TB in Cattle and Badgers
Debate between Bill Wiggin and Ruth George(4 years, 6 months ago)
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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.
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
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.