Memorandum submitted by M Hancox (BTB
12)
1. I am writing to you urgently concerning
your oral session next Tuesday. I wrote to you all on 21 January
to enclose some preliminary information, partly as regards my
2000 submission to your Inquiry into badger TB: Appendix 15; it
is still on the FMD Inquiry web http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/inquiry/index/
(four submissions warning FMD would exacerbate TB: it has!)
2. I also asked to be allowed to explain
to you orally as a completely non-party, independent committee
scrutinising the scientific validity and cost effectiveness of
government policy on badger and bovine TB where the confusion
lies. Having been at the ISG open meeting on the 25th, I am quite
certain that next Tuesday the Usual Suspects will inform you as
to the Usual Accepted Wisdoms . . . which is so spectacularly
wrong that no one can seemingly "see it" . . . the same
old ground re-visited.
3. It has become "accepted fact"
that proactive culls reduce cattle TB 19% but via perturbed badgers
increases it by 29% outside the area: Two Flaws:
A. Too few TB badgers in initial proactive
cull . . . for triplets A-J
Total
Cattle TB previous year
| 57 | 70 | 62 |
187 | 34 | 14 |
23 | 36 | 154 |
215 | 852 |
| Initial TB badgers | 8 | 13
| 4 | 102 | 29 |
13 | 29 | 12 | 82
| 65 | 357 |
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So, 5,100 km2 areas had less than 20 TB badgers . . . and
the total of 357 (only 127 with multi-lesions possibly infectious)
from 1,000 km2 hardly a cause anything.
B. Elliot Morley told you food and mouth "derailed
the whole trial" . . . and the lack of cattle testing then
huge backlog is precisely why TB has exploded exponentially many
more cases reaching the more infections Visible Lesion stage.
Hence from 2000 to 2002 (the 2001 gap) caused a jump from 1,044
new breakdowns to 1902; 8,000 reactors to 23,000; cost £34
million to £75 million ie double.
4. Not remotely surprising cattle TB was up to 30% in
reactive areas before any culls happened . . . hence the 27% "due
to culling" maybe 70 TB badgers of which 20 superexcretors
. . . nothing to do with perturbed badgers at all. As I pointed
out in last years Report Ev 37-44 two thirds of the 2,047 reactive
badgers were culled in the last five months of the trial in 2003
so could not have had any impact on cattle TB at all. In the follow
up analysis a year later there was no difference between reactive/survey
areas 356-358 breakdowns.
5. As regards the proactive areas . . . seven out of
the 10 had started pre-FMD (only three reactives by contrast)
so cattle controls had longer to effect the 19% drop, or 23% by
later follow up cull. Outside the proactive area, cattle testing
less prioritised so here slippage and the 29% rise comparable
to 30% in reactive above dropping to 22% as testing resumed. The
most impact of these cattle measures in inner proactive smallest
area for confirmed herds 107 in 28 km2, less impact 297 herds
in outer 71 km2, and least effect outside proactive area 307 TB
herds in 97 km2. Even less clear effects adding unconfirmed breakdowns
to total. The 29 September report to Minister graphs show a jump
in all proactive areas just after FMD. These results all show
in fact that systematic testing and movement controls are what
reduces cattle TB by removing large numbers of TB cattle . . .
as shown above. The ISG attempts to explain the cattle effects
in badger terms are farcical and indeed table, show most TB badgers
have caught it from most TB cattle DIJ.
6. You have an opportunity to at last discredit the badger
TB mythology. Please may I explain next Tuesday.
February 2006
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