Examination of Witnesses (Questions 480
- 499)
MONDAY 26 NOVEMBER 2007
DR GARETH
ENTICOTT, DR
CHRIS CHEESEMAN
AND DR
ROBBIE MCDONALD
Q480 Chairman: One of the things
that I am intrigued about is that you talk about this sort of
fatalism of the whole process, if Defra brought you in and said,
"Okay, we have to redesign how we get the message across
about what we think is biosecurity but we are not doing it very
well at the moment in the light of your findings", what would
you change? How would you design a new programme to get across
what might be best practice? What is missing at the moment?
Dr Enticott: I am not entirely
sure at the moment that I would change that much in the sense
that I do not really understand how valuable Defra see this as
a policy. It goes back to what I said earlier, people have been
talking about this for a long time. There may be good reasons
for that but over the last seven years what has happened?
Q481 Chairman: Let us be very clear
on that, are you saying that by virtue of your observations you
do not believe that Defra are actually committed seriously to
their own programme and advice on biosecurity?
Dr Enticott: I am not sure how
committed they are in the context of controlling the disease.
Q482 Chairman: What evidence do you
have to support that?
Dr Enticott: As I said, if you
look through, for example, all the select committees over the
last eight years, it has been talked about time and time again,
better communication strategies, et cetera, et cetera. Eight years
after the start of Krebs all that has happened is that there is
something on the web, two leaflets that might be developed in
some ways but that is not very much. There might be reasons for
that. It might be that Defra do not actually want to do this or
they do not actually see much value in doing it in terms of its
contribution to disease control. There must be a cost to that
as well. I could sit here and come up with a lot of good examples
of what could be done: follow the Welsh way, do what they are
doing and roll that out across the country but that might cost
a lot of money and it might not achieve that much, we do not know.
It is difficult to recommend something new without knowing the
costs as well.
Q483 Mr Drew: Is this not part of
a wider problem? We keep going on about vaccination as a strategy
always being ten years away. If everybody believes that sometime
it will be solved but not at the moment that is where the fatalism
comes in. In a sense that is the worst of every world because
ten years is too far away to do much about it but it is immediate
when it comes and hits you. I am surprised you used the word "luck"
alongside "fatalism". I meet a lot of farmers who believe
that it is only a matter of time before they are going to go down
again, therefore is it worth taking many preventative measures
because they can only work for a limited amount of time.
Dr Enticott: I think one of the
things I would say is that the research I have done is in high
risk areas for TB and it applies to those areas, it does not apply
to those areas outside. If I were outside where they are testing
on a four year basis I might have completely different views of
this. I do not know because my research did not cover those areas
for my own reasons. There has not actually been any research done
on those areas and this is one of the things I would suggest should
be done. If biosecurity is important it may be better to focus
on those areas rather than those high risk areas.
Q484 Mr Drew: I am interested in
two aspects of this. What number of farmers were prepared to admit
to at least being complicit in illegal killing of badgers and,
more particularly, what attitudes did you perceive with regard
to that as being an effective strategy in their mind? In other
words, did they believe if they felt they had a diseased badger
sett on their property this was quite a clever way of at least
trying to deal with that problem for themselves, even though it
may make someone else's problem worse with badgers obviously meandering
and so on?
Dr Enticott: I would like to say
before I answer that that I do not say this trying to sensationalise
this but obviously it does go on and farmers have spoken to me
about what goes on. It has been published elsewhere as well by
the NFU where they talk about it carrying on. I do not think what
I saw is anything different to what other people already know
about. Certainly farmers view it as an effective solution; certainly
the view taking out diseased badgers as an effective solution.
There is the old folklore that you leave your healthy badger and
you deal with the unhealthy ones and that very much guides decision
making. That would be their view.
Q485 Mr Drew: Dr Cheeseman and Dr
McDonald, I would welcome your views on what you have heard from
Dr Enticott.
