Badger Culling

Paul Monaghan Excerpts

Monday 27th March 2017 Westminster Hall

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I commend my hon. Friend for putting some of the facts about wildlife on the record. He is right about the reduction in some of our bird and mammal species, such as the hedgehog.

[Dr Paul Monaghan (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (SNP)]

Will the hon. Gentleman be kind enough to cite the source of the evidence he just supported?

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

Well, the source is evident to any countryman out there. There has been a rapid decline in hedgehogs, and we know perfectly well that badgers eat hedgehogs’ young, wild birds and birds’ nests. That, however, is not the subject of the debate, and I do not want to get drawn on that red herring.

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[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

As I was saying, we need to use all the methods at our disposal to get on top of this dreadful disease; I have already described the suffering in badgers and cattle that contract it. It is important that we find a variety of mechanisms in our locker to combat it.

I am sure that my hon. Friend the Minister will say more about this, but the opposition to the culls always harps on about biosecurity. However much the biosecurity is improved—some simple things can be done, and have been done over the years, such as putting the water trough and feed trough in places where badgers cannot get at them—the plain fact of the matter is that where badgers roam on pasture, and cattle feed on pasture, there is inevitably intermingling.

[Dr Paul Monaghan]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I said I would not, but since we have had a break, I will give way one more time and no more.

[Dr Monaghan]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. He is highlighting some alleged facts in relation to the engagement that badgers have with cattle. I would like to suggest that there is absolutely no evidence to substantiate that view whatever.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I simply say to the hon. Gentleman, who is an intelligent chap, that every bit of logic points to the fact that there must be a link. If badgers have TB and cattle have TB—I do not think this island is alone; this takes place in the rest of the world —any scientific hypothesis would assume there is a link. It is not credible for him to suggest otherwise.

We have to take every opportunity to improve biosecurity in the ways I have mentioned. We also need to improve the testing. We know that the traditional swelling test leaves an element of cattle undetected. We need to work on better tests, whether they be skin tests or others. We need my hon. Friend the Minister to ensure that we have the resources to research tests that are much more reliable. The polymerase test is being adopted in some areas, which gives a more reliable result. The problem is that it also detects the disease in some animals that do not have it, so they show up in the test as having it. We need to keep trying to develop a more effective test. As well as that, in edge vaccination areas, we need to stop the perturbation effect that I described. We rely on the Minister and the Government to ensure that we have sufficient supplies available to do that, because there is no doubt that that is part of the armoury.

The final part of our armoury is the trial culls. The opposition to the culls tries to maintain that the culls are not improving the situation. Any initial assessment of my constituency would show that where trials have taken place—for example, on the hard edge of the Severn—the incidence of TB has reduced. It is early days, but even the evidence from Krebs and pre-Krebs of the gassing of badgers showed that where badgers are eliminated, the incidence of TB declines.

One thing that my farmers want to know from the Minister today is what regime will succeed the original three cull areas. It seems that everybody has gone to a huge amount of trouble to eliminate badgers in those areas. If the whole thing were stopped dead now, it would be rather a waste of time. They want to know what sort of regime will succeed that. They hope that it will be a light-touch regime and not too onerous. I can tell my hon. Friend that getting the big trial area up and running in the north Cotswolds was very onerous indeed for the farmers involved. I think that he needs to look at ways in which the regime can be made lighter-touch.

In conclusion, my local farmers suffer emotionally and economically. The taxpayer suffers economically. The badgers suffer a painful death. The cattle become unproductive and have to be slaughtered prematurely. It is essential that the Minister reassures the House today that resources are being put into trying to find a satisfactory oral vaccine for badgers; that would be the ultimate solution to the problem. We need to find more effective skin testing, so that all the animals that have this dreadful disease are detected and eliminated from the national herd. We also need to look carefully at the spread of the disease to other species. There is increasing evidence that this terrible disease is spreading into the deer population. Perhaps my hon. Friend can say something about that this afternoon, and about the total situation in relation to TB. Is it stabilising in the main areas affected, or is it still increasing? We need to find that out.

