Examination of Witnesses (Questions 220
- 239)
WEDNESDAY 20 JUNE 2007
MR MEURIG
RAYMOND, MR
JAN ROWE,
MR MARTIN
HAWORTH, MS
CATHERINE MCLAUGHLIN
AND PROFESSOR
ROSIE WOODROFFE
Q220 Mr Gray: Final question. As
far as you are aware, and you might not know the answer to this
question, at what stage did ministers first see a draft?
Professor Woodroffe: Ministers
were sent drafts in sections. They were not sent a spiral bound
thing that looked like this.
Q221 Mr Gray: No, but that chapter
you referred to?
Professor Woodroffe: That chapter,
I cannot recall. I would have to ask Professor Bourne that question.
Q222 Chairman: The overview that
Professor Bourne wrote, which pulled it all together, when was
that put in?
Professor Woodroffe: Once again,
I would not want to go on. I actually cannot remember without
them here.
Chairman: Thank you very much indeed.
It has been a marvellous bit of tourism on your part and I hope
you did not mind this unexpected visit to the front row, but we
are very grateful to you for coming on board at extraordinarily
short notice and answering. Thank you very much indeed. It is
very kind of you. Roger did you have any more questions that you
wanted to raise?
Mr Williams: Not on that particular issue
that we were talking about.
Chairman: Then we move on to Peter on
Ireland.
Q223 Sir Peter Soulsby: As I remarked
at the time, and the witnesses from the NFU have heard what was
being said by the Badger Trust, in particular, about the Irish
experience, it is very clear that you have come to very different
conclusions about its significance. Why do you come to such different
conclusions?
Mr Raymond: Could I open it up
and then hand over to Martin, because Martin and I, and one or
two others on our professional team, went across to Ireland this
time last year, so we saw at first-hand. Over a period of three
or four days we met the farmers' organisations, we met the State
Veterinary Practice Government officials and we were shown figures
on what has been happening since they introduced a dedicated cull,
which was some three years ago. The figures that we were shown
were showing a reduction of 42% in cattle slaughtered. The enthusiasm
and the determination of pursuing the policy they have put in
place, I thought, demonstrated to me that this was a way forward.
They had full co-operation from the farming community, from the
landowner community and they were fairly optimistic that over
a period of time they were going to reduce the incidence and possibly
get to some form of eradication. So, having looked first-hand
on the ground, speaking to farmers, speaking to the State Veterinary
Practice over there, I have to say, since coming back and having
a long conversation with the Minister of Agriculture and her officials
at the Oxford Farming Conference last year, again, she was reinforcing
the line that the options and the strategy which they were implementing
was having a huge beneficial effect. She found it strange that
we had not followed a similar sort of policy.
Q224 Sir Peter Soulsby: The Badger
Trust, in some considerable detail, explained to us the other
factors that had changed over that period of time. Why do you
think that they were wrong in attributing the changes to those
other factors and why you are right in attributing them to culling
badgers?
Mr Raymond: We have been involved
in pre-movement testing of farms in one and two-year testing areas
since last June. The Irish State Veterinary Practice had abandoned
pre-movement testing at the time that they moved over to a culling
policy of wildlife, because they felt that pre-movement testing
was not working. They moved to an annual test rather than a pre-movement
test. They were linking that to a cull programme and they had
seen a remarkable reduction in the incidence and the number of
cattle affected.
Mr Haworth: I think the Badger
Trust were trying to say that the reduction is largely due to
cattle measures which were brought in. As far as we can see, there
is not a huge difference in the cattle measures which are in place
in Ireland or in this country. They talked about the use of gamma
interferon, which has now been used in this country, they talked
about restrictions on herds, to break down herds. I do not believe
that they are in any way different in Ireland and in England.
The difference is that they stopped pre-movement testing in 1996
and never reintroduced it, whereas we have introduced it. If anything,
I would have thought that the cattle measures in place in this
country are probably more restrictive than they are in Ireland.
