Memorandum submitted by the Royal College
of Veterinary Surgeons (BTB 08)
1. The Committee has invited views on the
key questions which Ministers must address in reaching conclusions
following the consultation. The Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons
would suggest the following:
— can the Department for Environment,
Food and Rural Affairs harness the resources and motivation of
farmers in order to control TB in badgers while making sure that
the net result is a reduction in the incidence of TB in cattle,
not an increase?
— what methods of killing badgers would
be effective and humane?
2. The Department's decision to consult
on options for culling badgers as part of the strategy for controlling
bovine TB is welcome. As the Select Committee knows, Ministers
have in the past declined to discuss that possibility pending
the completion of the Randomised Badger Culling Trial. Until recently,
indeed, it was said that the results of the trial would not be
reported to Ministers until next year. It is good that DEFRA have
now acknowledged that it is necessary to consider ways of controlling
TB in badgers, which in the present state of knowledge unfortunately
implies selective culling.
3. Regrettably, the content of the consultation
document and the draft regulatory impact assessment give cause
for concern. Having refused, during the years of the trial, to
license farmers to cull badgers in areas where there are grounds
for believing that they are infecting cattle, the Department now
seems to be preparing to step back and allow farmers to take the
lead. It is understandable that Ministers may wish to minimise
public expenditure and reduce their exposure to controversy, and
it is clearly right that a major zoonotic disease of livestock
such as bovine tuberculosis should be tackled by the Government,
the farming industry and the veterinary profession in partnership.
The Animal Health and Welfare Strategy rightly says, however,
that "It is fundamental to a successful collaboration that
all those involved contribute to and benefit from the partnership".
There are two specific reasons why it is most important that any
culling programme should be officially managed.
4. First, the Independent Scientific Group
has advised with admirable clarity that culling of badgers within
a designated area can help reduce the incidence of bovine TB within
it but can make matters worse in neighbouring areas. It should
be possible to minimise this "edge effect" by removing
badgers from a large area, but the ISG has recently expressed
the view that 100 sq km would not be big enough. The Group says
that "systematic and prolonged culling extending to areas
of 300 sq km or more could be expected to have an overall positive
impact on cattle herd breakdown rates, if adequately resourced
and coordinated to ensure high coverage". In the light of
this advice it cannot be satisfactory for the Department to deal
piecemeal with applications for culling licences from individual
landowners and then leave them to their own devices. Even if all
the landowners in an area of suitable size were able to agree
to a co-ordinated culling programme, there would be every danger
that it would break down when individuals changed their minds
or did not succeed in clearing badgers from their land. The Government
needs to decide on a strategy for dealing with bovine tuberculosis
in a particular area—the right approach is likely to vary
in different parts of the country—and make sure that it
is implemented.
5. The second reason is that removing badgers
is not straightforward. The Randomised Badger Culling Trial did
not test the effects of 100% removal of badgers from an area,
but the results in both the reactive and the proactive culling
triplets suggest that the aim should be to clear the designated
area and keep it clear thereafter, stopping neighbouring groups
of badgers from moving in. The Trial did not, however, test how
this might be done. An anonymous report of 20 October 2005 on
the DEFRA website reviews current knowledge of various methods
and concludes that gassing (probably with carbon monoxide), the
shooting of free running badgers and some forms of snaring are
worth considering. It would probably be necessary to use a combination
of these methods. The report does, however, identify areas of
uncertainty in relation to all of them, particularly gassing of
setts (which could leave some badgers alive but damaged if it
is not done properly). Further work in this area is urgently needed
so that licences for the culling of badgers can specify the methods
to be used, and the Department must make sure that the approved
methods are applied correctly.
February 2006
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