We need to use all the tools in our box. I urge the Minister to keep on with the trial areas; that is what my farming constituents want. They believe that that method works; the proof will come when all the results are evaluated, but anecdotally, so far, they believe that it works.

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[Dr Paul Monaghan (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (SNP)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) on opening this debate with an excellent speech. We last debated badger culling on 7 September 2016, in a debate that I led in this Chamber. Today, we are debating e-petition 165672, which calls for an end to badger culling, rather than an extension of culls to new areas.

Ending the badger culls is an eminently sensible and empirically sound proposition supported by almost 110,000 members of the public. I welcome the public support for the issue, and Mr King’s leading role in initiating the petition. The e-petition notes that experts in both disease control and animal welfare agree that badger culls have proven to be ineffective and inhumane. I add that the culls are also ruinously expensive, wasting taxpayer money at the rate of more than £6,000 per badger inhumanely slaughtered.

In September, I noted that bovine tuberculosis, or BTB, affects beef and dairy cattle herds in England, and that although Scotland has been officially free from the disease since 2009 and Wales is increasingly demonstrating how to bring it under control, the incidence of infection in England is rising, particularly along the edge areas, which threatens further herd outbreaks and the perpetuation of absolute misery for England’s farmers.

[Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (SNP)]

I join my hon. Friend in commending the work done in Scotland to ensure that we have been certified free of the disease for the last eight years. Does he share my concerns about the repercussions for TB control, particularly among cattle, of the UK’s withdrawal from the EU?

[Dr Monaghan]

I absolutely agree, particularly in relation to the evident risks of the spread of infection if appropriate cattle movement control and biosecurity measures are not implemented. That is why the Scottish National party is participating in this debate, even though it relates primarily to England and to the impact of bovine TB on England’s farmers.

We should be in no doubt that bovine TB is a very serious problem, and that killing badgers on an industrial scale is probably making the situation worse. Badger culling is nothing less than a costly distraction from the implementation of an effective solution, which requires a focus on sound animal husbandry and biosecurity, including vaccination, increased cattle movement control measures, and improved infection testing.

We know that bovine tuberculosis is caused by mycobacterium bovis, which is excreted by infected cattle on to the land they graze, where it survives in the soil and is then passed to other cattle and other species. Nevertheless, the predominant mode of transmission in cattle is nose-to-nose, and such transmission is encouraged by trading and moving cattle between herds. Indeed, evidence suggests that the number of new herd breakdowns appears to double approximately every nine years.

In the last decade alone, the UK Government have slaughtered 314,000 otherwise healthy cattle in an attempt to control infection. In 2013, more than 6 million bovine TB tests were performed in England in an ineffective attempt to identify the disease, leading to the slaughter of more than 26,000 cattle. Such skin tests are only 20% to 50% effective. The Minister will be interested to know that a new study, published just last week, shows that, as I argued in September, the tuberculin skin test fails to identify up to 50% of reactive cases. The skin test has always been a herd test, not an individual test. Its efficacy is hindered by the ability of the disease to hide in animals whose immune response is suppressed. In cattle, this could be due to a range of factors, including age, history of exposure, pregnancy and fluke parasite burden.

The ineffectiveness of the test means that in the last decade, the rising incidence of the disease has cost the UK taxpayer more than £500 million. Today, 20% of all new herd breakdowns are detected only in the slaughterhouse, such is the ineffectiveness of the overall testing programme. The inability to bring the disease under control resulted in a cost to the UK taxpayer of almost £100 million in 2014 alone, and the additional cost to farmers is estimated to run into tens of millions of pounds annually. The financial costs are staggering. The rise in the incidence of the disease in England is giving rise not only to an increase in the number of beef and dairy herds affected, but to increased geographical spread and consequently a spiralling cost to the UK taxpayer—more than £1 billion in the next decade alone, by the estimate of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

The crisis that England’s cattle farmers, and their families and communities, face cannot be overstated. If the disease continues to increase unchecked in England, it will also begin to threaten herds in other nations that are currently free of the disease, such as Scotland, and that are successfully combating it, such as Wales. I am certain that we all want to avoid that. In that context, it is frankly inexplicable that the rising incidence of bovine tuberculosis in England is being attributed to badgers, because research shows that, even in remote areas of England where bovine TB is rampant, 86% of badgers are clear of it.

