Friday, October 03, 2008

Wales starts the countdown

October 1st. saw the start of the Principality's plan to eradicate bovine badger TB from its 13,835 registered cattle herds. The three point strategy kicked off this week with a sweep of cattle testing through the entire country.
A one-off test for bovine TB of all cattle herds in Wales began on October 1. An additional 3,500 herds will be tested over the next 15 months, concluding on December 31 2009.
Wales has seen a surge of outbreaks, particularly in the South and West of the region, where 14 per cent of herds were under restriction due to 'a TB incident' during the first six months of the year.
Defra stats show 1307 herds were tied up with movement restrictions, 60 day testing and slaughter in the 6 month period up until June 30th 2008, compared with 1500 during the whole of 2007.

The timetable for Wales begins with annual cattle testing and includes
compulsory purchase adjustments. A 'tightening up' - as in reduction? - is intended to:
"bring them more into line with market prices"

and an assessed 'risk management' package has been bolted on:
the aim being to link them to good biosecurity and animal husbandry on farms in order to encourage farmers to fulfil their responsibilities.
We calculated at the outset of this plan, that little 'new' money was available for this project, so tabular valuations were on the cards to pay for the extra testing, the setting up of stakeholder groups and finally - maybe, just maybe - a pilot badger cull. As to the latter, Farmers Guardian reports:
As far as the “intensive action pilot area” was concerned, various technical experts had been commissioned with a view to authorising a badger cull in one area of Wales on the basis that certain conditions were met.This information is being collated and reviewed, and includes ecological reviews, epidemiological assessments, and ethical and practical considerations as well as the relevant legal requirements,” said the Minister “It is anticipated we will be in a position to make a decision on this in the New Year.”
England's farmers, through their respective organisations, offered pre movement testing and tabular valuations in 2006, as part of a three part 'package'. For their part, Defra delivered a 'consultation' on badger culling, and Hilary Benn still refuses to operate the law of the land, hiding behind his as yet unchallenged moratorium and quoting Bourne's final report on the RBCT badger dispersal trial. He seems completely oblivious to more recent work, by members if the ISG team ( but not including its chairman) using the same ten cull areas (not referred to by the chairman) and the same data stream collector(but not written up by the chairman).
This work, if we may remind you, allowed for cattle testing to catch up with the effects of the RBCT's 8 night hit-and-run visits with cage traps. And from the summary of their results we saw:
The estimated effects on cattle TB of culling badgers within the cull areas during the trial increased over the time frame from a modest 3.6 percent in its first year, to 31.8 percent from the 4th to final year. But two years later that effect had increased to 60.8 per cent.

Conversley the 'edge' effect, (unique to the ISG 8 night cage trap fiasco), caused 43.9 percent increase in breakdowns up to 2 km outside the triplet zone in the first year of culling, falling to 17.3 percent in the 4th - final year's scrape up.
But within two years, that negative effect had somersualted to a (minus) -30.1 percent incidence outside the proactive zones.


A 60 per cent reduction in cattle TB would be good (100 per cent would be better). And it would reduce pro rata the TB budget by a similar amount, one may assume? thus saving taxpayers some £600,000 annually.

We note that the Welsh Assembly has moved on two parts of their TB eradication 'package', but are still discussing the third.

19 comments:

Anonymous said...

you say "A 60 per cent reduction in cattle TB would be good (100 per cent would be better). And it would reduce pro rata the TB budget by a similar amount, one may assume? thus saving taxpayers some £600,000 annually." but you have to bear in mind that this was only achieved after all those previous years of culling - which of course didn't achieve 60.8% reduction annually - and of course you have to take into account the negative effect seen in those early years and subtract that from your £600,000. You can't just cherry pick one result from inside culled areas for one year and discount all that preceded it. The picture is far bigger than that.
And I'm aware that you think the trial was a "fiasco" and therefore don't believe the edge effect but either you believe it wasn't flawed, in which case the edge effect has to be considered along with the 60.8% or you believe it was flawed in which case the 60.8% is rubbish too. You can't just pick what you like and rubbish the rest.

