To cull or not to cull...

 

It is some twenty years since we started this blog, using Parliamentary Questions - all 500 of them - as its anchor. The written answers were illuminating, and still valid today.

A previous boss of Woodchester Park, otherwise known as 'Badger Heaven', Dr. Chris Cheeseman was heard on more than one occasion when asked how to keep badgers away from cattle replied with an elegant shrug "You can't. Get rid of your cattle".

And this message has been recycled with a Welsh Labour MP, Joyce Watson  suggesting that farms with persistent TB problems, should find another way to use their farms.

Pine trees? wild bird seed? Or perhaps greenwash air travel with those unicorn emissions, so beloved of the international jet set, off setting their guilt with carbon credits.

But Labour are sticking with their policy of non lethal intervention for the carrier of most tuberculosis bacteria in our farmed environment. Although they will happily slaughter cattle, goats alpacas and sheep - they will not harm a hair on a coughing badger's head.

The 'V' word is still bandied around, and although several wadges of cash have been thrown at vaccination, little has been published except the flaws in its results. 

But after ten years since the pilot badger culls started in England, followed by many areas achieving some good results,  Defra's statistics to mid 2023 show that cattle slaughter figures are down by over 20 per cent in England, while Wales' s problem rumble on particularly heading North and west.

The following table shows prevalence of TB (herds not cleared by repeated test / slaughter)

England showed  - 18 per cent overall and - 20 per cent in the High Risk Area, while Wales showed a +68 per cent rise in their low risk area.. 

Numbers of cattle slaughtered are similarly heading downwards in England with a 21 per cent drop overall, and the High Risk Area showing - 24 per cent.. Best not mention Wales - west and Low risk.

And despite rumours to the contrary, and a complicated way of presenting statistics, NHI (New Herd Incidents are down in England too. By 16 per cent overall, and -18 per cent in the High Risk Areas.

Possibly, the farmer led (and paid for culls) are actually having an effect.

As our PQs showed all those years ago, no matter how many cattle measures  rain down on livestock farmers, without culling infectious badgers, no progress can be made on eradication of this Grade 3 zoonotic pathogen. And no amount of mathematical gymnastics of x100 years divided by x, y or z, detracts from the fact that every single number is a farm, every cow slaughtered is owned by a farmer and these inconvenient facts can be frequently forgotten. 

So to the newbies, both in their Parliaments and elsewhere, it's all been done before. And most of the results are logged on this site.