The Government must stop allowing farmers to believe that the level of infectious TB in badgers is much higher than it is, and that culling might make a difference when we know that it will not. Despite the huge amounts being spent, no substantial or respectable body of scientific work has ever been produced that contradicts the conclusions of the study by the independent scientific group on cattle TB, which initiated the randomised badger culling trial in 1998. That study, as we have heard, found that reactive badger culling resulted in significant increases in cattle TB incidence, to the extent that culling was abandoned early in the trial. The study concluded, first, that

“badger culling cannot meaningfully contribute to the future control of cattle TB”;

secondly, that

“weaknesses in cattle testing regimes mean that cattle themselves contribute significantly to the persistence and spread of disease in all areas where TB occurs”—

that is, cattle themselves are the disease reservoir; thirdly, that

“cattle-to-cattle transmission…is the main cause of disease spread to new areas”;

fourthly, that

“substantial reductions in cattle TB incidence could be achieved by improving cattle-based control measures”;

and, finally, that

“agricultural and veterinary leaders continue to believe, in spite of overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary, that the main approach to cattle TB control must involve some form of badger population control.”

In short, the scientific evidence does not identify a causal relationship between the presence of badgers and a rising incidence of bovine tuberculosis in cattle. The current approach means that the people of England can have as much bovine tuberculosis as the UK Government are prepared to pay for.

History shows us that bovine tuberculosis is an ugly opponent, and that dealing with it requires scientific precision in testing, movement controls and selective removal. In the 1960s, bovine tuberculosis infection was reduced by around 80% in under four years. That reduction involved short-term actions in return for long-term benefit. The intelligent and evidence-led approach is to deploy interferon gamma and apply the emerging late-stage tests for hidden bovine tuberculosis, such as RPA 7, alongside biosecurity measures and cattle movement restrictions. Resources must be directed towards testing and control, and plans for expensive and divisive badger-culling pilots in England must be put on hold. There is already more than enough evidence to show that the controversial free-shooting method does not work. The strategy must now be to seek to deploy gamma testing in the pilot areas, and plans should be initiated to invest heavily in supporting livestock controls, with unequivocal backing from the UK Government.

Further attempts to disguise the failure of the badger cull programme are futile. Compelling recent evidence from Wales and Ireland shows that there is no value in addressing the hypothetical contribution from badger culling, especially while the overwhelmingly critical cattle-to-cattle transfer remains uncontrolled. No other country is seriously considering such a pitifully crude, wasteful and ineffective solution to bovine tuberculosis as badger culling.

In September’s debate, the Minister noted the policies that he is overseeing:

“We have annual testing in the high-risk area and four-yearly testing in the low-risk area. We have annual testing in the edge area and six-monthly testing in hotspots in the edge area, and we continue to consider rolling that out. We have contiguous testing in the high-risk area where there is a breakdown, and we have radial testing in the low-risk area, going out to 3 km, where we have a breakdown. We are now consulting on greater use of the gamma interferon test so that we can pick up the disease faster. We are also looking at what more can be done in other species. We are constantly trying to refine and improve our cattle movement controls”.—[Official Report, 7 September 2016; Vol. 614, c. 219WH.]