Dr Cheeseman: I would start firstly
by saying that I understand this need for a definition for biosecurity
and I think that in this particular context it has to include
good farm husbandry, that is husbandry that reduces the risks
of disease transmission. I think that is what we are specifically
talking about here. I know that Robbie McDonald will be able to
enlighten you as to some of the recent developments in that area,
research that is on-going. It very soon became apparent to us
as researchers, that there was a risk on the farm, in particular
with respect to buildings. The advice that is given to farmers
that has already been mentioned about keeping badgers out of buildings
is basic common sense. If you have a disease problem in the area
it does make sense to try to exclude badgers from buildings and
it is often not too difficult to do that. However, I do understand
the point that Mr Williams made that if you exclude them from
buildings the cattle are still exposed when they graze the open
fields. I think this brings us to the point that you asked Gareth
about, why does Defra not do more about it? I think I can offer
you an explanation as to where we are at the moment. The problem
that we have is that we cannot give farmers specific advice that
if you follow this particular regime you will reduce the risks
of transmission on your farm by 50% or whatever, and these are
the things you must do. We cannot give them a prescription for
reducing risk because we do not fully understand at the moment
just what the risk factors are and how they rank. I think that
the Defra position—some of my ex-Defra colleagues are behind
me and I am speaking on their behalf—is that they do not
have this specific advice which is why they funded a research
programme to try to investigate just these things, particularly
with relevance to farm buildings. Some of this research is on-going
and Robbie can fill you in on it, but I think it is terribly important
that we do things like the TB99 survey which you will be well
familiar with. That asked certain questions about the farming
practice that might help identify risks. I bet you that one of
the high risk factors is badgers being present in farm buildings.
Being present is one thing but Robbie might be able to show you
some rather compelling photographs of badgers raiding feed stores
and in amongst cattle. These things can be avoided. If you have
a consumptive badger in a situation like that it makes sense to
try to prevent it. It is this package that we do not have at the
moment which the research programme is designed to address. I
think perhaps it is understandable that Defra are not actually
going out there in a pro-active way giving farmers a leaflet telling
them what they must do. This programme has been talked about a
lot in terms of how do we incentivise farmers. There is a certain
complacency—or call it fatalism or whatever you want—about
the risks of TB on the farm, but I think if we are able to say,
"Look, if you ran this sort of practice and you have badgers
in your buildings you are increasing your risks by a certain amount
and these are the things you can do to prevent it" that would
be a very good position to be in, but I do not think we are there
yet.
Q486 Mr Gray: You have done an awful
lot of work on buildings in particular although, as my colleague
said, it does not help from March to November when the beasts
are actually out in the fields. Presumably where you have ultra
modern units it would be possible to put in badger fences to guard
feed stores and guard where the cattle are. However, in the high
risk areas in the West Country in particular there are very few
ultra modern dairy units of that kind. On your average dairy farm
in Devon, Wiltshire or Cornwall it would be virtually impossible
to prevent badgers getting in.
Dr Cheeseman: I accept that it
is difficult for some farmers to exclude badgers from their buildings.
There is one particular case study that we have done on a farm
in Gloucestershire where the particular farmer in question is
a member of the NFU and has taken really quite painstaking measures
to reduce the risks on his farm. This is all of his own volition;
he has not been encouraged to do so by Defra. He has raised mineral
licks off the ground to stop badgers getting access to them out
in the field; he has put his feed stores behind roller shutter
doors that he can close off from badgers. I had a discussion with
this particular person about the ways in which he could improve
even further his biosecurity and that might have included electric
fencing. Badgers can be excluded very effectively by electric
fencing. I did not perceive it to be too difficult to fence off
the whole of this farm complex and keep badgers out. The problem
is that he had eight points of access where milk tankers and other
vehicles needed to get in and out. The Central Science Laboratory,
when I was there, actually designed a grid that was intended to
keep animals out of the channel tunnel. It is an electrified grid
and it will stop them crossing. It is five metres wide and it
is not beyond the wit of man to put one of those in a road. It
was possible and it would cost, I accept, a lot of money, probably
tens of thousands of pounds. Of course the farmer's reaction was,
"Well, I can't possibly afford that". He had previously
told me that his run of breakdowns had cost him in excess of £100,000
so I put it back to him that perhaps it was a worthwhile long
term investment. His response to that was, "If I do all these
things and my cattle still go down because they are getting infected
in the fields, what do I do about that?" I had to concede
at that point that he had a fair point, that I could not demonstrate
to him just how much of a risk was present in the buildings.
