tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/badger-cull-7498/articlesBadger cull – The Conversation2022-02-11T13:32:11Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1739572022-02-11T13:32:11Z2022-02-11T13:32:11ZWhy badgers are unfairly demonised – and what we can do to help<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/445777/original/file-20220210-63440-m65sif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/european-badger-called-eurasian-part-controversial-220464949">Edward Hasting-Evans/shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Why can’t we leave badgers in peace? They are distinctive and iconic animals, but are subjected to shockingly high levels of abuse and <a href="https://www.wcl.org.uk/docs/WCL_Wildlife_Crime_Report_Nov_21.pdf">criminal behaviour</a>. Only very recently, a 28-year-old teaching assistant has been found guilty of animal cruelty after the RSPCA and police found pictures of her abhorrent <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10493251/Woman-encouraged-child-2-kill-badgers-foxes-faces-prison-animal-cruelty-offences.html">badger baiting</a> activities on a closed Facebook group. </p>
<p>Yet, with their trade mark black and white markings, large social groups and shy nature, badgers were very much part of British culture – they feature in classic children’s literature with characters such as Bill Badger, the best friend of Rupert the Bear, and kindly Mr Badger in Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willows. They seem to have the unusual status of being one of the most loved British mammals in fiction, but one of the most persecuted in the real world.</p>
<h2>Badger cull impact</h2>
<p>Despite being the UK’s largest remaining carnivore, <a href="https://www.badgertrust.org.uk/badgers">badgers are omnivorous</a> and emerge from their setts – elaborate systems of tunnels and nest chambers – at night to hunt for earthworms (a large proportion of their diet) as well as insects, fruits, cereals and small mammals. </p>
<p>Inevitably, badgers do often wander through fields with cattle. And they also happen to be the unfortunate carriers of a bacteria <em>Mycobacterium bovis</em> which causes severe disease in cows. As bovine tuberculosis (bTB) can wipe out a farmer’s entire herd and livelihood, it led to the UK government sanctioning its controversial <a href="https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn06837/">badger cull</a>, which has been responsible for the ongoing killing of thousands of the animals since 2013. </p>
<p>It is likely that badgers unwittingly <a href="https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/756942/tb-review-final-report-corrected.pdf">help to spread bovine TB</a> – but the evidence is unclear about how much culling actually helps to reduce the disease in cattle. In 2019, research found that it could in fact <a href="https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1365-2664.13512">make things worse</a> by pushing badgers out into other areas where culling is not taking place.</p>
<p>Whatever the impact of the culls, there can be little doubt that they had an effect on public perception. </p>
<p>There was huge public support for badgers through organisations such as the <a href="https://www.mammal.org.uk/2016/05/badgers-and-bovine-tuberculosis/">Mammal Society</a> and the <a href="https://www.wildlifetrusts.org/wildlife-and-wild-places/saving-species/badgers/solution">Wildlife Trusts</a> who are opposed to the cull.</p>
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<img alt="Queen guitarist Brian May leads a Team Badger protest march mimicking a funeral parade, to mark the killing of 2,263 badgers in 2013/14." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/445801/original/file-20220210-47270-4gm99j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/445801/original/file-20220210-47270-4gm99j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445801/original/file-20220210-47270-4gm99j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445801/original/file-20220210-47270-4gm99j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445801/original/file-20220210-47270-4gm99j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445801/original/file-20220210-47270-4gm99j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445801/original/file-20220210-47270-4gm99j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Badgers do have public support, including from high profile campaigners.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-badger-cull-protest-108380066.html?pv=1&stamp=2&imageid=9BE056C4-E7EF-413E-805B-B0C1EA2B19E7&p=309300&n=1&orientation=0&pn=1&searchtype=0&IsFromSearch=1&srch=foo%3Dbar%26st%3D0%26sortby%3D2%26qt%3Dbadger%2520cull%2520protest%26qt_raw%3Dbadger%2520cull%2520protest%26qn%3D%26lic%3D3%26edrf%3D0%26mr%3D0%26pr%3D0%26aoa%3D1%26creative%3D%26videos%3D%26nu%3D%26ccc%3D%26bespoke%3D%26apalib%3D%26ag%3D0%26hc%3D0%26et%3D0x000000000000000000000%26vp%3D0%26loc%3D0%26ot%3D0%26imgt%3D0%26dtfr%3D%26dtto%3D%26size%3D0xFF%26blackwhite%3D%26cutout%3D%26archive%3D1%26name%3D%26groupid%3D%26pseudoid%3D%7BAA4BFA21-6A20-4973-A795-CDDDB8962471%7D%26userid%3D%26id%3D%26a%3D%26xstx%3D0%26cbstore%3D1%26resultview%3DsortbyPopular%26lightbox%3D%26gname%3D%26gtype%3D%26apalic%3D%26tbar%3D1%26pc%3D%26simid%3D%26cap%3D1%26customgeoip%3DGB%26vd%3D0%26cid%3D%26pe%3D%26so%3D%26lb%3D%26pl%3D0%26plno%3D%26fi%3D0%26langcode%3Den%26upl%3D0%26cufr%3D%26cuto%3D%26howler%3D%26cvrem%3D0%26cvtype%3D0%26cvloc%3D0%26cl%3D0%26upfr%3D%26upto%3D%26primcat%3D%26seccat%3D%26cvcategory%3D*%26restriction%3D%26random%3D%26ispremium%3D1%26flip%3D0%26contributorqt%3D%26plgalleryno%3D%26plpublic%3D0%26viewaspublic%3D0%26isplcurate%3D0%26imageurl%3D%26saveQry%3D%26editorial%3D%26t%3D0%26filters%3D0">Jonathan Brady/PA Images/Alamy Stock Photo</a></span>
