TB in Cattle and Badgers

Bill Wiggin Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd October 2019 Westminster Hall

[Ruth George]

Absolutely. That is a very sensible approach. It is costly, but so is culling badgers, which does not have a proven effect.

[Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con)]

We have heard the number of badgers that have been culled. What estimate has the hon. Lady made of the number of healthy badgers that are protected by the vaccination programme in her edge area?

[Ruth George]

The Derbyshire Wildlife Trust has vaccinated 192 badgers this year as part of its five-year programme, which covers an area of around 120 sq km, so healthy badgers are being protected by that vaccination programme. Just as the debate last November preceded the publication of the Godfray report, I hope this debate may be a prelude to the Government’s long-overdue response to that report.

We must focus on farmers. I pay tribute to the farmers in my constituency, many of whom I know personally, and across the country. For them, farming is not just a job but a way of life. They work very long hours in all weathers, caring for their animals—their livestock—and producing food for us. Farmers, possibly more than any other business, are at the mercy of events: of weather, prices, policy and disease. It can seem that they have very little control over the factors that influence their business.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ruth George]

I will have to make some progress, as there are several more speakers to come in. I am sure the hon. Gentleman will have a chance to make his point later.

It is acknowledged that the pattern of livestock markets facilitates the flow of cattle in Derbyshire from the high-risk area to the edge area and that the major risk to other edge areas adjacent to Derbyshire—Cheshire, Nottinghamshire and Leicester—is mostly via cattle movements. When we say we must look at all the reasons why cattle are contracting bovine tuberculosis, we must look at cattle movement and infection in a herd.

The size of the herd was also a major factor. Herds of under 50, which account for about half of all cattle herds in Derbyshire, had only a 3% risk of contracting bovine tuberculosis. That rose to 27% in herds of 200 to 350, and to 38% in the largest herds of 500-plus. It seems very odd that badgers would discriminate between small herds of cattle and large herds.

[Bill Wiggin]

Will the hon. Lady give way? I will explain why.

[Ruth George]

If the hon. Gentleman can make a short point on that.

[Bill Wiggin]

The smaller herds are beef suckler herds and the larger herds are dairy herds. The cows also live longer in a dairy herd.

[Ruth George]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that point. I have beef suckler herds and dairy herds, and they both have plentiful badgers in the area.

Professor Sir Charles Godfray looked at all the evidence when he chaired a review of the Government’s 25-year TB eradication policy—a sensible measure to ensure that the strategy was on course. Sir Charles reported in November last year. His report emphasises the importance of improving testing and recommends the more sensitive test for high-risk and edge areas; biosecurity measures on farms to prevent contagion among animals with endemic disease; and reducing risk-based trading, because cattle movements, which increase risk, are comparatively high in the UK.

Professor Godfray states that the presence of infected badgers poses a threat to cattle herds, but he also acknowledges evidence of the perturbation effect from culling, and the impact on adjacent areas when badgers move further as territory becomes available and they become disturbed from their setts. The report states clearly that TB control efforts have focused too heavily on managing badgers, when most transmission occurs cattle to cattle. He therefore states that moving from lethal to non-lethal control of the disease in badgers would be highly desirable—something we would all agree with.

Culling is expensive—it costs more than £5,000 per badger, compared with less than £700 per badger vaccinated. It also involves trapping badgers at night and shooting them with a high-powered rifle. In 2013, the Government’s independent expert panel stated that at least 7% of badgers were killed inhumanely and took more than five minutes to die. That panel was disbanded in 2014, but its former chair, Professor Munro, and 19 other vets, scientists and animal welfare campaigners wrote to Natural England last month to say that of the 40,000 badgers culled before this year, a minimum of 3,000, and as many as 9,000, would have suffered immense pain from that process. The same proportion of the 63,000 badgers licensed for slaughter this year would equate to between 5,000 and 15,000 badgers suffering. I have been out with Derbyshire Wildlife Trust and seen the badgers in the traps, full after a night of gorging on peanuts and usually fast asleep and ready to be vaccinated. It is very hard to think of someone shooting them instead.

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[Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con)]

This is not a debate about wildlife lover against farmer; it is about healthy badgers being protected from a vicious and unpleasant infectious disease. It is all about stopping our healthy badger population dying from what used to be called consumption.

The genie is out of the bottle. The figures that my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) just gave show a 66% decline in TB in areas that were culled in Gloucestershire. We can never again expect a cattle farmer in this country to accept that culling does not work. It is proven to work, based on the science brought about in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs by the meddlesome right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) when he was Secretary of State.

The story of TB in cattle is one of delay. The chief vet stopped the culling in the 1950s, and then TB took a grip. We must not stop the scientifically-based cull that we have going on today in areas of high infection. To do so will be to create illegal culling. We all know that the problem with badgers is the perturbation effect; the minute we have a perturbation effect, we will have a terrible spread of the disease, so the culls we have at the moment must continue. They are working, and the science that they are generating is critical to the progress we need to make in stopping this disease, which of course can infect people as well.

I have heard that there is now a new mustelid vaccine—it is being tested on ferrets, because testing is not allowed on badgers—that is more effective than Bacillus Calmette-Guérin, or BCG. There are new tests that show a variety of reactions in cattle, so that we do not need just one indicator. They may show eight different types of reaction to Mycobacterium bovis, so we will not have the number of false positives or false negatives that have plagued the skin test. There is tremendous science coming along. The OIE—the World Organisation for Animal Health—is approving some of the tests. We have had a new test for camelids.

My question to DEFRA is this: “What are you doing to ensure that this new science can be brought in? We are still in the European Union. We need these tests approved so that we are internationally compliant in our fight against TB. We must ensure that sufficient funds go into that research. We need you to keep going on the science that you are currently applying, because not only is it working, but it is bringing results home to farmers in my constituency who love their cattle.” More than that, they love badgers too. Once we have beaten this disease, we will know that the whole UK badger population is secure, safe and likely to continue to provide the entertainment that people get when they see them.

However, people such as me who love their cattle want to know that they are safe from this horrible disease—not least because of the risk to farmers when they are testing and testing and testing. No cow likes to be jabbed twice in the neck, and they react dangerously when they are continually tested. For me, the worst thing that can happen is an outbreak—not just because I lose my animals, but because of the risk to my family when we have to perform those compulsory tests to go clear. I say to the Government, “Please do all you can.”