the livelihoods of so many people across rural Wales, and it seems that time and again there are debates and discussions about how to combat it, yet far too little meaningful progress.

After years of interventions, consultations and changing approaches, the uncomfortable truth is that the current strategy has not delivered the progress farmers were promised.

Now we have a new Plaid Cymru Government that appears to be taking a business-as-usual approach. There has been no major announcement on tackling bovine TB. Instead, as has become part and parcel of this Government's approach, there is another plan, another focus group or another "expert panel" to look into the issue.

Bovine TB is a devastating disease that not only causes enormous hardship for the agricultural community but also has consequences across the wider rural economy. It affects family farms, local businesses and the confidence of an industry that is vital to Wales.

For those affected, bovine TB is not simply a statistic published in a government report. It means animals they have cared for being slaughtered, businesses placed under restrictions and families facing years of uncertainty about the future.

The emotional and financial impact has been enormous.

Any Government that rules out potential solutions before considering the evidence is failing in its duty.

The principle should be simple: follow the science.

If independent experts advise that a particular approach should form part of a wider eradication strategy, then politicians should have the courage to consider that advice properly. Decisions should be driven by evidence, not ideology, and every scientifically validated tool should remain on the table if it can help achieve eradication.

The Welsh Government must rebuild trust with the farming community by being honest about what has worked, what has not worked and, most importantly, what needs to change.

The week before the Royal Welsh Show is the perfect opportunity for the Government to send a clear message that it is prepared to back Welsh farmers by supporting Reform's calls for a genuinely science-led approach to eradicating bovine TB.