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<p>Some animal campaigners feared that they resulted in the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/feb/05/huntsman-jailed-for-badger-baiting-in-wales">badger becoming “demonised”</a> in certain parts of the UK – and government policy was at least in part responsible for the increase in cruelty towards the animal through barbaric activities such as badger baiting. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/badger-cull-alone-wont-work-for-eradicating-bovine-tb-but-this-might-107472">Badger cull alone won't work for eradicating bovine TB – but this might</a>
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<p>It didn’t stop there. Although the badger cull itself is legal, it has been used as a front by some criminals in order to make money. One licensed badger cull contractor, for example, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-50335647">illegally killed 28 badgers</a> outside of the cull period and then stored the bodies in a freezer in order to claim payment when the cull window was reopened.</p>
<h2>Unsubstantiated perceptions don’t help</h2>
<p>Badgers have also been <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/9/10/759">implicated in the decline</a> of the hedgehog, ‘<a href="https://www.rsb.org.uk/news/hedgehog-wins-favourite-uk-mammal-poll#:%7E:text=The%20hedgehog%20has%20been%20voted,in%20second%20place%20with%2015.4%25">UK’s favourite mammal</a>’. </p>
<p>While it is true that badgers are the main wild predator of hedgehogs and a competitor for food, the two species currently coexist in many areas of England and Wales, with one study reporting badger presence at <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-30130-4">49% of sites</a> where hedgehogs were found. </p>
<p>And although <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0095477#:%7E:text=By%20the%20end%20of%20culling,were%20culled%20(Figure%201)">hedgehog numbers</a> have been reported to increase in badger cull areas, hedgehog numbers have declined <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/10/9/1566">all over the UK</a>, including in regions <a href="https://ptes.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/SOBH2011lowres.pdf">with fewer badgers</a> than the cull areas.</p>
<p>This suggests that while badgers may have some negative impact on hedgehogs as you’d expect with any predator-prey relationship, there is no clear connection between declining hedgehog numbers and the size of the badger population - and it’s important to remember that they have co-existed for thousands of years without human interference in the form of culls. </p>
<p>In fact, a <a href="https://ptes.org/state-britains-hedgehogs-report-2018/">report on hedgehog declines</a> found that habitat loss through the intensification of agriculture, fewer hedgerows and tidier gardens are the main drivers. </p>
<p>Badgers are also perceived to be responsible for the decline of ground nesting birds, with a recent survey by the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT) showing that <a href="https://www.gwct.org.uk/blogs/news/2021/june/badger-predation-%E2%80%93-it%E2%80%99s-not-all-black-and-white-(part-1)">75% of respondents</a> believe this to be true. But a recent study looking at bird populations inside and outside badger cull areas in South-West England found <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00063657.2021.1889460">no evidence</a> that the removal of badgers made any difference.</p>
<h2>What can be done?</h2>
<p>To its credit, the National Trust has already <a href="https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/features/our-view-on-badgers-and-bovine-tb">banned badger culls</a> on its land. </p>
<p>And, crucially, in May 2021 the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-sets-out-next-phase-of-strategy-to-combat-bovine-tuberculosis-in-england">government announced</a> that the licensing of new intensive badger culls will stop at the end of 2022. Instead, they plan to focus their efforts on badger vaccination, increased cattle testing and development of cattle vaccines. </p>
<p>But despite this announcement, Natural England has approved <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-58487796">seven new cull zones</a> and 40 new licences which allow the killing of tens of thousands of badgers by 2025. Much more needs to be done to challenge the perception among the farming community that culling badgers is the answer to eradicating bovine TB.</p>