Matthew said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Matthew said...

Anon 5.21
We would dearly like to rubbish all the RBCT. Nevertheless it is published. Not peer reviewed, that will come, but published.

The whole point about the RBCT was that the last thing it did for its first three years was cull social groups of badgers. Its own managers said this in evidence to EFRAcom (Paul Caruana).

8 nights well advertised cage trapping caught the strong scent markers - if anything was caught at all. The old, weak, sick and ill were then left to wander. So no, we do not agree that John Bourne's edges' should be factored in. They were unique to this method of culling. And this method of culling was bad. Really bad. And he knew it was bad at the start of the trial, and said so.

In the last couple of years of the trial, managers say that the ISG actually listened to their advice and traps were laid on runs away from the setts, with much more success. The work done 2006 - 2008 only reflected the time scale of cattle tests to catch up with culling done the previous year. It takes up to 221 days for exposure to infection to work its way through cattle. The ISG final report did not accomodate that.

The whole point of the work done by Jenkins et al, was that it was a continuation. A continuation of assumed data, but nontheless a continuation, and it achieved a totally different result from that published in 2006. We take your point re the using the 'whole ten years of the trial', but having seen at first hand how it was conducted, and read Mr. Caruana's statement which confirms the lack of culling in the first 3/4 years, and a years' lay off for FMD biosecurity, why would we? As we have said, to see the result of culling badgers on incidence of cattle TB, it is necessary to actually cull groups of badgers. Not the odd one or two, once a year, when they could. Or leave grossly infected sows infecting their cubs.

Bourne was at pains to explain several times to EFRAcom 'culling as done by the ISG' did not work particularly well. But that is not to say different methods, on a tighter time frame and over smaller patches as dictated by cattle tests would not have a much better effect on disease in both cattle and badgers. It's been done before, and it will have to done again.

So the 'picture' is as big as you want to make it. Leave infected badgers around and ignore tested cattle sentinels failing those tests, means more pets will get infected and possibly more human beings too. That isn't scaremongering, that's reality.

From exposure to tuberculosis bacteria to flagging up cattle sentinel reactors is maximum 221 days. So, remove the source and in 7 / 8 months the problem is solved.

It really is that simple.

Anonymous said...

matthew said: "So, remove the source and in 7 / 8 months the problem is solved." what evidence do you have to support this statement? Does it not assume that there is zero cattle-to-cattle transmission and that testing is perfect?

I'm not quite sure why you say that the RBCT was not peer reviewed - all the resulting papers and results were published in peer reviewed journals.

And what evidence is there to support:"8 nights well advertised cage trapping caught the strong scent markers - if anything was caught at all. The old, weak, sick and ill were then left to wander." As the badgers that weren't caught, weren't caught, it is impossible to know what type of badgers they were. Isn't your statement that the old, weak, sick and ill were left to wander a hypothesis rather than fact?
And the line "if anything was caught at all" is clearly untrue otherwise where did the ~11,000 badger carcasses come from?

Matthew said...

Anon 12.51
This debate did not start with the RBCT, but from decades of experience of the transmission of bTB. Both within cattle herds and its eradication, and now from badger adapted TB (where it is endemic) spreading back up into many mammals.

The parliamentary questions which form the basis of this site nailed most of the work done, which has been peer reviewed, cogitated - and ignored.

RBCT results and opinions have been published in segments, but the final report is at present being peer reviewed, unusually with access to all its raw data. The work went out to tender earlier this year. It is not available yet.


Exposure to m.bovis will flag up a reaction in a cow up to 221 days from exposure. Testing cattle regularly, removes reactors. Very few cattle ever have a chance to become so overwhelmed by disease that they are the source of infection to other cattle. The exception is advanced and open case lung lesions. Anbout 50 per cent of cattle slaughtered as reactors will have no visible lesions, and fail to produce any material capable of culture. They are not infectious.

