Cull badgers to stop TB in cattle, Benn is urged

Feb 27 2008 by Tom Patterson, The Journal

THE NFU yesterday called on Defra Secretary of State, Hilary Benn to grasp the nettle and mount a concerted attack on bovine TB – including action to target the disease in badgers.

That was the unanimous recommendation of a House of Commons select committee.

The Efra Select Committee, chaired by MP Michael Jack, has spent the last eight months assessing the recomm- endations of the Independent Scientific Group (ISG) to the Govern- ment on how best to tackle the problem.

In 2007, new outbreaks of the disease exceeded 4,000, resulting in the slaughter of more than 28,000 cattle.

The ISG concluded that badger culling could make a contribution but questioned whether it could be practically achieved.

However, the Government’s former chief scientific adviser, Professor Sir David King, concluded, on the basis of the same evidence, “that removal of badgers can have a beneficial effect in those parts of the country where there is a high incidence of TB in cattle”.

The Select Committee has weighed up those two scientific opinions, and favours bringing bovine TB under control by licensed badger culling subject to strict conditions.

It also condemned the Govern- ment’s current TB policy as “not working effectively” and concluded that the present system for valuing TB reactors is unfair.

NFU president Peter Kendall called on Hilary Benn to implement the recommendations in full, without delay.

He said: “It is time to act. We must attack this disease on every front before it destroys more cattle, damages more businesses, infects more wildlife, ruins more lives, and costs the Government and farmers even more money.

“The Select Committee’s report is comprehensive.

“It has drawn on informed opinion from every side of the debate and it is unanimous.

“At its heart is the principle that we must tackle every facet of this disease if we are to make progress.

“We know from bitter experience of the past 25 years that partial controls don’t work.

“Our belief is that if the issues at stake are properly explained to them, the public will accept the over-riding need for this disease to be brought under control.” Not everything in the report will be welcomed by farmers in the TB hotspot areas.

The recommendations on additional testing and increased use of the gamma interferon test will be a particularly bitter pill to swallow.

Mr Kendall added: “However, in principle we agree that a comprehensive strategy that deals with every aspect of the disease, including some difficult issues for farmers, is right.

“What we most certainly will not accept is a continuation of the present one-sided approach, where all of the concentration is on cattle-to-cattle spread, and nothing at all is being done about the infection that is constantly being recycled from the badger population.” Mr Kendall said that farmers would want to work closely with Defra vets in devising culling strategies that would achieve the greatest impact on the disease, and emphasised that whatever was done would be legal, licensed and subject to veterinary advice.

He also welcomed the committee’s recommendations on disease compensation and vaccination.

He added: “Compensation arrangements are manifestly unfair to owners of pedigree cattle and should be changed immediately.

“As for vaccination, there is obvious scope for using it to reduce the risk of disease being spread and to protect incoming healthy badgers to areas that have been cleared of disease.”