Badger Cull

Neil Carmichael Excerpts

Thursday 25th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Central Devon (Mel Stride), who spoke with great authority about the impact of this dreadful disease on cattle, badgers and our farming community, and about the economic cost to the Government and the taxpayer.

I welcome the Government’s decision not to go ahead with the pilot cull at this time. The pause is welcome and allows this time to be used not only for debate in the House but for a proper examination of how to make sensible progress on dealing with this terrible disease in future.

Bovine TB is a truly dreadful disease, endemic in cattle in the UK. As we know, there are hot spots in the south-west and the west midlands. About 26,000 cattle were slaughtered in 2011 as part of the control of the disease, costing the taxpayer about £87 million in compensation for farmers. It is a dreadful disease in every respect. As I have listened to the debate, I have heard huge consensus about that. The question is what to do about it. We all fully understand the frustration in communities where bovine TB is endemic, and the desire to do something. As several of my hon. Friends have pointed out, however, it is not right to do something that will be unhelpful and make matters worse.

Bovine TB has consistently been a problem for decades in some parts of the UK. When the disease was found in badgers, it was easy to jump to the conclusion that a solution had been found—kill the badgers, eradicate the disease. Simple. Unfortunately, it has not worked like that. Right from the beginning, there were problems with that theory. There were cases of cattle herds testing positive for TB while local badgers were disease-free, and other cases of cattle being free of TB when local badgers were carrying it. There were also cases in which both badgers and cattle were carrying it. Nobody disputes that badgers can carry the disease, but it is not fully understood whether they infect cattle and how the pathway of the disease’s spread works.

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

Professor Donnelly has already been mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Central Devon (Mel Stride), and it is worth noting that she also observed that up to 50% of cases of TB in cattle could be attributed to infectious badgers.

[Nic Dakin]

As we have heard, the weight of scientific evidence goes in a certain direction, but some scientific voices fall outside that. The assumption about proximity and the fact that badger populations in some parts of the country are infected, is based on the balance of fact, rather than on scientific evidence. The history of badger culling to control TB in the UK has, in reality, been one of abject failure. Culling has gone on since 1971 although gassing was abandoned in 1980 as it was considered inhumane. The culling policy was not considered effective and was replaced by the so-called interim strategy in 1986. That followed the Zuckerman and Dunnet reviews which, while supporting badger culling at the time, acknowledged that there were insufficient data on the whole approach to badgers.

The interim strategy, which was based on identifying diseased badgers where there had been a cattle outbreak and then killing the whole sett, was seen largely as a placebo for farmers, rather than to tackle the real issue. It was a complete failure and disease outbreaks continued to rise and spread to other areas of the country throughout the period. I fear that the current Government strategy appears to be repeating that error, albeit confined to smaller areas.

As we have heard, in 1997 the incoming Labour Government stopped randomised culling and oversaw the establishment of a detailed scientific trial introduced by Professor John Krebs and overseen by the independent scientific group, chaired by Professor John Bourne. The trial demonstrated the complexities of the link between badgers and disease in cattle, and, importantly, showed that culling could actually make the disease worse by increasing spread and incidence of TB on the perimeter of trial areas. We have heard from hon. Members on both sides of the debate a recognition that those scientific facts are true.

My hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) spelled out clearly that the Labour Government would have gone ahead with culls had the scientific evidence supported it. Since it did not, however, the process did not go ahead. These matters involve closely balanced determinations.

In the summary of his report, Professor John Bourne states that

“although badgers contribute significantly to the cattle disease in some parts of the country, no practicable method of badger culling can reduce the incidence of cattle TB to any meaningful extent, and several culling approaches may make matters worse… rigidly applied control measures targeted at cattle can reverse the rising incidence of disease, and halt its geographical spread.”

Two weeks ago, that was echoed in a letter published in The Observer from 30 leading scientists, including Lord Krebs and Professor John Bourne:

“As scientists with expertise in managing wildlife and wildlife diseases, we believe the complexities of TB transmission mean that licensed culling risks increasing cattle TB rather than reducing it.”

As we have heard, that is the last thing we all want. They continued:

“We are concerned that badger culling risks becoming a costly distraction from nationwide TB control.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

I have been a livestock farmer for two decades, so I am familiar with the difficulties that cattle farmers in particular face: the eradication of brucellosis, the threat of BSE, the arrival of foot and mouth and now, of course, TB. I am familiar with the challenges both financial and emotional.

The best farmers look after their livestock and have a healthy respect for wildlife. It is important that the House understands that point in this excellent debate. I represent a Gloucestershire constituency, so I know that farmers are suffering from the effects of TB and am fully aware of the devastation that it has caused to many businesses. It has been disastrous for many families. That is something that we have to bear in mind.

It is with huge reluctance that I support the pilot culling scheme. I emphasise that it is a pilot aimed at finding out whether the scheme works. It will be a properly controlled and managed scheme, as ironically the postponement largely demonstrates. The consideration behind the pilot scheme has been intense. I accept that information on the numbers of badgers has not always been completely accurate. It must be a properly managed scheme, however, and enable us to make judgments on the matter in the future.

It is important to emphasise the value of controlling movement and how animals are looked after. I welcome the fact that the Government have further strengthened movement controls. All farmers will welcome that step, because it is part of a package that must be introduced to deal with this threat. My hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) was right when she reminded us that there is little point vaccinating something that already has the disease. It just does not help. Instead, we must find a vaccination that works but that is used as part of the process to deal with the problem.

I have mentioned movement, which is one part, and I have mentioned vaccination, which is another. I salute the Government’s decision to increase expenditure on developing the vaccination. I hope that it yields results. However, we cannot simply wait and wait, so the two strands of the strategy to deal with TB must also include culling. Some 26,000 cattle have been culled this last year alone. That is a significant figure, and it represents the scale of the problem. It is reasonable for Members to recognise that that amounts to huge difficulties for farmers, as well as huge difficulties for the cows. We talk a lot about badgers, but let us give the cows a boost, because they are animals and deserve fair treatment, too. I love badgers, but I also love cows. That must be how we look at this issue.

There are three things to do: control movements, look at vaccination and run a pilot scheme for culling. That amounts to a reasonable way to proceed, and I certainly hope that people give the cull that opportunity. I have one last question, however. It would be quite interesting to analyse the movements of TB after the slaughtering during the foot and mouth crisis. If there is evidence that there was latent TB, we must explore that issue; it ought to be analysed and discussed. I conclude with this quotation by Professor David King:

“In our view a programme for the removal of badgers could make a significant contribution to the control of cattle TB in those areas of England where there is a high and persistent incidence of TB in cattle, provided removal takes places alongside an effective programme of cattle controls.”