I think that we would think that the reduction is largely down
to a cull. It is interesting that the cull is actually effectively
a reactive cull, which is the one that the ISG discounts out of
hand, almost without consideration, whereas in Ireland it seems
to be working. The reason that it works there, I think, is that
they have a very quick reaction time, they have a much better
system of cattle tracing than we do, they immediately look at
any breakdown and see if it can be associated with a cattle movement
and, if it in any way seems to be, then they do not take any measures
against badgers. If it is not immediately explicable by a cattle
movement, they do what is effectively a reactive cull. Their culling
technique is more efficient than ours because they use snares
rather than traps. There is no closed season in their culling,
whereas in the ISG trials there were. They are rigorous, they
do it often and they persist for a long time. I think all of those
things lead us to believe that in the Irish circumstance that
has caused the reduction. Interestingly, there is hardly any,
I do not want to say no, evidence in Ireland that neighbouring
farmers are concerned about the perturbation effect. It does not
seem to be an effect that causes, as you would expect if it was
there, neighbouring farms to be very concerned about the policy.
It does not seem to happen. I think, again, the ISG tried to draw
a distinction as to why the Irish experience should not be used
as a comparator in this country, and the reason they come down
to is that the density of badgers is much less in Ireland than
it is in England, which, I think, would point to a hypothesis
which they ought to have followed up. Is there a link between
the density of badgers and the incidence of TB in badgers and
cattle. That would have been an interesting hypothesis to have
followed up, but they did not seem to do that. I do not know why.
Perhaps our previous witness, as a badger ecologist, could have
commented on that as well.
Mr Rowe: Could I make a couple
of points. That last point is interesting because what we know
about the ISG trial is that there was a plateauing out effect
in their ability to lower the population levels beyond a certain
point. It seemed they were catching the same amount each year
after a while, and the interesting thing is that the population
that the ISG ended up with is about the same level as the Irish
started with. So, if we could drive that level down further than
the ISG got to, we might make significant inroads into the disease
transmission back to cattle much as the Irish have demonstrated.
The other point that was made by the Badger Trust was about different
interpretations or varied levels of TB in badgers that seem to
come up in the Irish reports, and that is because they looked
at badgers in two different ways. Whenever they were looking at
groups of culled badgers, they would do crude pathology on them,
which is where the 15 to 20% infection came, but what they found
was that when they did detailed culture on those badgers it went
from somewhere between 40 and 50% of badgers that they were culling
were infected (carrying TB), which comes back, I think, to the
point I made right at the beginning, that it appears that our
infected badger populations are much the same, that they seem
to be able to develop TB very quickly once they are disturbed,
and they are probably latently carrying much higher levels of
TB than some of the RTA data seems to indicate.
Mr Raymond: Can I follow through
two avenues. Again, I return to Professor Simon More's paper at
the Annual TB Conference. He reinforced the line that the policy
in Ireland is working, as the policy of the outline in Australia
had worked, so that, I think, was an extremely good paper, and
I am just picking up percentages where we saw figures (again reinforced
by Professor Simon More) that the reduction is around 42% in Ireland.
Professor Woodroffe stated 23%. As long as the edge factor and
the perturbation was organised, as long as the method of cull
was systematic, I just sit here and I think to myself that representing
the farming community, people who are at the coal face, the people
who are suffering, if you were to average 42% to 23% and have
a 30 odd per cent reduction in TB in the cattle herd, that would
be a huge step forward. We have got to look at all this data and
hopefully come to the right conclusion.
Q225 Chairman: One technical point.
Would you be confident that other measures could deal with the
70% that was left?
Mr Rowe: You are only looking
at cattle testing, basically, as proposed by John Bourne and the
ISG.
Q226 Chairman: If you have got a
30 odd per cent reduction in the rate of incidence or an absolute
drop, I am not quite certain which it is, but a drop, then, if
you are going get on top of it, what you may see from the drop,
following your thesis, is that, if you like, the numbers of cattle
affected by it, by definition, becomes lower, but your strategy
wants to lead to elimination of the disease, because that is where
we are all trying to go.
