April 3, 2014

expert reaction to Owen Paterson statement on badger culls and bovine TB eradication

In response to an Independent Expert Panel’s report on controlling bovine TB through badger culling, Environment Minister Owen Paterson announced that the culls in Gloucestershire and Somerset would be continued over two more years as was initially planned, but that no new culls would be started at this time.  The possibility of implementing badger vaccination around edges of infected areas was also mentioned. 

Prof Lord Krebs, Principal of Jesus College, and Professor of Zoology, University of Oxford, said:

“The IEP report concludes that the pilots failed the test of humanness and efficacy.  These facts are inconvenient for those advocating the policy of culling by free shooting.  It is therefore sensible not to extend the failed policy to new areas.  However the time has come to abandon badger culling, and concentrate on other options such as improved biosecurity, which may well yield quicker benefits at less cost.”

Dr Rosie Woodroffe, Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Zoology, Zoological Society of London (ZSL), said:

“It’s excellent news that Defra ministers have decided not to extend badger culling to new areas, when the poor performance of last year’s pilot culls raised very serious questions about whether this approach will make a bad situation worse.

“Continued culling in the Somerset and Gloucestershire area needs to be much more humane, and much more effective, than last year’s pilots, and so it’s disappointing that this year’s culls will lack the independent oversight needed to provide confidence in those key measures.

“While further investment in badger vaccination is encouraging, restricting this to areas with low TB risk leaves the worst-affected farmers with very few options for managing TB transmission from badgers. The Secretary of State’s repeated assertion that there is “no point” in vaccinating badgers within high-risk areas is not based on empirical evidence. If badger vaccination can reduce TB rates in badger populations and in local cattle herds, these effects will be most easily detectable where infection rates are higher.

“The poor performance of last year’s pilot culls suggests that it would be prudent to invest in a Plan B for farmers in high-risk areas. Trials to explore whether badger vaccination can complement improved cattle controls and protect farmers from this terrible problem would surely be worthwhile.”

Prof Rowland Kao, Senior Lecturer in Animal Production and Public Health, University of Glasgow, said:

“The plethora of approaches being considered (culling, tailored biosecurity, cattle movement controls, vaccination of cattle and badgers etc.) simply emphasises the complexity of the problem being faced. Because of these complexities, simplistic approaches to control may aggravate the problem, rather than help it. These complexities are exacerbated when considered the socio-economic and cultural implications of any strategy that needs to respect both animal welfare and farming community impact. The science to develop a proper evidence base is still being developed; importantly, these now include approaches that consider the complexity of the bTB ‘ecosystem’ (encompassing wildlife, livestock and farming practice) as a whole. Such approaches will be greatly aided by the increasingly dense datasets now available to understand this ecosystem, including the availability of high throughput sequencing data to track the transmission of the disease at very fine scales.”

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/plans-to-eradicate-bovine-tb-in-england-unveiled

IEP report available here