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<img alt="European badger with trout caught in mouth in mountain stream" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/445803/original/file-20220210-24693-1dbisd7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/445803/original/file-20220210-24693-1dbisd7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445803/original/file-20220210-24693-1dbisd7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445803/original/file-20220210-24693-1dbisd7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445803/original/file-20220210-24693-1dbisd7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445803/original/file-20220210-24693-1dbisd7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445803/original/file-20220210-24693-1dbisd7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Badgers are omnivores, but largely feast on earthworms, insects and small mammals.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/european-badger-meles-fishing-mountain-stream-1457752076">Martin Mecnarowski/shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>As badgers are already fully protected by law – under the <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1992/51/contents">Protection of Badgers Act 1992</a> – the key to reducing persecution lies in ensuring perpetrators are caught and convicted. This requires increasing public awareness and recognition of wildlife crimes. The Badger Trust has produced a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtlMpg5Gl-A">short film</a> to show the different methods of badger persecution, how to recognise the signs and to highlight the importance of recording and reporting badger crimes.</p>
<p>As for hedgehogs, we can look closer to home when it comes to taking action. </p>
<p>Good habitat cover provides safety and refuge for hedgehogs, and in areas where food supply is plentiful, enables them to <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/10/9/1566">live alongside badgers</a>. Creating hedgehog friendly gardens by leaving wild areas and enabling connectivity to other gardens – by installing <a href="https://www.hedgehogstreet.org/help-hedgehogs/link-your-garden/">hedgehog highways </a> – has been found to <a href="https://ptes.org/success-stories/investigating-the-effectiveness-of-hedgehog-highways/">significantly increase sightings of hedghogs</a>. </p>
<p>In short, there is no reason why both of these popular animals can’t continue to coexist and thrive. And in any case, can it ever be right to demonise (and even kill) an animal for simply living its life?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/173957/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anna Champneys does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Badgers are shy and nocturnal animals. It’s time to challenge false perceptions and end the cruelty towards this iconic mammal.Anna Champneys, Senior Lecturer in Wildlife Conservation, Nottingham Trent UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1074722018-12-06T13:55:10Z2018-12-06T13:55:10ZBadger cull alone won’t work for eradicating bovine TB – but this might<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248721/original/file-20181204-34138-n64a35.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:M%C3%A4yr%C3%A4_%C3%84ht%C3%A4ri_4.jpg">Kallerna/Wikimedia Commons.</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Controlling the epidemic of tuberculosis in English cattle is a hugely controversial issue. The role badgers play in that epidemic and how to prevent their infection spreading to cattle is also hotly contested. </p>
<p>The recent <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/a-strategy-for-achieving-bovine-tuberculosis-free-status-for-england-2018-review">Bovine TB Strategy Review</a>, known as the “Godfray Review”, described culling badgers as having only a “relatively modest benefit” in reducing the incidence of TB in cattle and described the use of “non-lethal” control of infection in badgers as “highly desirable”. </p>
<p>Culling badgers has been <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2014/09/11/two-years-badger-cull-remains-unpopular">largely unpopular</a> with the public, and since the report suggests it may not be an effective long-term solution, what are the non-lethal alternatives, and do they work? </p>
<p>There are three main approaches to reducing the risk that TB in badgers poses to cattle. We can reduce the number of badgers, reduce contact between badgers and cattle, or reduce infection among badgers. </p>
<h2>Culling or birth control for badgers?</h2>
<p>The idea behind culling is simply to reduce badger numbers so that the amount of badger-to-badger and badger-to-cattle transmission falls, ideally until the infection dies out among the badgers. </p>
<p>The largest trial of badger culling, the <a href="https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20081108133322/http:/www.defra.gov.uk/animalh/tb/isg/pdf/final_report.pdf">Randomised Badger Culling Trial</a>, finished around ten years ago and found that culling caused both a reduction in badger numbers and of TB in cattle.</p>
