Western Morning News (Saturday)
Light at the end of a dark tunnel in battle against bovine TB
The Government has announced that as part of the next phase of its 25-year strategy to eradicate bovine TB it will be phasing out badger culling. Philip Bowern looks back on the policy which sparked huge divisions in the countryside
FARMERS are not, as a breed, prone to tears. But I saw quite a few livestock farmers well-up as they recounted news of herds failing tests for bovine TB. As former farming editor of the Western Morning News I was there more than once when the condemned animals were led away for slaughter.
And while compensation payments were made, from a couple of hundred pounds for young animals up to more than £1,000 for some breeding bulls, it rarely made up for the loss, both financial and emotional, of seeing once-healthy animals, often part of a herd built up over decades, go for slaughter. That is why, although often loudly condemned for their support for badger culling, a majority of livestock farmers across the hard-hit Westcountry supported the policy when it came in – belatedly in their view – in 2013.
The news, this week, that it appears to have done its job in many of the areas where the pilot culls began and that culling badgers can now be phased out has prompted mixed reactions.
But it is worth reflecting that, in the seven years since the start of the cull, the controversy, while it has never gone away, has significantly reduced. In 2012, when the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition announced it was proposing to authorise a cull, as part of a suite of measures to reduce the number of bTB outbreaks, both parties stood foursquare behind the policy. Bad weather, a court challenge and the London Olympics reducing the availability of police to deal with potential clashes in the countryside forced a delay but by the following year the marksmen were in place.
For the farmers who formed themselves into cull companies and the marksmen, trained under Defra guidelines to carry out the culling humanely and efficiently, it was a difficult time. The RSPCA – vehement opponents of the cull – called for those involved to be ‘named and shamed.’ Rock star Brian May of Queen headed up the protest organisations. Animal welfare campaigners formed themselves into Badger Watch groups intent on disrupting the culls.
But Owen Paterson, the sometimes combative Secretary of State at Defra, who had reassured farmers at the NFU conference in February 2013 that culling would start later that year, stuck to his guns. He said tackling bovine TB had already cost the taxpayer £500 million in the past 10 years, and costs could reach £1 billion over the next decade if the disease was left unchecked.
He said that research in the UK had shown that culling badgers, would reduce the levels of the disease in herds, and that Britain had to learn from experience elsewhere that the tuberculosis could not effectively be curbed without tackling the problem in wildlife.
Mr Paterson said he wanted to see effective and affordable vaccines deployed for both cattle and badgers as quickly as possible – but it was likely to take another decade before the deployment of a cattle vaccine validated and legal under EU regulations could take place.
This week, seven years down the line, we are substantially closer to that goal. Several Environment Secretaries later, George Eustice was able to announce this week that field trials of a cattle vaccine were being accelerated following a breakthrough in the science and badger vaccination, which has been going on for several years, would be extended too.
Culling, however, has not been ditched. There is, it is clear, no U-turn by the government. And there is a good reason for that. The evidence is mounting that – along with the other policies of testing and slaughtering infected cattle and improving biosecurity on the farm – the badger cull is working.
A four year study, carried out by the Government’s Animal and Plant Health Agency and published late last year showed that in Gloucestershire the incidence of TB cases in cattle was two thirds lower after four years of badger culling than would have been expected from a comparison of similar unculled sites, while in Somerset the rate was 37% lower. In Dorset, however, the bTB rate was unchanged. The apparent success of the cull in two of three areas has not, it should be said, changed the minds of many of the most vociferous of the badger cull’s opponents. They still say badger culling wrongly condemned to death a much-loved and protected British mammal. Around 130,000 have been killed to date.
It is fair to say, however that many of the most committed campaigners did not only oppose badger culling. They were – and are – opposed to livestock farming. Their concern is not the eradication of bTB in cattle but the end of the meat and dairy industries.
A majority of the wider public – as a 2012 survey in the WMN showed – were also opposed to the cull. But that opposition has waned, as the story has moved on and, crucially, the policy has shown to be working.
It was always said by those close to the politics of the battle against bovine TB that public opposition to the culling of badgers should be taken extremely seriously. Not for nothing is old Mr Brock the symbol of the Wildlife Trusts up and down Britain. And in children’s literature there are few better loved characters than the badger. In Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willows he is depicted in dressing gown and slippers preparing a late supper in his cosy sett for Rat and Mole – the epitome of kindness and good sense.
It is a terrible shame that for many the fight to rid rural Britain – its livestock and its wildlife – of bovine TB should have been too often seen in the black and white terms of badgers versus cattle; conservationist versus farmer; gun-toting marksman versus kindly animal lover.
Tears have been shed on all sides as this grim episode in British country life has played out. Tears of animal lovers, tears of farmers. It’s not over, but maybe with this announcement that we are moving to the next phase, we are seeing the beginning of the end of the badger cull.
‘Defra Secretary Owen Paterson said in 2013 TB could not be curbed without a cull of badgers’