Mr Raymond: Yes.
Q227 Chairman: So the question is,
within the sum total of knowledge of testing, retesting, cattle
movement, before and after a movement, for example, would that
package, if it was properly applied, be sufficiently robust to
eliminate the rest of the disease incidence over time question?
I do not know the answer to that.
Mr Rowe: I think the risk—.
We do not know what the effect of ramping up even further the
cattle testing side of it is going to be. The big worry is that
it may destroy the industry before it destroys the disease. That
is the huge worry that farmers have at the moment because, even
under current policy, we have a business threatening policy there.
Q228 Chairman: The "do nothing"
option is a gradual painful decline.
Mr Rowe: The point I made about
ramping up the cattle testing was that, firstly, we do not know
what effect it is going to have. I suspect in the short-term it
may take out quite a lot more animals, particularly if you applied
gamma interferon at a wide level, but at a great expense both
to farmers losing animals and the effect that has on the business
and the tax payer paying for the test, if the tax payer is going
to do that, because it is an expensive test. That may, in fact,
ultimately reduce the number of animals after probably a peak,
and then it will drop away, but if we do not break this interface
of reinfection from the wildlife reservoir back to cattle, it
may not make much difference to the herd level breakdown, which
is probably happening because of one animal in 500 in the herd
that has come across and infected the badger in its pasture, but
we just do not know. It is hypothesis that has been presented
to us, it is hypothesis whether it will work or not and what the
economic effects of it are.
Mr Raymond: Can I follow that
through. There are lots of cattle measures in place where the
herd does break down. There is a herd restriction, there is pre-movement
testing out of cattle herds in one and two-year periods, there
is the total herd test, gamma interferon is now being rolled out;
so there are lots of cattle measures already in place, and, unless
we roll out gamma interferon across the whole country, I do not
think we would have a problem with that, but there is a huge issue
around the cost. I thought it was fairly strange that the ISG
had done a cost-benefit analysis on the cull of wildlife when
we did not see any figurers on cost-benefit analysis of further
cattle measures and who is going to pay. Because one thing I can
assure you, the farming and industry people, who are suffering
in these hotspot areas, are in no position to pick up these extra
costs and, on top of that, we also hear of total herd dispersals
in herds that have been persistent with TB for years. We are talking
about destroying lots and lots of cattle, and I have to say at
this point, when you start looking at the valuation system and
the compensation system that is in place at the moment in England,
a lot of these people are just going to disappear out of cattle
farming. Again, I return back to the cost-benefit analysis that
has been done on a possible cull. You have got to look at the
whole social, economic basis, the infrastructure and the countryside
management and the whole food supply chain, because I think this
is a much big picture than just pounds, shillings and pence and
a possible badger cull. I think the same definitions should appear
in any cost-benefit analysis on these cattle measures.
Q229 Sir Peter Soulsby: I wonder
if you would forgive me if I return for a moment to the NFU's
attitude to the ISG report. I entirely understand the disappointment
at its conclusions, and also I understand the very deep concern
that there is amongst their members of trying to find a way forward
about this issue; but they have been very critical, not just of
the report but of the authors of the report. On three occasions,
on my count, they have described the report as slanted, they have
described it as flawed, they have described the authors as having
approached a part of the drafting of this report in a way that,
to use their phrase, "suits their purpose", which certainly
implies that they have been less than rigorous in their approach,
and I think at one point described them as having slanted it at
the last moment. Those are very serious criticisms, not just of
the report, but of the integrity of its authors. These are respected
scientists. They are impartial and rigorous in their approach
insofar as we know. I wonder really whether you might want to
reflect on what you have said about the report and its authors
and whether you really feel that there is sufficient evidence
to make those very serious allegations about their integrity stand
up?
