Memorandum Submitted by A Johnson (BTB
07)
SUMMARY
1.1 Should badgers be culled?
No
1.2 From our experience, we are convinced
badgers are being demonised to divert attention away from:
Inadequate TB testing regime
Other vectors
Inappropriate cattle management
1.3 Content of following pages
2.2 Our beef suckler experience
2.3 Do focus on cattle, not wildlife
3.1 Outdated TB cattle test
3.2 Success post WW2
3.3 Overdue testing in 1970's to 1990's
3.4 Avoidance of movement restrictions
3.5 Other loopholes
3.6 No pre-movement testing after FMD
3.7 False positives give worse impression
4.2 Movements on and off farm
4.3 Brought-in feed and bedding
5.1 Intensification and stress
5.2 Our cattle
5.3 Exotic breed
5.4 Housing/yarding
5.5 Over-crowding
5.6 Stress and reduced immunity
6.1 DO NOT blame the badger
6.2 DO blame MAFF/DEFRA
6.3 DO blame CAP headage payments
2. INTRODUCTION
2.1 We have been farming this land for 30
years, and joined the Dartmoor ESA scheme when it commenced in
1994. our land is all permanent pasture, virtually organic and
includes species rich hay meadows, species rich wet areas and
wooded pasture. It is home to mammals of all sizes from dormice
to roe deer.
2.2 From the late 1970's to the early 1990's
we had a beef suckler herd. At that time, this area was one of
the very few remaining hotspots of bovine TB. While our neighbours
had reactors, our cattle and badgers remained clear and healthy,
and we successfully fought off MAFF's attempts to gas our badgers.
2.3 There have been reports that bovine
TB, which we must remember is a cattle disease, has been transmitted
to various other species of wildlife. So far, the vast majority
of badgers have remained clear of bovine TB. So the focus should
be on tackling bovine TB at source, not persecuting the victim
species.
From our experience, we are convinced badgers
are being victimised to divert attention away from an inadequate
TB testing regime and from inappropriate changes to the management
of cattle.
3. TB TESTING
REGIME
3.1 It is shameful that the TB test on cattle
has not been updated for 50 years or more. It is in an inexcusable
time-warp.
3.2 Despite its unreliability, it was used
successfully in the post WW2 decades to virtually wipe our TB
from the UK's cattle population, in which TB had been endemic,
without culling wildlife.
3.3 What was it that achieved such a dramatic
turn-around? It was a thoroughly rigorous testing regime.
3.4 By the late 1970's, when TB in cattle
was rare nationally, this part of Dartmoor was considered to be
a hotspot. Cattle here were supposed to be tested annually by
private veterinary practices, but MAFF had to keep reminding the
vets that tests were overdue. What with some farmers making excuses
to delay testing further, the interval stretched to 18 months
or more. Then there was the scam practised by some farmers.
3.5 The TB test scam was easy to operate
in larger batches of cattle, with a single vet outnumbered by
eager helpers. On the first visit to inject the TB serum, eartag
numbers were recorded as part of the concurrent brucellosis testing
procedure. On the second visit to examine the results of the TB
test, no eartag numbers were checked. The vet knew how many cattle
had to be examined and simply counted them through. What he did
not know was that before he arrived for the second visit, the
farmer had conducted is own check and had decided which animals
may fail the test. These he spirited away and, in the "confusion"
of the vets second visit, several cattle were presented for inspection
more than once. Any suspect cattle were quickly sent off to market.
Has the TB test second visit been tightened up yet? I have often
wondered whether the vet knew how many cattle had to be tested
in the first place.
3.6 Other loopholes were excluding young
cattle from the TB test, and uncoordinated testing. Particularly
in an area such as this, where cattle are put out onto common
grazing land, it is ludicrous to test one herd at a time instead
of carrying out the testing in coordinated "waves" across
the countryside.
3.7 Following the FMD slaughter in 2001,
when TB testing was understandably put in abeyance, it was scandalous
that pre-movement TB testing was not introduced before cattle
movements resumed. This failure cannot be excused by the re-branding
of MAFF into DEFRA as the TB testing personnel were not culled.