There is scope for further work on those points. What progress has the Minister made on controlling slurry spreading, on managing deer populations, on limiting hunting with hounds, on restricting cattle movements and, above all, on challenging weak biosecurity measures, including feeding infected cattle to hounds? I say “weak”, because it has recently been brought to my attention that Natural England has rolled back on farmers’ risk assessments; indeed, I understand that in five of the seven new cull areas, only 5% of participants’ farms had received biosecurity visits from Natural England by mid-September 2016. It is unsurprising, then, that Natural England failed to release information from its biosecurity monitoring forms for all the new cull areas and has abandoned the assessment ratings of good, fair and poor that were used up to 2014. Why is that, Minister?

By 2015, the percentage of participants’ farms with cattle that had not—I emphasise not—been visited by Natural England monitoring staff was 55% in west Gloucestershire, 63% in west Somerset, and 68% in Dorset. I repeat that those are the percentages of participants’ farms that were not visited. That is not science-led or evidence-led practice, Minister. Why was a small team of between just seven and 10 people monitoring biosecurity visits from 2012 to 2015? Has the team been expanded to an appropriate level? I also note that the UK Government no longer collect data on the humaneness of culling badgers. Again, why, Minister?

There is also further evidence of a failure to assess the wider ecological impacts of culling. A report by the Food and Environment Research Agency in 2011 identified a range of outcomes from the culling of badgers that could result in disruption to ecosystems. The report identified the potential impact of the resulting change in the abundance of other species on a wide range of habitats, and it indicated that screening exercises and appropriate assessments should be carried out where badger culling was proposed. However, with a total of 10 licences having been issued to date, the UK Government have failed to conduct appropriate assessments to determine whether badger culling is creating wider ecological impacts that affect species and habitats protected under the Bern convention. That is yet another reason why badger culling should be suspended.

The historical and contemporary evidence increasingly demonstrates that the true engine driving the ongoing spread of bovine TB is, and always has been, the so-called problem herds with recurrent and/or persistent chronic TB. The proposition that the inhumane persecution of badgers will miraculously control TB infections is ridiculous, which is exactly why the Welsh Government have abandoned badger culling and why the European Union has never agreed with the UK’s policy in this area. This is a disease more likely to be carried on the boots of human beings than by badgers.

The UK Government should abandon the tuberculosis skin test as the primary means of identifying infection and new herd outbreaks, and should instead adopt modern methods and technologies to address this disease. Specifically, they should adopt gamma interferon tests and robust systems of biosecurity. Combined with a co-ordinated badger vaccination policy in high-risk areas for bovine TB in England, and restricted movement of cattle, this course of action would represent a more progressive and intelligent approach, and it would realise results within months. It would also be more humane and better support England’s farmers.

Just as I did in September, I again ask the Minister to please look to Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales; to recognise the important contribution of rigorous blood testing regimes and effective movement controls to reduce the risks of cattle-to-cattle transmission; to introduce a centrally co-ordinated and comprehensive badger vaccination policy in high-risk infection areas in England, focusing on reducing the incidence of this dreadful disease in cattle; and to please stop the regressive and medieval practice of badger culling, which the public abhor, and which diminishes our collective humanity.

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[Dr Monaghan]

The Minister has accurately noted some of the initiatives he mentioned at the conclusion of his speech in September 2016. Can he tell us what impact those measures have had? What action has he taken to address other issues, such as slurry spreading on fields and feeding infected cattle to hounds and perhaps other animals?

[George Eustice]

We publish the disease surveillance data annually in August. To pick up on the point that the hon. Member for Penistone and Stockbridge made, that includes data specific to the cull areas that we have under way. Having just implemented the new use and the adoption of the interferon gamma test, it is too early to tell how much impact that will have. What we do know is that the basic surveillance testing measures, pre-movement testing and restrictions have been in place for a number of years. As in Wales, they have undoubtedly contributed to holding the disease in check, but we know that, on their own, the measures will not be enough to roll the disease back.

