The ban on badger culls is bad news for farmers, for wildlife
Publications that summarise the news into good and bad weeks for certain groups may say that this has been a good week for the badger. Possibly that is true for certain individual brocks in areas where culling might have been about to start prior to this week’s announcement that no new culls will be permitted and others will be phased out. But for the badger as a species I can’t honestly say that it is good news.
The attempt to eradicate TB by a less efficacious method will surely lead to more badgers contracting the disease and dying horrible deaths, and probably lead to a resumption of the cull later. And nor is it good news for increasingly rare hedgehogs, hares, ground nesting birds, bumble-bees, grass snakes and other species preyed on by the fairly ubiquitous badger, for cows and – the mammals who seem to matter least – beef and dairy farmers, for whom the threat to their livelihoods is often existential. The farming charities say there is one farmer suicide each week, and they are providing emotional support to many more. Even healthy herds have to endure costly and stressful testing regimes, which are a drag on efficiency not borne by overseas competitors.
Certainly it is very bad news for the covenant between this ‘One Nation Tory’ administration and the thousands of rural people who tramped the pavements of market towns canvassing to put them in government. And that is inflammatory in a year when the countryside is already being asked to swallow some very bitter pills on subsidy withdrawals and free trade agreements.
In fairness to the Badger Trust and others, the worst vector of the disease is the movement of cattle out of infected areas. Farmers and especially auctioneers have resisted attempts to impose movement controls for commercial reasons. DEFRA should arguably have been stronger in imposing them. Frustratingly, this has led to both sides in the debate talking at cross purposes for decades.
But what is beyond doubt is that, once TB is in an area, the only way to beat it – still, despite progress developing vaccines – is to cull badgers. The idea that you can catch all the badgers in an area and dose them effectively is for the birds. Vaccinating cattle might work in time (in the cattle herd but not in the badger population), as it does for leptospirosis spread by rats, but so far the efficacy of the vaccine is not there yet and best case predictions are for 2025.
Bovine TB is a zoonotic disease like, wait for it, Covid-19. That means it can jump the species barrier and attack humans. People have died of TB in the UK recently, although mercifully that is relatively rare. The consequence is that other nations take a very dim view of countries that fail to deal with the problem. Countries that take their agriculture seriously, the United States, New Zealand and Ireland have all had problems with TB but dealt with it by culling carrier species, ruthlessly. At a time when our revitalised, post-Brexit, globalist trading nation is looking to trade with the world we are being made to look foolish and giving other countries an excuse not to trade with us. This is not a time to duck the issue.
It was David Cameron who first ordered the cull. He wrote in his memoirs: “This was one of those absolutely thankless tasks in politics, when doing the right thing is not very pleasant and not at all popular.” Indisputably the culls have worked in reducing TB but the job is unfinished. The problem with this U-turn is not that DEFRA has been made to look stupid and its increasingly disappointing Secretary of State made to look weak, but that the balance of power inside Number Ten is now the number one topic of conversation in the snug bar of the Bag of Ferrets, (at least it would be if it was open).
The assumption, rightly or wrongly, is that the First Lord of the Treasury and the First Terrier were instinctively pro-cull but that the First Fiancée is not just anti-cull – everyone is entitled to an opinion – but able to exert her influence decisively over government policy. And that is a very bad thing.