Although they will have been exhausted from assisting with the
FMD cull, a slightly extended standstill to allow them to recuperate
would have been significantly preferable to allowing TB to be
spread by the movement of large numbers of untested cattle. I
understand there was a backlog of overdue TB tests prior to FMD,
so the number of untested cattle was considerable.
3.8 The pathetically outdated TB test on
cattle has always been notoriously unreliable. It throws up many
false positives which has the unfortunate effect of making the
disease seem more prevalent than it really is. A prime example
happened to a neighbour recently. A pedigree bull and two cows
failed the TB test and, on one of them the reaction was so pronounced
that the vet said it definitely had TB. But the post-mortem examination
showed none of them had TB. All that immediate and consequential
disruption to the farming business for nothing.
4. OTHER VECTORS
4.1 Back in the 1980s, it was found that
some TB outbreaks were due to human/stockman carriers. Why does
not MAFF/DEFRA have routine TB tests done on all those people
(whatever their job, professional to labourer) who have come into
close contact with cattle?
4.2 What about all the other coming and
goings, particularly those people and vehicles that visit farm
after farm after farm: milk collections, delivery lorries, cattle
transporters, agricultural contractors, etc, etc?
4.3 And what about the delivered produce
that ends up in contact with the cattle—straw, hay, manufactured
feedstuffs (remember the source of BSE), etc, etc?
5. CATTLE MANAGEMENT
5.1 A number of significant changes in the
management of cattle have occurred concurrently with the rise
in bovine TB. To start with, the size of the national herd has
increased largely on the back of headage subsidies, leading to
intensification and stressed livestock. And stress leads to an
impaired immune system.
5.2 Our beef suckler herd, which did not
succumb to the locally prevalent TB, were of a local breed attuned
to the Dartmoor weather. They had the freedom to seek shelter
in a modern barn, but chose to withstand even the foulest winter
weather outdoors. They kept themselves well groomed; grazed on
herb rich pasture in spring, summer and autumn and had free access
to herb-rich silage in winter; shared their grazing with badgers
from our own sett; and rarely suffered from any ailment.
5.3 Compare that with the increasing use
of Continental breeds from warmer, drier climates that are not
bred to withstand our climate. What is the incidence of proven
TB cases in these exotic breeds compared with indigenous breeds?
5.4 Compare that also with the significant
and widespread subsidised construction over the past 30-40 years,
of buildings and yards in which to keep beef and dairy cattle
for at least six months of the year instead of allowing them out
to grass. Some pundits have promoted the extreme of nil grazing.
5.5 Compare that also with increasing numbers
of cattle now being crowded together, often with inadequate bedding
and getting caked with each others muck. These unsavoury conditions
are so prevalent that they are not difficult to find. But to the
perpetrators they are so normal and unremarkable that they remain
"unseen".
5.6 Herded together in confined spaces and
in unnatural conditions, stress levels are bound to rise, and
immunity to disease plummet. So it is not surprising that contagious
diseases such as bovine TB are able to flourish on the average
modern farm. What is the incidence of bovine TB in relation to
the various degrees of housing/yarding of dairy and beef herds?
6. CONCLUSION
6.1 DO NOT blame the badger (or any other
wildlife):
— It is being used to divert attention
away from the true causes of the resurgence of bovine TB.
— Post-war, the widespread/endemic
incidence of TB in cattle was all-but eliminated without culling
wildlife.
— Badgers (and other wildlife) are
a victim of this cattle disease, not the cause of it.
6.2 DO blame MAFF/DEFRA:
— For laxity and complacency in applying,
and for inefficiencies in, the bovine TB testing regime.
— For not improving the TB test on
cattle during the past 60 years.
— For not reintroducing the rigorous,
thorough cattle testing regime that had previously been successful.
— For not introducing pre-movement
testing of cattle after the FMD standstill.
— For not introducing the vaccination
of untested cattle.
— For not researching and developing
a test for live wildlife, instead of culling healthy animals.
6.3 Do blame the CAP headage payments:
— For the intensification and degradation
of dairy and beef farming over the past 40 years.
January 2006
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