Q487 Mr Gray: The purpose of our
study is to discuss culling of badgers and if a farmer is faced
with tens of thousands of electronic grids and roads and all that
or going out and shooting the buggers, that is what a farmer is
going to do. They are not going to put in the measures you talk
about, are they?
Dr Cheeseman: No, I accept that.
I would say this though, as a counter to your argument, there
are some farmers out there who are prepared to take quite considerable
measures to protect their cattle against exposure to badgers.
There are some who are really diligent. I accept that the majority
probably do not give a lot of thought, but some farmers really
do want to try.
Q488 Mr Gray: The bigger more modern
ones maybe, but I was thinking about the average farmer—particularly
in the area we are talking about, the West Country—who has
been going through very hard times over the past ten years. The
reality is that they are probably unlikely to do all the things
you are talking about. They might do some things: they might lift
something of the ground, they might put up some kind of badger
proof fence around part of it but actually the reality is the
really clever biosecurity things that you are describing through
your study most normal dairy farmers in the West Country will
not be able to implement.
Dr Cheeseman: I do not think some
of these measures are going to be that complicated; Robbie will
fill you in on some of the details here. We could show you some
videos of large numbers of badgers raiding cattle feed stores;
it is not difficult to exclude them from these feed stores. They
are literally put on the ground on pallets as they are delivered
by the lorries and they stay there and the badgers happily come
along at night—this is highly concentrated, highly nutritious
feed—and they will rip open the bags and have a feast. We
have one video with 11 badgers present at one time. That is easy
and I put it to you that it would not be very expensive to put
food like that in a badger proof store and also administer it
to the cattle in a way that does not leave spillage that badgers
can gain access to.
Q489 Mr Williams: Is there any evidence
that badger behaviour has changed? Before I was a politician I
was a farmer on a livestock farm and we used to be out late at
night for lambing and calving and it is only in the last two or
three years that I have ever seen badgers anywhere near a building.
Have badgers always been coming into farm buildings or is only
just recently?
Dr Cheeseman: I think it has been
going on a long time but what has changed is the law; it is now
illegal to kill badgers. I can remember being asked as a teenager
to go and shoot a fox that was killing a farmer's chickens and
I sat up and waited for this animal to appear. Three of them appeared.
I could only see shadows or silhouettes running round and I shot
all three of them. They were all badgers and they were in a farmyard
killing chickens. That happened back in the 1960s. In 1973 we
saw the passing of the Badger Act and it became illegal to kill
badgers and since then the law has been tightened even further;
you really are restricted by law in anything you do against badgers
or their setts. That is what has really changed. It would be true
to say that in the past farmers would probably have dealt with
that sort of problem quite easily whereas now they are restricted.
Q490 Mr Williams: Is there a correlation
between badgers becoming a protected species, a growth in population
and their behaviour changing and them becoming more dangerous
and aggressive?
Dr Cheeseman: There is an element
of truth in the fact that the legislation has probably allowed
the population to reach capacity whereas in the past it may have
been held in check by activity involving management of badgers
by farmers and the shooting fraternity. The idea of a population
explosion I think is a myth; there have always been a lot of badgers
in this country and we are effectively farming badgers by the
pastoral system which is creating ideal habitat conditions for
badgers so we have encouraged the high densities that we see today.
