Ignore science, kill the badgers

Culls don't work. 

The Welsh Assembly is poised to surrender again to the prejudice of farmers.

The line is ‘Ignore the science, slaughter the animals.’  What are the facts for and against a cull of badgers to reduce TB in cattle?

There has been no cull in Scotland but they are free from TB. There was a cull in Ireland but TB remains a major problem and they are trying vaccination. There are no badgers on the island of Anglesey but they have TB. In the area planned for a cull in Wales TB levels have dropped 7% in the first three months of this year- without a cull. The ten years cull trial by Krebs found that culling made the problem worse.

Now the Tories are genuflecting before the farmers and planning to let them to kill a protected species. It’s politics, not science. The court appeals against culling have been successful.

The source of the problem is the very profitable farm-to-farm cattle trade. Badgers stay in one territory. Cattle to cattle infection is the problem that farmers refuse to see. Why should they? Trading cattle makes money. The taxpayers pay the bill for compensation for disease and the legal appeals. In any other industry problems are dealt with through insurance. If farmers became responsible for their own losses they would seek practical solutions. Culling is not one of them.

 

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Cull futility

The UK government's plans to curb cattle tuberculosis by culling badgers could make the problem worse, says a former government scientific adviser.

Ministers propose licensing farmers in England to shoot badgers on their land.

But Dr Rosie Woodroffe, a member of the now defunct Independent Scientific Group (ISG), said the policy risked increasing the spread of TB.

The government says culling is badly needed to curb a disease that costs the UK more than £100m per year.

The ISG spent 10 years studying evidence on various options for bovine TB control, including supervising the biggest experiment ever conducted on the issue, the Randomised Badger Culling Trial (RBCT) - also known as the Krebs Trial.

Its headline conclusions were that culling did reduce the rate of cattle TB inside target zones, but the rate increased just outside.

This is thought to be because killing badgers upsets their social structure, causing them to roam further in search of food and territory, increasing contact with cattle.

The ISG's final report in 2007 concluded that culling was not an effective option, even if conducted rigorously and systematically. Hilary Benn, then Environment Secretary, ruled against a cull based largely on evidence from the trial

The ISG then analysed various strategies that could be pursued at lower cost - including licensing farmers to conduct a cull, rather than having it co-ordinated by some central agency.

 

Comments

[patrick]

The conclusion having spent around 100Million of taxpayers money.

Chairman’s Overview (Professor John Bourne CBE MRCVS):-

Point 9: “After careful consideration of all the RBCT ( Random Badger Control Trials) and other data presented in this report, including an economic assessment, we conclude that badger culling cannot meaningfully contribute to the future control of cattle TB in Britain.”

The NFU 'all of a sudden' warn us that farming families livelihoods are in jeopardy. Shame they have stood silently by in recent years and watched 50% of small British farms go bankrupt.

So go ahead NFU cull the badgers then the Deer then all the voles, mice and other TB carrying small rodents.

As intensive farming via bent politicians has practically wiped out UK biodiversity they might just as well finish the job.

God bless the cow!

[Sarah Reisz]

Oh Mr Flynn
Thank you.
So wonderful to hear a politician speaking the truth!
This whole badger fiasco is like the emperor's new clothes...
Sarah

[Glenn Ibbitson]

Bang on target, Mr. Flynn. There is one large mammal resident in the countryside responsible for spreading TB in cattle -and it isn't the badger. The whole problem here is that farmers have for too long been given subsidies without question. If compensation and subsidies were directly linked to animal welfare and withdrawn where poor husbandry practice prevails, we probably wouldn't have the TB problems here in Wales at the moment.

[Paul Flynn]

I'm very grateful for the comments. This is another example of mindless muscle dominating political sense. Plaid Cymru and the Tories will always surrender to the insatiable farming lobby. One item that came up in the Radio Cymru Taro Post phone-in was whether there are badgers in the island of Anglesey. A resident there told me that there are no badgers there but a lot of TB. A caller said that there are badgers there. Any ideas?

[Kay Tie]

"This is another example of mindless muscle dominating political sense."

I'm afraid this is precisely the characteristic of politics. Hardly a day went by under Labour when there wasn't some daft proposal forced into law by fake charity lobbying.

[DG]

The media has a lot to answer for.

Just read Vince Cable's conference speech and can't find any logical reason for it to be large-font reported as an attack on capitalism.

[Is]

Here's what scientists concluded earlier this year, including a former member of the ISG: "The results demonstrate close positive relationships between bovine TB in cattle herds and badgers infectious with M. bovis. The results indicate that TB in cattle herds could be substantially reduced, possibly even eliminated, in the absence of transmission from badgers to cattle."
By implying badgers are 'innocent' and farmers are to blame; that Scotland is comparable with Wales and England in terms of badgers and bTB, that Anglesey has bTB without badgers etc., Paul Flynn demonstrates complete ignorance of the facts surrounding this complex issue. If you approach the subject with long established positive and negative passions about badgers and farming, this is the sort of misguided conclusions you come to. Thankfully, if you have a discussion with one of the former ISG members about badger culling, it is based purely upon the science and economics of culling, not on the myths propagated on websites like this, which only serve to polarise views.
There are those who are aware of the science and have come to the conclusion that culling is not worthwhile, and then there are those who are blind and do not want to see. The latter are easily identified by the inaccurate statements they post on blogs like this.