Mr Raymond: I do not believe that
we have questioned the integrity of the authors at all.
Q230 Sir Peter Soulsby: With respect,
if you accuse a respected scientist of having produced a slanted
report, that is a fairly serious attack on their integrity.
Mr Raymond: When you think back
to the remit that was given to the ISG ten years ago, which is
probably not where we would have started from, it was the information
that we were being fed, I have to say, leading up to the presentation—
Q231 Sir Peter Soulsby: That is very
different from accusing them of having produced a slanted report.
It is a serious accusation.
Mr Rowe: Could I add, I personally
have not done that at all, and I am not quite sure whether the
NFU have.
Q232 Sir Peter Soulsby: I have been
counting. On four occasions (and you can look at the record afterwards)
you and your colleagues have used the word "slanted"
in your description of the report.
Mr Rowe: Is this in press releases?
Q233 Sir Peter Soulsby: No, in evidence
to us today, and I invite you to look back at the transcript when
it is produced. You have on four occasions used the word "slanted"
in your description of the report.
Mr Haworth: I think what we said
was not that the report was flawed but that the trials themselves
on which the report was based was flawed, and that in presenting
their conclusions we were inevitably led to the conclusion that
somehow the presentation of the evidence, the presentation of
the conclusions, had been, let us say, strengthened rather than
using the word "slanted", possibly at the last moment.
That may be explicable by what Professor Woodroffe said.
Q234 Chairman: Hang on just a minute.
This almost gets the impression that you were given indications
by others, possibly from within Defra, that the conclusions which
the ISG were coming to were of a different analysis to the one
that emerged. Hence the basis of your observations that what you
thought was coming turned out to be different from what arrived.
The reason I invited Professor Woodroffe to come on to very kindly
give us the benefit of her observations was to address precisely
that particular point, and the impression gained from her helpful
observations was that the ISG had remained true to their last.
In other words they reported what they found, and they did it
in a way that was not interfered with by other parties. That was
clearly the view that I formed from listening to what she had
to say. I do not want to make life unnecessarily uncomfortable
for you, but who in Defra has been giving you this sort of insight:
because I did not hear from Professor Woodroffe that they had
been giving in little dollops to the Defra official so that they
had some idea but only a partial view. The impression I got was
that when they reported, they reported there and then; they gave
them some principal findings and then they got the final version.
Mr Haworth: Yes. Let us go through
this. In the first place I think, yes, we did at various levels
in Defra firmly get the impression for a period of time that the
report was going to conclude that there were circumstances in
which a cull could be beneficial.
Q235 Chairman: But I have just clarified
with Professor Woodroffe that there were circumstances, in the
mechanical sense, of a relationship between culling badgers and
a reduction in the incidence of bovine TB. She said that I had
got that right. So that bit, no difference really.
Mr Haworth: Yes, but I think there
is a difference of tone, which is probably why we used the word
slanted. No-one is accusing anybody of being nobbled, but the
impression given (and this has to be an impression, obviously,
from the outside with imperfect knowledge) that at least the people
who had seen earlier drafts of the report had got the impression
that it was much more nuanced than it was, and that may be explicable
by Professor Woodroffe's observation that initially it had been
written in scientific language and, in the end, it had been more
written for the layman. That maybe the explanation. No-one is
accusing an outsider of interference, but at some point it seems
that the Secretary of State wrote to other Cabinet ministers announcing
the fact that there was a likelihood, or probability, or possibility
that there would be a cull, which must be a conclusion which was
based on having read earlier drafts of the report. We are not
saying that the report was nobbled by outside interference, but
maybe, in the light of that, the authors of the report themselves
were at pains to write the report in a way that would prevent
the conclusion that had seemed to have been reached.
