Badger Cull

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown Excerpts

Thursday 25th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sir James Paice (South East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

I start by reminding the House of my declared interests in this matter. I would like to comment briefly on this week’s announcement and statement, but I want to spend most of my time trying to explain how the policy that we are debating was devised. I think I am the only person in the Chamber who was involved right through that development work. I am delighted that it has been taken on by the Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath), who is in his place on the Front Bench.

I think, in the circumstances, the Government were right this week to make the decision to postpone the cull. I regret that those circumstances arose. The main reason is that it is far too late in the year to start a cull. Badgers are going into semi-hibernation, slowing down and are not as active, so fulfilling a cull of any size would have been made much more difficult. In my view, it should have happened in the summer, notwithstanding the Olympics, and it should certainly have started by 1 October. I am concerned that the groups of farmers and their contractors were not ready to go when the first licence was issued in September.

I was pleased to hear the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) refer to the European context. She is absolutely right: the European auditors came here over a year ago to investigate how we go about this matter. She is right, too, to make the point that we get considerable sums of money from Europe. What she was unaware of, understandably, is the fact that this time last year, the European Commission threatened to withdraw our funding because it was not satisfied that we were taking sufficient actions, including dealing with badgers. I had to go to Brussels to make a personal plea to the then commissioner to sustain Europe’s support of our programme.

It is interesting that several Members have referred to the situation in Wales. More recently, the Commission has said that the Welsh decision to stop the proposed cull damages the likely fulfilment of its eradication plan. There should be no doubt about the European position. I was as angry as the hon. Member for Bristol East about some of the reports of what was happening on the ground. That is why we toughened up right across the board, as she was kind enough to say, and it is partly why we agreed to this latest tranche of further restrictions, including a significant extension of annual testing into new parts of the country where the problem did not exist. I am pleased that my hon. Friend the Minister has endorsed the position that I took.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

I happen to represent one of the areas worst affected by TB. I want to commend my right hon. Friend as one of the most outstanding Agriculture Ministers, who knows a great deal about this subject. Does he acknowledge that there is not only human misery in every case where a farmer loses cattle, but a huge economic cost to all these biosecurity measures, such as pre-movement testing, reactor testing and all the additional measures now announced? Those come at a huge economic cost for farmers.

[Sir James Paice]

My hon. Friend is entirely right. Several Members, including the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) who introduced the debate, referred to cattle-to-cattle transmission, which is of course a major factor—nobody denies it—that has to be properly addressed. The tranche of new measures to which I referred a minute ago is the third tranche; it started under my watch, but I had already introduced two tranches of much tougher measures. To be honest, the previous Government had done the pre-movement testing as well. The suggestion that cattle-to-cattle movement is not being addressed is nonsense. The other measures are hugely important, but we come down to the fact that no country in the world has got rid of bovine TB—I mean get rid of, not just reduce—without addressing the reservoir of relevant wildlife. In this country, as in Ireland and France, this means badgers.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bill Wiggin]

I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend. He is absolutely right: it is a tragedy not only for the cattle, but for the farmer, and it is also a great tragedy for badgers.

The figure that is hardest to ascertain is how many badgers catch this disease every year. I am not aware of any evidence, but what I do know is that badgers are tough and they can cope with this infection for some time. Some badgers first display lesions in their bladders and then, as the disease progresses, they develop in other organs. The badger will become increasingly sick and eventually be driven out of its social group. When that happens, the badger will leave the sett territory and wander into other badgers’ territories where it may have to fight, and fighting is bad, because the risk of passing the infection, through scratches and bites, increases greatly. That, too, is beyond dispute.

I remember tabling a written question some years ago asking what would be the right thing to do if someone were to find an injured badger by the side of the road. The answer that came back was: “Consult your lawyer before doing anything.” This situation cannot be allowed to continue. There needs to be a humane way of ending suffering—for badgers, not lawyers, of course!

I have real concerns about the skin test we currently use to identify the disease. Here is a challenge for the armchair scientists. If we carry on testing and culling cattle, we will succeed in breeding cattle that do not show a reaction to the skin test. That is happening already. A constituent of mine tested her cattle, then took one for slaughter, only to find two lesions in different organs of that cow. That meant that the cow was unfit for human consumption and she lost her beef—which was probably worth about £2,000. She was very angry as her cow had been tested and passed and then been condemned. She wanted compensation from the Government for such a rotten test. She is right. This is another example of what happens if we carry on with the “do nothing” policy we have inherited.

