badger © Darin Smith

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Stand up and be counted

The Wildlife Trusts are standing up for badgers and farmers alike by urging the Government to resist calls for a badger cull. Simon Brenman, Director of Regional Programmes for South West Wildlife Trusts (SWWT) - has been co-ordinating the SWWT position on this issue and in this article explains some of the complexities behind the call for a badger cull.

A common enemy
Farmers, conservationists, vets, animal welfare organisations, and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) should all unite to face and fight the common enemy - the bacteria that cause this disease - and not badgers.

Bovine TB(bTB) is a serious and growing problem for cattle farmers, Government, and everyone who cares about the countryside. Last year around 23,000 cattle were infected with the disease and £90 million was spent on compensation and veterinary costs. Badgers, deer and other native mammals are affected as well as cattle, and the worry is that wildlife can act as a 'reservoir' of the disease and a potential source of infection for otherwise healthy cattle.

While there is no disputing that there is some link between badgers and cattle in the spread of bTB, the evidence would suggest that this is not the main cause. The Government's own advisory committee has stated that cattle-to-cattle transmission is responsible for 80% of the disease. Added to this, evidence from extensive trials (which took eight years and cost more than £34m) clearly shows that badger culling actually increases bTB infection in cattle in the surrounding areas. This happens because culling destabilises badger populations.

Yet the National Farmers' Union (NFU) continues to lobby the Government for a badger cull, and indeed has attempted to strike a deal which sets out their willingness to go along with plans for much more stringent testing of cattle before they are moved off the farm, if there is a badger eradication programme. This is thought by some to be irresponsible and will lead to the problem getting worse not better.

At the heart of the problem is the fact that effective action against the disease will unfortunately continue to cost farmers and taxpayer lots of money for a long time.

So what is the way forward?
The NFU and Defra must learn that breakdowns in animal health should first and foremost be addressed by good animal husbandry, bio-security, and effective vaccination programmes.

The last Foot and Mouth disaster in 2001 cost this country over £5 billion, caused untold suffering to farmers and their families, and massive economic hardship for many other rural businesses. And why? Because a strategy of culling was pursued ahead of vaccination.

Once again cattle farmers face a major disease problem and once again their leaders and representatives seem to be ducking the key issue - which is controlling the movement of over nine million cattle a year from farm to market to farm.

We are all part of the problem
Cattle are transported around the country because farmers are desperately trying to cut their costs in order to supply the supermarkets with beef and dairy products at the same price as cheap foreign imports produced without care for the environment or animal welfare. Like it or not we are all part of this problem and we should understand the repercussions of our demand for so called cheap food.

We urge the NFU to

• address the real cause of bTB and not look for a scapegoat
• campaign to stop the industrialisation of livestock farming
• promote good husbandry and the retention of local infrastructure

We also urge the NFU to stand up to the domination of the UK food market by a small number of huge companies who drive down prices to farmers, forcing them to take measures that go against good farming practice.

These are the issues behind our inability to throw an effective cordon around a farm animal health problem once it has become established. The financial and emotional costs of dealing with bTB is another example of concealing the true costs of producing food.

We must all accept that cheap food isn't cheap for society. It costs us our farmers - who are crucial producers of our food and stewards of our land; it causes pollution of soil, air and water; and it costs us our biodiversity.

And now it may well cost the South West our native badgers by eliminating them from large parts of the countryside. Badgers are protected mammals and have lived in the South West of England for around 200,000 years. They are caught up in a problem that is not their own making but which is now threatening their imminent demise.