Mr Rowe: Could I add a slight
qualified—
Q236 Patrick Hall: Could I just ask
a question? I have not followed it all in great detail for several
years, but there has been some recent comment in the press on
3 June in The Sunday Times, for example, flagging up that
ministers are likely to allow a large-scale kill. The media does
have a role to play in this country, it does not always mean,
though, that the sources of its information are clear and unknown,
and we can all suffer from this whatever walk of life we are in.
Maybe what the media were saying is something that the NFU liked
the sound of and is disappointed, but the real report is not what
the media said. Is that not possible?
Mr Haworth: No, the report was
never denied by anybody—that this letter had been written.
Q237 Chairman: I will tell you one
thing, we have asked for it because I think it would be helpful
for us all to know. So far we have had about one sentence from
an alleged letter, and the sort of numerical bit of it does not
quite stack up with all the evidence that has actually arrived.
I do not know which version the Secretary of State is alleged
to have seen and based this on. It is quite unusual that secretaries
of state sit down and spontaneously write letters to Cabinet colleagues
just because they thought, "I will just drop a note to the
rest of the Cabinet and say, `I am just browsing through a partial
copy of an unfinished report, so I thought I would just write
you a letter telling you what is what." So far we have had
one sentence of a letter. We do not know what else it said. Do
you?
Mr Rowe: No.
Q238 Chairman: No.
Mr Rowe: Could I slightly clarify
where the sense of feeling comes from. All the way through this
report there is a qualification which put over a lot of statements
about "as in the culling done by the RBCT method", and
that is fairly constant throughout the report, and they qualify
it, that all the data is from that particular method of culling.
There are lots of other methods of culling that could be employed
with greater degrees of efficiency and yet we have this absolute
definitive statement: "Culling badgers will not work."
I think that is where the confusion has come from.
Chairman: I will tell you what we will
do, because there are one or two areas we want to move on to,
and you have been very patient and we have extended this session
because of Professor Woodroffe's fortuitous presence here. I think
that we will analyse very carefully the reservations that you
have had about the way in which the report was put together and
I think that the Committee will be minded to do two things, one
of which will be, with greater rigour, to play this back to the
ISG as a whole to seek their observations, notwithstanding the
very helpful comments from Professor Woodroffe, and secondly,
and again you will be unsurprised to learn, I am sure, that this
will form part of the basis of the questioning to a minister,
once we get a minister, whichever that person may be, in front
of us to find out where the Government have actually reached at
whatever time we get hold of a minister. So, I want to move our
questioning on and ask Mr Gray if he would take up future prospects.
Q239 Mr Gray: Let us imagine that
the Government accept the recommendations on their face value
and say, "Fine, no culling", what would the NFU advise
people to do? There are really two parts to that. First, I remember
back in 2006 the NFU said that, if that were to happen, there
would be civil disobedience with regard to pre-movement testing
and, secondly (rather than keep asking different questions perhaps
you could answer them all at the same time), what would you say
to farmers some of whom might conclude that if it is not going
to be done officially they should do it themselves? In other words,
this whole question of illegal culling. What would your advice
to members be?
Mr Raymond: Obviously we would
not advise any of our members to disobey the law. If there was
a decision against culling, we would have to accept that, but
I would put a proviso on that because there is so much frustration
at the moment. There is a determination within the farming industry
that they want decisions, they want to move this debate forward,
but I do fear for the industry, for the people involved in the
industry, I return to the welfare of the farming families involved,
and I just fear that, at the end of this, if people do not move
this strategy forward, I can see a mass exodus from the livestock
industry, particularly in the South West, particularly in the
West Midlands and particularly in parts of Wales because I think
people are at the end of their tether. I do not need to say to
any of you the pressures that there are on the livestock industry,
whether it is dairy farmers or even beef farmers at the moment;
and this could well be the final nail in the coffin for those
farmers because I think they have put up for many, many years
with economic hardship with the pressures of restriction, and
a lot of these people that I speak to have been waiting for a
change of direction. If that is not forthcoming, I can see this
exodus happening and I do fear for the infrastructure, for countryside
management in certain parts of the country.
|