Cattle under TB restriction are tested every 60 days. The intradermal skin test is as good as it gets. It is the primary test for TB, universally used, and when used as regularly as that(2x plus) its sensitivety / specificity "rapidly approaches 100%".(PQs)

The scent markers within a badger social group will always be the leaders and thus first into any situation. That's pecking order for any group of animals - not unique to badgers. What the RBCT did not catch for 3/4 years were the dispersers, already holed up away from main setts and causing havoc. They caused havoc on our farm for four years and were eventually caught 'off piste' in 2005. 5 years of restriction? 47 dead cattle? Almost thirty back to back 60 day tests? Were they worth it?

The 'interference' and releasing of trapped badgers accounted for 69% of set traps being found opened or removed altogether. (Up to October 2003.) That's a pretty poor record by any standard. And combined with just 8 nights in an area. From personal communication one area did achieve nil points. It caught nothing at all.

The point here is that dragging out of a cull, and subsequent regrouping (dispersal) of badgers achieved by the RBCT could have been avoided. The Clean ring culls were faster and tighter and Thornbury too - with spectacular results. A cull for sure, but tighter, more thorough and over a very much shorter time scale.

Take 8 nights x 8 years but compress that into a concerted effort to clear an area (as dictated by cattle test results) and that would have a much faster and more thorough effect than the drip feed of peturbation achieved by the RBCT shambles. Including, as Rosie Woodroofe pointed out a couple of times and was shown in the data capture from 2006 - 2008 'sucking out dispersers' from neighbouring clan, thus clearing the perimeter of the cull area too. Clean ring culls averaged 5 - 6 weeks only. Thornbury cleared its main area in a few months. Why do half a job and leave after 8 nights? Why leave half a clan of badgers, when the idea was to cull the whole infected social group? Or was that the idea? NOT to clear the whole infected group?

"There is no intention of culling all the badgers" said the irrepressible Bourne. "Couldn't possibly cull all the badgers". So scatter them to the four winds, with the help of activists who relocated and released almost 70% of them for the first years?

Personal experience (4 of us were within the trial areas) and Paul Caruana's devastating confirmation of arrogance and muddle is why we do not take the whole ten year shambles, but concentrate on when the RBCT actually caught most of its target. And that was 2004 - 2006 only.
Tragic.

Anonymous said...

Matthew said: "The 'interference' and releasing of trapped badgers accounted for 69% of set traps being found opened or removed altogether. (Up to October 2003.) That's a pretty poor record by any standard. And combined with just 8 nights in an area. From personal communication one area did achieve nil points. It caught nothing at all."

Can you give the reference for the 69%? Also, what do you mean by one "area" - if you mean one triplet then that is not true that nothing was caught at all.


Matthew said: "RBCT results and opinions have been published in segments, but the final report is at present being peer reviewed, unusually with access to all its raw data. The work went out to tender earlier this year. It is not available yet."

Do you have the name of this tender? If it's the one that I'm thinking of then it wasn't actually to peer review the RBCT but instead was to do further work with it that there wasn't time to do in the original contract. And actually someone from the ISG got it and will be, as I said, doing further analyses.

Or are you thinking of a different tender?

Anonymous said...

In fact, I just found this in your December 2007 postings: "Defra have invited tenders for 'Further Analyses of the RBCT Badger Dispersal Trial databases. This work is abbreviated to AHW-TB RRD 2008 - 2009 and tenders must be submitted by 18th January 2008."

If this is what you mean by peer reviewing the RBCT then you are wrong. It's actually a tender for what it says - further analyses. So don't hold your breath for that peer review. All the main results were in peer reviewed journals anyway.

Matthew said...

Anon 9.47

The reference for traps was:

Hansard: PQ [141971] "To ask the Secretary of State, in how many cases badger traps laid by or on behalf of the Department in the TB culling trials have been interfered with or removed without authorisation".

8th Dec Col 218W

..." Management records indicate that - over 116 culling operations, across 19 trial cull areas, between December 1998 and October 2003, during which 15,666 traps were sited - there were 8,981individual occasions where a trap was interfered with and 1,827 individual occasions when a trap was removed".

And at 10.07 re peer review of ISG Final report.