<p>But it also found that a high proportion of the <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/103/40/14713.long">remaining badgers had TB</a>. So once culling stops, a regrowing badger population that’s still infected might pose an even greater risk to cattle.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/badger-cull-didnt-kill-enough-badgers-to-be-effective-36388">Badger cull didn't kill enough badgers to be effective</a>
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<p>Early trials have suggested another way to <a href="http://sciencesearch.defra.gov.uk/Default.aspx?Menu=Menu&Module=More&Location=None&Completed=0&ProjectID=17952">reduce badger populations</a>: immunocontraception. This involves vaccinating badgers against their own reproductive hormones so they can’t get pregnant. It may prove more socially acceptable than culling. </p>
<p>But rolling this out is some way off. As it reduces the future birth rate rather than increasing the death rate, contraception will also take longer to reduce badger populations than culling. </p>
<h2>Biosecurity</h2>
<p>Keeping cattle and badgers apart with physical barriers around farm buildings such as badger-proof gates and electric fences – an approach <a href="http://www.tbhub.co.uk/biosecurity/biosecurity-guidance-farm-buildings/">known as “biosecurity”</a> – is relatively simple but can be expensive. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248745/original/file-20181204-34142-lmqvyi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248745/original/file-20181204-34142-lmqvyi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248745/original/file-20181204-34142-lmqvyi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248745/original/file-20181204-34142-lmqvyi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248745/original/file-20181204-34142-lmqvyi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248745/original/file-20181204-34142-lmqvyi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248745/original/file-20181204-34142-lmqvyi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Biosecurity – keeping cattle and badgers separate – could be part of the solution.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/wildlife-protection-fence-return-facility-keep-534795562?src=8hzYRllp_2GUlfzjqAh_DQ-1-27">Rudmer Zwerver/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>How the disease is transmitted in open environments, through slurry and soil movement or on contaminated farm vehicles, people and wildlife, is less well understood.</p>
<p>However, improved biosecurity will also help control other infectious diseases. The <a href="http://www.tbas.org.uk/">TB Advisory Service</a>, which provides free advice to farmers, emphasises integrating TB and other disease control programmes.</p>
<h2>Vaccination</h2>
<p>Badger vaccination requires first trapping the badgers, as it uses the same injectable vaccine, BCG, as is used in humans. It is undertaken by <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/badger-edge-vaccination-scheme-2-bevs-2/how-to-run-a-scheme-to-vaccinate-badgers">trained and licensed</a> volunteers in England, thereby reducing the cost. </p>
<p>Oral vaccines would be easier to use but are not yet licensed. Small numbers of <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/2010-to-2015-government-policy-bovine-tuberculosis-bovine-tb/2010-to-2015-government-policy-bovine-tuberculosis-bovine-tb#appendix-5-badger-vaccination">trials have demonstrated</a> that vaccination reduces both the number of badgers infected and the degree of disease in badgers with only partial protection. However, unlike for culling, there have been no large-scale trials of the effect that vaccinating badgers has on TB in cattle.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248713/original/file-20181204-34122-1d3tilz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248713/original/file-20181204-34122-1d3tilz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248713/original/file-20181204-34122-1d3tilz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248713/original/file-20181204-34122-1d3tilz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248713/original/file-20181204-34122-1d3tilz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248713/original/file-20181204-34122-1d3tilz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248713/original/file-20181204-34122-1d3tilz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">A badger is caught and vaccinated by a trained specialist.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jason Skeen/Derbyshire Wildlife Trust</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Most badger vaccination in England has been undertaken in areas <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/badger-vaccination-scheme-relaunched-in-fight-against-bovine-tb">in front of the expanding cattle epidemic</a>, where the badgers are believed to be free of bovine TB. This is because vaccination will protect against infection in susceptible badgers but will not stop the development of the disease in those already infected. But vaccination may still be effective at the population level among infected badgers by reducing transmission. </p>
