Badgers and Tb

Martin Hancox, a badger expert in Stroud asked me to post this letter below on my blog re Tb.

Photo: Graphic from Stop War on Badgers

Some might remember that I was involved in a local campaign to highlight the issue when the government first went to consultation - see here demo (yes it is me in the badger costume), here re consultation results and letter here from last year highlighting the plight for farmers over Tb and milk prices (use search engine to find others and report to consultation).

Martin is a member of the locally based group Stop War on Badgers - and as they point out the NFU is being a little naughty over its presentation of figures - but here first the letter:

Having been on the Government's badger TB panel and involved some 15 years, I am very saddened at farcical nature of the current debate with facts bandied about both for and against a mass badger cull which are simply wrong! Ministers may have to reach a decision soon since the final report on the Krebs culling trial is imminent and will doubtless repeat the nonsense that badgers perturbed by culls make cattle TB worse.

After some 35 years of pseudoscientific debate farmers, vets and everyone else are still claiming that cattle are not the infectious source of TB to other cattle and badgers. This surreal view overlooks the most pivotal misunderstanding in the whole saga. TB in both cattle and humans is a progressive respiratory lung disease such that initial microscopic or "non visible lesion" (NVL) give rise to many larger or visible lesions (VL) with an increase in infectiousness.

The whole point of testing in both species is to catch cases before they reach the more infectious VL state. Annual testing is so effective in cattle that it reduces cattle-to-cattle spread so that nearly half of herd breakdowns comprise only a single reactor. Putting herds under immediate movement restriction stops export of latent TB carriers which would otherwise go off and cause further herd breakdowns.

The third result of intensive cattle controls is that some two-thirds of cases are caught so early that it is not possible to confirm that they do in fact have TB (NVL and few M bovis present so hard to confirm .. PCR would help!). It is important to realise that untraced movement of such unconfirmed or undetected true TB cases is why TB persists both here and in Ireland and why both pre- and post-movement tests are important to avoid new TB hotspots. The Badger Trust is misguided in pushing so hard for IFN blood tests.

Yes, they do pick up the early NVL cases, but miss later skin test positive ones, which is why EU rules are only for IFN as a backup test. These points are raised in M Clark's new Badgers by Whittet, third edition just out.

On the Stop the War on Badgers site they write:

"The National Farmers’ Union (NFU) is pointing out that the latest yearly figures (2006) for bovine TB are nearly three times what they were in 1997. These figures, taken alone, imply a relentless upward slope, with dire consequences for cattle, farmers and taxpayers. What the NFU doesn’t mention is that the 2006 figures are steeply down on the post-Foot and Mouth disease (FMD) peak. In 2005 the number of cattle slaughtered following a positive TB test was 25,769. In 2006 it was 19,963. In other words, the figures selected by the NFU imply a picture that is not the true situation at all.

The NFU is also renewing calls on the government to allow the slaughter of badgers, against scientific advice. In the light of this, it’s worth recalling what happened the last time the government listened to the NFU, rather than the scientists:

* During the FMD epidemic of 2001, cattle TB testing was stopped. Scientists warned that to restock depleted areas with untested cattle would lead to an explosion of TB.
* The NFU persuaded the government to ignore this advice.
* The result was exactly as the scientists predicted – the huge surge in TB that the NFU now laments.

The recent reversal of the disease’s trajectory follows the resumption, long overdue, of cattle TB testing. But the testing regime still doesn’t identify all infected cattle. Cases continue to be discovered at abattoirs, from ‘clean’ herds. Tackling this hidden reservoir is where the real urgency lies. But their preoccupation with badgers has blinded the NFU, and some vets, to the full reality of TB in cows. Unless a cure is found for this, yet more public money will be wasted, ordinary farmers will continue to suffer, and even more badgers and cattle will die unnecessarily.

Whether or not we accept the arguments above (and I think they are very persuasive and warrant research urgently) the arguments in favour of a cull just do not stack up - even the government's scientists agree - it looks at least slightly better from reports that the Government will not be going down the route of a cull.

However instead of welcoming the reversal in bTB, farmers’ spokesmen are directing their energies to keeping the badger theory alive, by threatening an illegal DIY badger ‘cull’. In Dursley an offer has been made by a badger group to give £1000 to anyone who provides info on culling badgers that leads to a prosecution. It is clear this issue will not go away while problems remain and farmers are given such a poor deal.