We continue to do work on developing a cattle vaccine. The BCG vaccine can be used in cattle, but we know it is not 100% effective. It probably gives between 65% and 70% protection to herds, but that would nevertheless be beneficial if we could secure the right kind of test that could differentiate the vaccine from TB. Some years ago, we did manage to get in place an interferon gamma blood test that could do that, but it unfortunately threw up a lot of false positives, which is a common problem. We are now doing work to consider the skin test. We believe that we are close to getting a skin test that can distinguish between the disease and the vaccine. When we are able to get that in place, we will work towards starting trials of that.

A number of Members have raised the issue of Wales. As my hon. Friends the Members for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart) and for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) pointed out, the area in Wales under the vaccination pilot represented just 1.5% of the country. Wales’s cattle movement restrictions almost mirror ours; there is very little difference. The differences tend to be in the types of restrictions on cattle markets, but they are minor differences. All the other approaches, on surveillance testing and restrictions, are remarkably similar. If we look at the figures, the latest statistics show that 95% of Welsh herds and 94.2% of English herds are TB-free, so the difference is not enormous.

The large drop in TB in Wales that has been quoted by a number of Members seems to be based on a reference point of 2012-13, which was a year with a very high prevalence of disease. In the past year, Wales has seen a 23% increase in the number of cattle slaughtered due to TB, while England has seen just a 4% increase, so we can trade statistics, but I simply point out that the approach in Wales to cattle movement controls is remarkably similar to what we are doing in England. The area covered by Wales’ vaccination pilot is nowhere near large enough to draw the conclusions and inferences that some Members are drawing.

To turn to the badger cull and the science, the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn)—he opened the debate, and he has a long track record of campaigning on wildlife issues and animal welfare issues—rightly pointed out that badgers are sentient creatures and that we would not do the cull unless we needed to. As I have made clear many times before, I would not sanction the cull unless I believed it was necessary to combat this terrible disease. The advice we have from our chief veterinary officer is clear that we cannot eradicate the disease unless we also tackle the reservoir of the disease in the wildlife population. While the policy is contentious, it is the right policy. Sometimes Governments have to pursue the right policy, even if it is not popular.

[George Eustice]

The issue was looked at extensively during the randomised badger culling trials, and we know that in the high-risk area, where there is a strong prevalence of the disease, around a third of badgers have bovine TB. That has been demonstrated previously.

On the science, there is no example anywhere in the world of a country that has eradicated TB without also addressing the reservoir of the disease in the wildlife population. TB was first isolated in badgers as long ago as 1971. In 1974, a trial was conducted to remove badgers from a severely infected farm, with the result that there was no breakdown on that farm for five years. Between 1975 and 1978, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food funded extensive work and demonstrated conclusively that there is transmission and a link between badgers and cattle. Subsequent work in Ireland reaffirmed that finding.

The Krebs review observed that, between 1975 and 1979, TB incidence in the south-west fell from 1.65% to 0.4% after the cull—a 75% reduction. Subsequently, in the late ’70s and early ’80s, more extensive work was done in three exercises. One was in Thornbury, where the TB incidence fell from 5.6% in the 10 years before culling to 0.45% in the 15 years after, which was a reduction of 90%. In Steeple Leaze, there were no breakdowns for seven years after the badgers were cleared. In Hartland, the incidence dropped from 15% in 1984 to just 4% in 1985—a reduction of more than two thirds. I have pointed out the historical data, as I did in the previous debate, because it is often tempting for this House to feel that it is considering issues for the first time, but the challenge of fighting TB is not new and a great deal was learnt during the 1970s and ’80s.

[Dr Monaghan]

I am grateful to the Minister for being so generous with his time. He has given various examples that suggest that culling badgers has been successful in reducing the incidence of bovine TB. Can he tell us the full range of variables that were tracked and monitored in each of those experimental cases? How do we know that the assertion that badgers were responsible for the infection rate is not just an artefact of poor experimental design?

[George Eustice]

It was always recognised that the trials did not have controls alongside them in a scientific way. That is why, as I was going to explain, the RBCT trials were carried out.