TB in Cattle and Badgers

Fiona Bruce Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd October 2019 Westminster Hall

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

Farmers in my constituency are experiencing worse difficulties with bTB in their cattle than anywhere else in Cheshire—and Cheshire has been hard hit, with 2,331 cattle having to be slaughtered last year. The Animal and Plant Health Agency report for the year ending 2018 states:

“The burden of TB in Cheshire is considerable…it can prove difficult to source cattle to replace reactors which have been slaughtered”

and that

“TB can have a significant economic impact resulting in cash flow problems…full market prices are rarely available for TB restricted cattle.”

It also states:

“The economic losses to dairy farms in the case of lost milk yield can be further impacted by financial penalties imposed by the dairies through breaches of contract and not meeting forecasted milk yields.”

However, those statistics can never fully describe the financial and emotional toll on farmers and their families from the impact and threat of bovine TB, which cannot be overstated.

Many farmers have told me about that and I will never forget when I sat in the kitchen, at a farm where infection had taken hold, and the farmer’s wife sat sobbing at the kitchen table. Another told me last week, “We literally live daily in trepidation of bovine TB infecting our animals”, and another wrote to me this week:

“We have failed our TB tests and have our next test on 17th December…Cow movements are on hold which will damage us financially as there will be no income from sales, nor will we be able to buy cows in, which we have been trying to do”.

They are in suspense. That is why, on their behalf and as requested by many who have written to me and met me in the past few days, I am asking the Government to continue with their bovine TB eradication strategy, including wildlife control in endemic areas, to free our country from this awful disease.

I am a strong supporter of animal welfare, and for healthy cattle we need healthy wildlife. To those who dispute that the disease is spread by wildlife movement, I would point out that the Animal and Plant Health Agency report that I mentioned states, with reference to Cheshire:

“In the south…of the county there has been a large number of new incidents…which are not thought to be due to movements of undetected infected cattle...The farms are not related nor connected by cattle movements, there has been no contiguous cattle contact. Infected badgers are suspected to be the source of infection. In total there have been ten herds known to have been affected.”

The NFU says of the results of a 2018 TB epidemiology report for high-risk areas,

“the results concluded that badgers constituted 64.19% of the source attribution whilst cattle movements accounted for 12%”

and

“these results provide further evidence that by controlling the badger population the number of new TB breakdowns can be minimised.”

I agree that we need evidence-based decisions. A range of interventions is, indeed, appropriate, but, as the NFU says,

“no other major cattle producing country in the world has ever successfully dealt with BTB in cattle without addressing disease where it is present in wildlife to break the cycle of infection.”

Culling has been effective in the Republic of Ireland and the NFU has also said that after 1997, when all badger culling ceased, in subsequent years infection spread in wildlife.

The scientific evidence exists. The Downs report, which was peer reviewed in the journal Scientific Reports, published last week, and endorsed by DEFRA, deals with analyses conducted to compare the rate of new TB breakdowns in cull areas, compared with rates matched in areas with no culling. There was a 66% reduction in new TB rates in cattle in Gloucestershire after culling, and a 37% reduction in Somerset. A DEFRA spokesman said of the report that

“this independent and detailed analysis builds on previously published data showing strong reductions in the disease in cattle following culling in Gloucester and Somerset areas over four years compared to unculled areas.”

As the NFU vice-president Stuart Roberts has said:

“Controlling the disease in wildlife is a crucial element to tackling this devastating disease”.