Q491 Mr Drew: Robbie, it would be
useful if you would now talk to us about some of the practicalities.
Could you start by answering one of the issues that we are trying
to look at and that is, is there any evidence that biosecurity
is better today, despite what Gareth says, in terms of the fatalism
of farmers' perceptions but also whether this is making any difference
in terms of Defra's strategies?
Dr McDonald: Can I start by referring
back to Mr Gray's question about what biosecurity means in this
context. I think here we can give you a scientific working definition,
that we are looking for means of controlling exposure of susceptible
animals—in this case cattle—to sources of infection
whether they be cattle or badgers in this case. Really what we
are talking about is keeping those two things apart from one another
and in this case it is largely going to be physical means of doing
so. We started working on this under Chris's direction some years
ago with evidence that badgers, particularly tuberculous badgers,
were making more use of farm buildings than you would expect and
that tuberculous badgers ranged more widely than badgers that
were not infected. We have since extended that into video and
camera surveillance of the activity of infected badgers on farms.
I can show you evidence of this if you look at these photographs.1[1]
These show the outputs from some still remote camera surveillance
of farms in Gloucestershire and I think it is worth saying first
of all that it would be entirely reasonable for farmers not to
suspect the level of badger activity on the farms that we have
observed. Most of this happens very late at night; most of the
observation of activities that we have seen peak at around midnight
when farmers have got better things to be doing. We put cameras
out in farms and we found that about 50% of farms received badger
visits with any frequency and about one in ten receive very frequent
badger visits, in excess of 50% of nights.
Q492 Mr Gray: Is that 50% in Gloucestershire?
Dr McDonald: On this sample of
farms. So, 40 farms, of which a handful experienced badger visits
more nights than not. It is by no means a universal phenomenon
but it is common.
Q493 Mr Gray: Sorry, 40 farms of
which 50% receive some visits but 10% receive more.
Dr McDonald: 10% receive visits
on more nights than not, on more than 50% of nights.
Q494 Mr Gray: So half of them receive
visits most nights.
Dr McDonald: Some nights. Let
me start again. We surveyed 40 farms and half of them received
visits by badgers—so about 20—and four of the 40 received
visits by badgers on more than half of the nights that we had
been observing.
Q495 Mr Gray: That sounds quite a
lot to me.
Dr McDonald: Yes. One in ten farms
received a lot of badger activity. That is where these sorts of
observations took place and we have a video on our website that
you can look at and see some of the phenomena that Chris has described.
It is by no means universal but it is very frequent and it is
exactly these sorts of areas of focal points of activity on the
farm which farmers could take action to prevent exposure between
infected and susceptible animals.
Q496 Mr Gray: I have a question on
your observations, were they single badgers or on some occasions
many badgers? I have heard anecdotally tales of 20 or 30 badgers
turning up.
Dr McDonald: You will see in the
video if you have the time to look at it there is one example
of an entire social group showing up and being chased away by
a dog and being back again half an hour later. I reiterate the
point that it is one in ten farms that receive visits of that
order of magnitude. If I could move to what you do about it, the
trial that we are engaged with at the moment is a good example
of working with farmers in the local community to try to arrive
at practical solutions to this sort of problem. We are evaluating
in an experimental way what happens when you install measures
to reduce badger activity around these focal points of feed stores
and indoor housing. We will be trying out a range of measures
including electric fencing and potentially weld mesh installations
that stop badgers getting through gates and so on. There are clearly,
as you have highlighted already, very serious practical constraints
that will limit the uptake of that by farmers but it is part of
our role in this project, which Defra supported, to try to work
out where the farmers can work around that. We would hope to then
demonstrate that there can be major reductions in those rates
of badger visitations experienced by that one in ten farm. It
is a practical solution that we are looking at; we are not talking
about a channel tunnel scenario that Chris described but one which
the farmers can work with on a daily basis.
