There are 220,000 badgers (Meles meles) in the UK, each one a sentient, intelligent and curious individual with a personality and a consciousness flourishing over 6 – 8 years of life in the wild. As a species they play a crucial role in the functioning of our ecosystems and are unanimously adored, recognised as a symbol of the beautiful British countryside and one of the last remaining bastions of our ever less diverse wildlife.
There are 5.3 million cattle in the UK, 2.6 million of which are slaughtered every year at around 18 months old for meat.
Over the last ten years, an annual average of 30,000 cows have been slaughtered early due to bovine TB. The primary cause of the spread of bovine TB is cattle to cattle infection. A herd can also be infected by contact with other infected animals, whether fox, badger, worm, deer, rat etc. Recent research has also shown that bTB survives in the environment, residing in the soils and slurry of agricultural fields for up to a year. If bTB strikes a herd, it can be economically devastating for a small scale farmer and all political parties are therefore determined to eradicate the resilient disease.
Unfortunately, the ruling Conservative government is afflicted by an incapacity to make policy choices based on science and an absence of imagination that renders them unable to try and beat bTB via any means other than those that predate modern science. Since gaining power in 2010, the Tories have pushed hard for badger culling and recently announced plans to cull 85,000 brocks, roughly 38% of the UK population. Assuming current rates continue, killing 85,000 badgers would save (at most (adopting estimates assumed by the Government (despite evidence suggesting otherwise)) 18,000 cattle from early slaughter at a cost of roughly £500 million. What sane thinking government spends half a billion pounds on slaughtering 38% of all our badgers to add 18,000 cattle on to the 2.3 million already being slaughtered for meat each year?
The Conservatives running and ruining South Glos Council, seemingly unable to identify a single backbone between themselves but blessed with toes stuck to their party lines, have proven equally unable to believe scientists, stand up for their electorates or appreciate the value of wildlife. In May 2018, following a debate, the Council make the repugnant decision to continue to support the environmentally, economically and socially unsustainable cull in our district.
Public opinion on the badger cull has been unequivocal – responses to the public consultation on the cull were 95% against it. Rural police services are increasingly stretched by the warfare happening out there between cullers and protesters. Only 70% of the slaughtered badgers, at most, will actually have bTB. But all of them will endure several minutes of a painful, terrifying and drawn-out lonely death caused by bullet wounds, starvation or dehydration. The Independent Expert Panel (IEP) oversaw the humaneness of the culls. In February 2014, the BBC reported that the pilot culls failed the efficacy and humaneness tests with up to a fifth of badgers taking longer than 5 minutes to die. For no clear reason the government then disbanded the IEP after the first year of the pilot culls, despite the unmitigated disaster in effectiveness and humaneness. The British Veterinary Association subsequently withdrew its support in 2015 after the culls failed to improve in humaneness. It’s an inhumane mess.
The Randomised Badger Culling Trial, commissioned by the government and conducted by the Independent Scientific Review Group between 1998 – 2006, cost £50 million and resulted in a final report of 289 pages containing substantial amounts of data. It’s conclusion: “badger culling can make no meaningful contribution to cattle TB control in Britain”, in part because of the perturbation effect (culling caused changes in the social behaviour of badgers including greater ranging outside their normal territory, resulting in increased incidence outside the culling zone), and “bovine TB is mostly a problem of cattle-to-cattle transmission that can be solved by cattle-based controls”. In 2015, an open letter organised by veterinarian Mark Jones opposed the continuing culls. It was signed by many, including the Chairs of the three major recent scientific reviews on badger culling—the Independent Scientific Review Group (Krebs), the Independent Scientific Group (Bourne) and the Independent Expert Panel (Munro). More recent evidence has proven that badgers and cows very rarely come into direct contact, with the study finding them a badger and a cow to be within 10 metres of each other once out of 65,000 observations. They found the disease to be passed on as a result of contamination in soils and dung, which relies on altering agricultural practices to amend.
The experts have been clear – the cull is a monstrous waste of time, money and badgers.
Tory politicians trying to defend the cull can only resort to the argument that bTB is devastating cattle herds for local farmers – see Councillor Ben Stokes’ comments in the recent debate held at South Glos Council. But if they really care about the well-being of their constituents and the economic viability of local farming, why are they making them pay for a badger cull which they know won’t fix the problem, which could potentially make it worse and that is stirring up widespread unrest and vitriol between citizens and cullers?
South Glos Council’s decision to support the cull is a humiliating fall from grace for people who supposedly represent their electorates. It is emblematic of the price we pay for a flock of straitjacketed Councillors unable to consider anything outside the lines drawn by their central government bosses, and therefore unable to pursue viable and affordable bTB controls such as vaccinations and bio-security measures on farms.
Joe Evans