"If this is what you mean by peer reviewing the RBCT then you are wrong. It's actually a tender for what it says - further analyses. So don't hold your breath for that peer review. All the main results were in peer reviewed journals anyway."

We sense that this follows Bourne's arrogant reply to EFRAcom when he indicated that his work did not bear further scrutiny, as the ISG were the expert group. It was shortly after that,(and most unusually we think) the RBCT raw data was offered by tender to many research / educational establishments for further analyses.
We are not sure what this means other than Defra are taking another look, both at the work, its modelling base and its conclusions.

Anonymous said...

Matthew said:"We are not sure what this means other than Defra are taking another look, both at the work, its modelling base and its conclusions."

Well now you can be sure what it means - further analyses - i.e. additional analyses that can be done with those data - not a reanalysis, not checking its modelling base nor its conclusions. As mentioned above, it's been awarded to a former member of the ISG.
You may have to accept that having the results from a trial published in peer reviewed journals is peer review. Whatever additional thing you thought was going to happen, isn't.

Matthew said...

Anon 9.03 said:

"As mentioned above, it's been awarded to a former member of the ISG"

Which one? And at which University?

"Whatever additional thing you thought was going to happen, isn't."

We did not assume anything was going to happen from the RBCT database. We have discussed its broad based 'simple assumptions' many times. And we have witnessed the work done by Jenkins et al, given selective amnesia by Defra's top team. The world stopped in 2006it seems.

What we stand firmly behind is a proven expectation of phenomenal increases in sentinel cattle casualties, if the reservoir of disease in badgers was not tackled. And what is increasingly happening now: the overspill into other mammals, especially domestic pets, having direct and prolonged contact with their owners in a confined space.

No amount of reshuffling of the Titanic deckchairs will stop that. Not even the RBCT's deckchairs - or especially not them.

Anonymous said...

Matthew said: "RBCT results and opinions have been published in segments, but the final report is at present being peer reviewed, unusually with access to all its raw data. The work went out to tender earlier this year. It is not available yet."

Anonymous said:
"You may have to accept that having the results from a trial published in peer reviewed journals is peer review. Whatever additional thing you thought was going to happen, isn't."

Quite clear what's being referred to, I think Matthew? ie The peer-reviewing that you claimed hadn't happened...You do find it difficult to admit being wrong, don't you?

(A different Anonymous)

Matthew said...

Anon 5.51

"Quite clear what's being referred to, I think Matthew? ie The peer-reviewing that you claimed hadn't happened...You do find it difficult to admit being wrong, don't you?"

Nope. We stick to questions asked by EFRAcom, of Bourne, re the Final report, which in its entirety, together with its conclusions, has not been peer reviewed. For sure, snippets have been published, (and criticised - Godfray / King) in publications, including we understand, in the form of letters rather than data. All rather ad hoc.

And we are not a little puzzled at the inference of 'insider trading' , which has been alleged in an earlier comment. In that further analyses of the RBCT - or whatever handle is attached to the tender contract - has been awarded to a member / members? (as yet unidentified) of the former ISG.

Not only is that odd, it is incestuous enough to make us extremely uneasy with Defra's 'tendering' process. But you're right in one thing. We are not surprised.

Matthew said...

We would point out, that this thread has gone a tad off title which was the Welsh Assembly's attempt to draw up a strategy for eradicating TB.

Anonymous said...

matthew said: "..it is incestuous enough to make us extremely uneasy with Defra's 'tendering' process."

No it's not incestuous. You ASSUMED (hoped?) that the tender for further analyses was some kind of complete review / reanalysis of the RBCT in the hope that someone else might magically come up with different results. But the reality was that the defra tender was for further analyses (wasn't that what it said it was in the first place?). I don't think's it's at all surprisingly that member(s) of the ISG would put in a bid to do extra work that they had potentially thought would be feasible/of interest during the course of the trial but hadn't had time to do. I can also see that they would have a good chance of getting the tender as they have been working on the trial and with the data and therefore are more familiar with it than anyone else.

I have to agree with the comment further up that the Matthews find it very hard to admit being wrong - even about assuming the meaning of "further analyses" or the intentions behind a tender.