As well as breeding test-proof cows, we are also allowing the disease to spread in the badger population. Not one of the letters I got from supposed friends of the badger pointed out that, by doing nothing, more badgers would become infected. In fact, many said that diseases in wild animals were no concern of theirs—and they call themselves animal lovers. I have nothing but contempt for people who allow badgers to suffer, which is why I pushed for longer prison sentences for genuinely evil people who bait badgers. Sadly, Opposition parties voted down an amendment I tabled on that.

The Dutch vaccinated “to die” during the foot and mouth outbreak, and that is based on the principle that a vaccinated animal must be traceable throughout its life. Perhaps we should be seeking permission to trial vaccination in areas that have not been selected for a trial cull, despite EU directive 78/52/EEC, article 13.

Beef suckler cows could be considered as “not for export”. By that, I mean a farmer may decide to keep a beef heifer calf for the rest of her life. She will never be sold for export, nor would her beef go into the export market. This would shift the decision on the risk of TB from DEFRA to the farmer. The risk would be the farmer’s. After a cow has passed a TB test, she would be vaccinated. Her passport would be stamped “TB vaccinated, not for export.” She would stay in the UK for the rest of her life. At the end of her days when she went for slaughter, if lesions were found in her body, the meat would be condemned and the farmer would lose the £900 or so she was worth as beef. That decision and risk would belong to the farmer. Any calf born could be tested, and bulls or cattle that would be worth exporting could be left unvaccinated. If the cow were to develop the disease, it would be picked up every time she had a calf, which is annually, and which is when we test for the disease.

Mathematically, every animal that is protected from the disease makes it harder for the disease to spread. Dairy cattle that are to be milked would not qualify for vaccination. Even if bacillus Calmette-Guérin vaccination is not much better than 50% or 60% effective, ways of reducing the costs, reducing the chances, reducing the possible vectors, and reducing the bill to taxpayers are all worth exploring. I urge the Government to look into this as one of the tools in the box.

Data from the randomised badger culling trial led to the conclusion that

“in the absence of transmission from infected badgers, only 3.4% of herds per annum would be expected to have a TB breakdown”

and that

“TB in cattle herds could be substantially reduced, possibly even eliminated, in the absence of transmission from badgers to cattle.”

I believe that vaccinating badgers could contribute to that, but there are constraints. We do not vaccinate infected cattle; we cull them, and we should do the same for infected badgers. One of the ideals would be a test for badgers. I urge the Government to look at having more research done into the PCR—polymerase chain reaction—test at Warwick university. Accordingly, the British Veterinary Association announced its relief that there has been no U-turn on the badger cull. It reiterated that scientists think culling badgers does reduce levels of infection in cattle herds.

As I said, I am in favour of vaccinating cattle and badgers, but we are all aware that we cannot wait. I am aware of the hundreds of e-mails that colleagues have received, as I have, but they largely cite the alternative of vaccination as the answer to the TB problem. That sounds better in theory than it is in practice: the badger vaccine is injected and is therefore difficult to administer, as badgers need to be trapped; and it is difficult to record which badgers have been vaccinated, and some may be trapped again and again. Furthermore, EU legislation currently bans the cattle vaccine, as it can interfere with the tuberculin skin test. The Government are right to develop the DIVA test.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the ideal in terms of getting rid of this problem is a cattle vaccine as well as a badger vaccine, but the problem is that we are a long way from both of those and a badger vaccine has no effect on badgers already infected with TB?

[Bill Wiggin]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We do need a suitable vaccination to be developed and to be legal in the UK. No one wants to cull healthy badgers. So an experimental pilot cull in the highest-risk areas, with all the barriers to spreading the disease, such as coastlines or rivers, and with the local farmers in support, would prove whether culling was worth rolling out in other high-risk areas. People should be clear that the whole badger population is not at risk from culling, just those badgers that are highly at risk themselves of being infected.

Professor Bourne told me that a cull would not work the way he did it, so the Government have rightly changed the parameters. Culling will not be done in the way it was done before; it will not be done by the same people and it must be done to a level that commands scientific respect, within hard boundaries and in a specifically large area. Without vectors I believe the chance of infection drops dramatically, although M. bovis does live in soil for up to two years. If the chance of infection remains high and the pilot culls do not work, we would be glad it was only a pilot and we could then spend all our time and money on vaccinating alone—that is why we should vote down today’s motion. But vaccination is illegal under article 13 of EU directive 78/52/EEC, so that approach may not work either. That is why I think we should seek a derogation so that we can pilot vaccination in this country as well.