Q497 Mr Drew: Can we move to the
issue of culling now? Obviously, as Mr Gray has said, that is
one of the issues that we have been looking at and have taken
advice both formally and informally. I suppose my first question
to you, Chris, is that if there were this policy put forward to
what extent is there the capability to track badgers so that you
could carry out the sort of culling that we are told would have
to be undertaken to make it an effective policy? Is the surveying
means there, given that in the ISG we were talking in terms of
up to 80% and the view that has been expressed is that it would
have to be 80% plus.
Dr Cheeseman: I understand you
have been circulated a little list of some of these considerations.
Q498 Chairman: We have.
Dr Cheeseman: It is a document
entitled Some of the practical considerations associated with
badger culling.[2]
I will take you through that because it is an annotated list.
Before I do that I would like to say that I think it is absolutely
crucial that you should be considering this in the context of
culling and I would like to explain to you why I think it is so
important. As you know, I have been studying badgers a long time;
some 35 years of my professional career has been spent studying
the TB problem. In that time the one thing that I have learned
is that it is immensely complicated and there are no easy solutions
to this. It is also apparent that people get easily confused about
the idea that there is an infected badger so they should be killed.
I am afraid it is never as simple as that and there are some issues
which I think we need to be aware of that are serious constraints
on whether culling can actually make an impact. During that 35
years in the early phase I became very aware that culling seemed
to make it worse, in a nutshell, and I developed a quarter of
a century ago the idea of perturbation, this idea that if you
disrupt badgers' social order you will exacerbate the spread of
disease. When I first floated that idea at a meeting with what
in those days was called the Badger Management Group I was told
by one of the senior members of the State Veterinary Service that
it was an unhelpful distraction. Now I had to accept that that
was a fair point because I did not have any proof as to what this
idea of perturbation might be; I did not have any field evidence.
At that time I had to accept that the idea was not good enough,
we needed the evidence, which is why I was extremely pleased in
the 1990s that the Badger Culling Trial was set up because here,
for the first time, we had the opportunity of evaluating the pros
and cons of culling. I think that I and a number of my colleagues
of the scientific community could be forgiven for thinking that
the issue of culling was really well and truly laid to rest when
the Independent Scientific Group published its report in June
this year. I would say that that report was exhaustive in its
science. The analyses were robust and the conclusions were sound.
I have yet to meet a single member of the scientific community
that I have spoken to since the publication of that report who
disagrees with that. As I say, we thought that that was it but
we have recently seen the publication of another report by Sir
David King and colleagues which has come to a very different conclusion
on the issue of culling. I was extremely surprised at this and
I know a number of my ex-colleagues and professional contacts
were also surprised. In my desire to understand just why Sir David
King had come up with this alternative conclusion I very quickly
became aware of some serious deficiencies in the report. I know
some of these issues have been summarised for you by the ISG—you
have another paper I believe by the ISG which deals with things—but
I would summarise them by saying in one area there was a misinterpretation
or a misrepresentation or a misunderstanding of some of the basic
field data with respect to this negative edge. Secondly there
was a large chunk of the ecological data which is so important
which was completely left out. It was all there in the public
domain; it has been published and it is in the scientific literature.
