Examination of Witnesses (Questions 180
- 182)
WEDNESDAY 20 JUNE 2007
DR RICHARD
YARNELL, MR
TREVOR LAWSON,
MR COLIN
BOOTY AND
MS CLAIRE
ROBINSON
Q180 Patrick Hall: I must say, I
am fascinated by what seems to be a different definition of animal
welfare to what maybe the general public would understand it to
be. There is nothing wrong with there being different definitions,
and it is your full-time concern, but the idea that if an animal
has a foreshortened life because it has a disease but as long
as it is dispatched humanely that is not an animal welfare issue
is an interesting issue. Perhaps there is not time to go down
that road, but I do find it quite fascinating—
Mr Booty: My colleague in our
farm animal department will be pleased to discuss it with you.
Q181 Patrick Hall: —that the
RSPCA does not see this issue as fundamentally an animal welfare
issue or at least include significant animal welfare implications.
What does the Badger Trust think about that?
Mr Lawson: I will make a couple
of observations. On the issue of cattle welfare, the Government
had a report published last year on TB testing and it made the
interesting observation from vets that the current trend in terms
of breeds towards crossbreeds, continental crossbreeds, is posing
difficulties in terms of doing the skin-test itself because those
animals are particularly difficult to manage in a testing environment—they
thrash about and kick about a lot and get pretty stressed out
by the experience. One of the benefits of gamma interferon testing
that has been mooted is that it is a quicker blood test that only
requires one visit from the vet and does not require you to put
those livestock through the pen twice. That has to be balanced
by the fact that the scientific advice shows that the skin-test
and gamma interferon work best used together; so that may not
be a great benefit. Can I just add one other thing in relation
to your question about illegal badger culling. One of the things
I wanted to add on that, if you look at Defra's map of bovine
TB, it is a small-scale map where you see the whole country and
there is a big blob of red over the West Country and up the west
coast, but when you go down to the macro level and you look at
the distribution of bovine TB at a local level, generally there
is relatively modest clustering in terms of infected herds, and
when you look at parishes you get large areas where there is no
TB. In other words, in a parish only maybe, at a maximum, say,
35% of the herds may be affected, and one of the difficulties
is, if you have got 35% of the herds in a parish affected and
the farmers on those are culling badgers, you are creating, in
effect, a perturbation effect on the macro level that puts their
neighbours at risk. Our view is that the NFU should seize on the
scientific research that has been published and make it absolutely
clear to its members that that is the worse thing that they could
possibly be doing for their neighbours as well as for the farming
community as a whole.
Q182 Patrick Hall: That last comment
was about the previous question, which is on the record, and maybe
that will help you discuss things with the NFU, but can I, therefore,
conclude on the relative merits or otherwise of animal welfare
considerations that both of you disagree with the NFU's view,
which seems to be that you are both more concerned about the welfare
of badgers than of cattle. You are both saying that it is not
an animal welfare issue full stop.
Mr Booty: It would be a wrong
impression to say we are not concerned, that our concern is solely
related to the badgers in the context of your question and the
disease and the consequences. We see the consequence primarily
as not being a major animal welfare issue. That is not to say
that we are not concerned, as I sense might be interpreted, about
farm animal welfare.
Patrick Hall: That seems to be what the
NFU has said, but we will have the opportunity to find out this
afternoon.
Chairman: I am going to bring matters
to a conclusion, because I think we have listened very carefully
to both the Badger Trust and the RSPCA and we are very grateful
to you for your contribution and observations. I suspect that
the Committee's work in this area will not be concluded quite
as quickly as we had thought and, therefore, that gives you an
opportunity, during your period of further reflection, if there
is anything else that you wanted to communicate to us to assist
us in our further work, we would, as always, be delighted to hear
from you, but can I thank you for your observations this afternoon.
It has been very interesting to hear from you and I am now going
to invite you, if you would be kind enough, to vacate the witness
stand and we will hear from the National Farmers' Union. Thank
you very much.
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