Matthew said...

Anon 8.31

Don't agree. And still very uneasy. Note no names shared for beneficaries of successful tender??

Of course we can make mistakes - and admit them. We missed - as did press releases at the time - the crucial authors of the 2006 - 2007 work. As important as its content. A comment alerted us, and for that we were grateful.

The one person who considers himself infallable is Bourne - and that from his managers and veterinary colleagues, as well as those of us on the receiving end of any alleged RBCT 'cull'. Thus we are still, and will remain, highly critical of the methodology of the RBCT, especially 1997 - 2004

I'm afraid we can't get too excited about pedantic barbs on this site, lobbed in our direction. What really gets us upset is the sheer bloody waste of good young cattle, loaded up for premature slaughter. The inability of our businesses to trade and the prospect of another ban (by any other name) on exports. Given the present parlous state of governmental finances, we would have thought that if nothing else, this sheer waste of money (£1 billion over the last decade[Rooker], £2 billion over the next?) would have occurred to others as well.
But on that too, we were wrong.

Anonymous said...

BILLY & BERYL ‘NO-NAMES’

It’s a shame that some {most?} contributors feel the need withhold their personal or ‘corporate’ identification – it would add much value to their comments if we all knew where you are coming from!

Whilst all contributions are interesting to read there is much added value knowing the source of the contribution – eg Farmer, the NFU, NBA, ISG member, Badger Trust, MP - whoever!

Of course - I recognise that sometimes if it wasn’t for the ‘anonymous’ option then some contributions would not be made when it was better said rather than not.

I’ve always identified myself and the folk I represent even though when quoting my home address in the press it does sometimes invite the interesting, unidentified but still welcome ‘hate mail’.

In many instances it has also brought some interesting scientific data and views on the ‘socio-economic implications of BADGER TB on UK cattle”.

Peter Brady
SETT

Anonymous said...

re interference with trapping in the RBCT

you have misinterpreted the numbers given in the response to the PQ.

15,666 traps were used ON MULTIPLE OCCASIONS

and there were 8,981 and 1,827 OCCASIONS of interference

since, as you keep pointing out, the trapping periods were 8 days long, the 15,666 traps becomes 125,328 trapping occasions

and this means that 8.6% of trapping occasions were lost

not the 69% that you incorrectly claim.

for information on the entire RBCT i'd refer you to the ISG final report paragraphs 2.55 to 2.59 (also considers badger trapping rates) and tables 2.7 and 2.8

Matthew said...
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Matthew said...

Anon 11.56

The PQ was quite clearly posed, and its answer is equally straightforward - unlike the majority of the Final Report which takes ' simple assumptions' to 2 decimal places. 2.7 gives a percentage "for a proportion of trap nights". As to whether that makes a difference, ask Christl Donnelly.

We are reminded of field manager Paul Caruana's statement to EFRAcom, where at the end of a damning critique, he said:

"Scientists do not have all the answers and most certainly Krebs doesn't. The Trial has far too many flaws in it to be trusted to produce meaningful evidence.

I know what happened on the ground - the scientists only have the results which we provided them with to work with. I know that those results could and should have been much better and useful than they currently are.

Nobody - and I do mean nobody, working on the Trial at grass roots level has ever believed that operating under the too strict and inflexible regime that Krebs put in place could work successfully. All common sense answers to everyday problems were too often ignored because "things had to carried out scientifically" to mean anything. The whole basis of Krebs was to remove badgers off the ground. For the first four years, that effort was farcical due to restrictions placed upon us. Repeated requests to change operating methods were ignored. With that in mind, how much weight do we give the ISG report, detailing their 'robust' findings to the Minister? If it were down to me and my staff, very little."


In general terms, the idea of the RBCT, as sold to farmers in participating areas, was that in pro-active zones, all badgers would be culled and in reactive, badgers would be culled in response to confirmed outbreaks of TB.
From personal experience, Paul Caruana's highly critical overview, and the figures (to 2 decimal places) produced from an 'estimated' badger population assumed by the Final Report, the last thing the trial did was to catch badgers.