I could not understand why that was not even referenced. Thirdly,
I think perhaps the most important deficiency was the failure
to understand and even consider these practical constraints on
culling. I understand it was not in the remit but I think that
was a big mistake. That is why I am so pleased to be able to discuss
this with you today because I cannot imagine how anybody could
even contemplate resurrecting a policy which will actually make
things worse. Over the years I became very concerned that culling—particularly
the piecemeal culling—was making it worse and the ISG's
report very clearly demonstrates that you would get a benefit
in the core of the culled area but you get this large negative
effect which eliminates any benefit and unless you cull over a
large area—it would need to be at least 300 square kilometres
or bigger—and do it in a sustained, coordinated and repeated
way you will not get benefits, you will get negative effects that
will make it worse. I cannot understand why anybody would want
to do that. That is why I drafted this list which I would say
is by no means exhaustive and neither is it in any particular
order of priority, but these are the main points that occurred
to me. Firstly, you would need to decide where you are going to
target the culling and across the south west of England, which
is the biggest of the hotspots, you have really very hot hotspots
and areas of low TB incidence as well, so a big culling area would
inevitably probably take in some areas of low incidence. Next
you have to decide how you delineate your culled area and I think
you are familiar with the issue of boundary permeability, this
is the permeability of the boundary to badger movement and the
desirability of having a hard boundary that would prevent badgers
crossing the edge of your culled area. The one thing I can say
to you is that as far as I am concerned, with my experience of
badger behaviour, the only real hard boundary is the sea. Roads
and rivers do form some kind of natural boundaries to badger movement
or the organisation of badger society, but they certainly cross
roads. Witness the fact that an estimated 50,000 badgers a year
are killed on the roads, which is actually about half of the annual
adult mortality, so they certainly cross roads, even motorways.
I have seen badgers swim across tidal estuaries so even a big
river is not really necessarily a hard boundary. If you look across
the south west of England you will see that there is, apart from
the sea, a great absence of hard boundaries. The idea of soft
boundaries that was proposed in Sir David King's report does not
have any field evidence to back it up and in my own professional
judgment it would not work. Badgers have, as part of their territorial
organisation, some areas of arable land and they do use it at
certain times of the year and they certainly cross these areas
to gain access to other good foraging habitats, so I do not think
that would work. Cattle free buffers have been mentioned and these
would need to be at least two kilometres wide and for a 100 square
culling area you would need a cattle free buffer zone of 80 square
kilometres. Electric fencing has been mentioned as a means of
preventing badgers gaining access to areas but on a scale that
would be needed for a culling area it would be extremely costly
and actually impractical, largely because of the presence of roads;
you cannot put fences across roads and badgers cross roads. You
have to coordinate this effort over what would be very, very large
areas and the Badger Culling Trial data shows very clearly that
the marginal benefits that you get in the core area would be reduced
by piecemeal culling and you would also need to synchronise the
culling over the whole area and sustain it for at least four years
to get the benefits. Failure to achieve any of these—that
is if you cull in a patchy or asynchronous or unsustained way—you
will risk (a very high risk) making matters worse. So there is
a huge cost of failure. Then you have the issue of landowner compliance.
Q499 Chairman: Could I just stop
you at that point because I want to ask Dr Enticott a question
and then we will come back to this, Dr Cheeseman, in due course.
When the Committee visited Devon we had put before us a proposal,
which was put forward by the NFU who said they had a programme
worked out how they could do a cull of 300 square kilometres,
et cetera. I will not go into the detail of that, but you have
just given us a set of reasons as to why, unless you have a systematic,
hard boundary, well-organised cull things could get worse. Dr
Enticott, we have a lot of desperate farmers, some of them whose
livelihood has been absolutely disrupted, their business ruined,
they are in a state of total despair, they see nothing on the
horizon in terms of biosecurity—whatever that means—they
know there is a vaccine light years away and the only thing they
have got is a gun. Do you think it is possible, given the measured
terms of your paper, to convince those people that a cull that
they might be invited under those circumstances to take part in,
is not actually the best way forward taking into account the concerns
which Dr Cheeseman has just enunciated. How would you deal with
that as an issue? If I sent you to Devon and I said, "Go
and talk to those farmers there, you are the man who is the expert
on getting the message across" how are you going to turn
them away from wanting to go and blast every badger that they
see out of existence?
Dr Enticott: I am not sure that
I could.
1 1 http://www.csl.gov.uk/aboutCsl/scienceGroupsAndTeams/wem/badgersinbuildings.cfm Back
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