The widespread badger cull starting today will not solve the problem of tuberculosis in cattle, according to Professor Peter Atkins, from the Institute of Hazard, Risk and Resilience.
It has been claimed that controlling badger numbers will reduce the spread of TB in cattle and trial culls are due to begin this weekend. But Professor Peter Atkins has investigated the spread of bovine Tuberculosis (bTB) and believes that rolling out this approach across the country would be simplistic.
Professor Atkins said: “Badgers almost certainly play a part in spreading the disease, but my conclusion is that their impact over the decades has been far less than suggested.
"Very carefully arranged culling may have a part to play alongside other measures in areas of particular prevalence such as southwest England and South Wales, but my research suggests that extending the policy elsewhere may neither be justified nor particularly effective. It certainly won’t be a panacea.
"Bovine TB has been around for several hundred years and appears to have become more prevalent here in the UK because of the intensive cattle breeding and farming from the 18th century onwards. It is an airborne infection generally, so if cattle were confined without much ventilation, the disease inevitably spreads. We think the peak of bTB probably was in the middle or late 19th century, with perhaps as much as 80 percent of cattle then infected in some counties."
"It is very probable that other animals did and do carry TB including badgers and deer, but cattle-to-cattle transfer is likely also to be an important factor.
"For example, only one out of nearly 400 badgers killed in road accidents in Cheshire over two decades tested for the disease turned out to be positive. This goes against received wisdom that some badger communities could have been infected for decades after the disease was cleared from cattle in 1960.
"If there was little bTB amongst wildlife in Cheshire and similar counties, then reinfection of cattle from this source is a lower risk than in, say, Gloucestershire. Extending the same type of cull beyond the southwest in future would therefore be a mistake."
"Furthermore, no one has yet proved definitively which direction the infection travels between species. The Randomised Badger Culling Trial, which ran from 1998-2006 indicated complex, interwoven patterns of infection and concluded that badger culling was unlikely to be effective for the future control of bTB."
As the open season for shooting badgers begins on 1st June, the British Veterinary Association (BVA) is reiterating its support for the planned badger cull pilots as part of the overall bovine TB eradication strategy in England.
Although the shooting of badgers is not expected to start until later in the season the BVA is responding to activity amongst those who oppose the cull and appealing to them to allow the necessary scientific work to take place unhindered in the two pilot cull areas.
The BVA pointed to the evidence base behind the policy – data from the Randomised Badger Culling Trials (RBCTs) – which shows that bovine TB in cattle can be reduced by around 16% in areas where a targeted, humane badger cull has taken place. The pilot culls will use different culling methods to the RBCTs and are therefore being monitored by the Independent Expert Panel made up of experts in veterinary pathology, animal welfare physiology, wildlife ecology, badger behaviour, wildlife management, ecological theory, statistics, and marksmanship.
Commenting, Peter Jones, President of the BVA, said: "We have not taken the decision to support the pilot badger culls lightly; we have considered all of the scientific evidence, which supports the management of bovine TB in badgers in order to reduce the incidence of the disease in cattle.
"We accept that there is a gap in our knowledge, which is whether controlled shooting can deliver a badger cull humanely and safely, and to the same degree of effectiveness as cage trapping and shooting. That is what the pilots are designed to address and why is it important that they are allowed to go ahead unhindered.
"We understand that this is a highly emotional issue but we must be able to gather the evidence to enable future policy decisions to be based on science."
After World War II, bTB fell dramatically because of a policy of slaughtering all cattle that tested positive and most herds were free of the condition by 1960.
But Atkins believes bTB in badgers is a spillover disease from cattle rather than an endemic condition and probably does not persist over lengthy periods. He believes a cull could even exacerbate the problem.
He added: “When badgers are disturbed, they seem to perceive they are being attacked and move from their original area by a kilometre or more and join other badger groups, which spreads the disease.”
Atkins believes that, following the 2001 foot and mouth crisis, different parts of the country were restocked with cattle from the southwest, a traditional breeding area, and that this has been a factor in the spread of bTB to regions that had previously had low incidence of it.
A likely solution to the problem may lie in vaccination, but unfortunately inoculating cattle for TB is forbidden by EU rules as it would render testing for the disease as ineffective, because all vaccinated cattle would test positive for it. The search for an adequate TB vaccine for cattle continues, but badgers can be vaccinated now to help prevent the spread of TB, an alternative to culling.
Atkins concluded that the government should take a more comprehensive approach to controlling TB.
He said: "The assumption that badgers are always responsible for this disease in cattle has to be reviewed. If our analysis showing the lack of disease persistence in medium and low density badger populations is correct, the improvement of cattle controls including improved testing, tighter movement controls and, eventually, a useable vaccine should be enough to halt the spread. We should continue to investigate and cooperate with farmers over this problem."
Farming Minister David Heath has backed badger cull calls by saying the government must do everything it can to stop the spread of bovine TB which is an 'ongoing misery for our dairy farmers'.
Referring to new figures released that show over 38,000 cattle were slaughtered in Great Britain, the minister said it was a 'stark reminder' of the scale of the challenge faced by the 'dreadful disease.'
"Not every farm has suffered from bovine TB. But every cattle farmer in the South West who has managed to avoid it to date will tell you that they live in constant dread that one day they will get the terrible news their herd has tested positive for bovine TB.
"For farmers who have invested in their herd and spent time raising the animals, such news has a devastating effect. It means that some animals they've spent sometimes years rearing are slaughtered.
The minister said a cull was 'backed by science'.
"Evidence has shown that culling, when carried out properly, can play a significant role in helping to reduce the spread of bovine TB. And with the spread of TB expected to cost the economy £1billion over the next ten years if action is not taken, we can't afford to sit back and do nothing."