<p>A <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.prevetmed.2017.10.010">recent study in Ireland</a> found that vaccination reduced transmission enough that TB should die out among the badgers if reinfection from cattle is prevented. It will be interesting to see if vaccination on the edge of the English cattle epidemic has any effect on the expansion of the epidemic in either cattle or badgers. Determining this, however, will require <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/a-strategy-for-achieving-bovine-tuberculosis-free-status-for-england-2018-review">more surveillance of TB in badgers</a> than at present.</p>
<h2>Combined solutions</h2>
<p>In Ireland, the follow-up strategy to culling badgers appears to be <a href="https://www.agriculture.gov.ie/press/pressreleases/2018/january/title,113880,en.html">vaccination</a>, while a “test-vaccinate-remove” (TVR) approach, in which individual badgers are caught, tested and either vaccinated or killed, is being trialled in <a href="https://www.daera-ni.gov.uk/articles/test-and-vaccinate-or-remove-tvr-wildlife-intervention-research">Northern Ireland</a> and <a href="https://gov.wales/docs/drah/publications/180712-delivery-of-badger-trap-and-test-operations-2017-report-en.pdf">Wales</a>. </p>
<p>TVR is as labour-intensive as vaccination but might reduce the numbers of infected as well as susceptible badgers. Unfortunately, the current diagnostic tests for TB in live badgers are not very sensitive, so some infected badgers will be left in the population.</p>
<p>The Godfray Review discusses how combined approaches to controlling TB might have bigger effects than any single approach. Vaccination plus immunocontraception, or short culls plus vaccination, all combined with better biosecurity may be the answer. </p>
<p>But this would require a more joined-up approach than currently exists and an agile policy, responsive to local differences and capable of changing rapidly as new evidence becomes available. And, of course, whatever approach is used to control TB in badgers, reintroduction of infection is possible if the disease is not better controlled in cattle.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/107472/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Malcolm Bennett has received funding from DEFRA and wildlife and farming charities to investigate the role of badgers in the epidemiology of TB on the edge of the cattle epidemic. He also supervises research council-funded PhD students working on various wildlife diseases, including bovine TB.
While not formally affiliated with any relevant organisation, the research involves working closely with stakeholder groups in government, farming, conservation and animal welfare.</span></em></p>The unpopular badger cull has had only ‘modest’ success in reducing bovine TB, according to a recent report. What would an alternative approach that was effective and humane look like?Malcolm Bennett, Professor of Zoonotic and Emerging Disease, University of NottinghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/363882015-01-19T16:47:54Z2015-01-19T16:47:54ZBadger cull didn’t kill enough badgers to be effective<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69287/original/image-20150116-5165-1ugzwy7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">You're next.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/chrisjohnbeckett/10366786873">Chris Beckett</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the flurry of the holiday season, many people will have missed the government’s verdict on the 2014 badger culls, <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/bovine-tb-summary-of-badger-control-monitoring-during-2014">published on December 18</a>. Farmers’ representatives have branded these recent culls “<a href="http://www.fwi.co.uk/livestock/badger-cull-trial-extension-not-needed-as-pilots-end.htm">successful</a>”, and environment secretary Liz Truss claims that they show how culling “<a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/environment-secretary-speech-at-the-oxford-farming-conference">can work to reduce disease</a>”, confirming her plan to extend this controversial approach across western England.</p>
<p>Cattle farmers have suffered terribly as a result of bovine tuberculosis (TB). Many are desperate, and would welcome a cull of badgers, which research (including <a href="http://archive.defra.gov.uk/foodfarm/farmanimal/diseases/atoz/tb/isg/report/final_report.pdf">my own</a>) has shown to be a source of infection for cattle. Sadly, a closer look at the evidence suggests that the 2014 culls bring little hope of succour.</p>
<p>Despite the environment secretary’s optimism, there is so far no evidence that these pilot culls have reduced disease. The government has <a href="http://sciencesearch.defra.gov.uk/Default.aspx?Menu=Menu&Module=More&Location=None&ProjectID=18287&FromSearch=Y&Status=2&Publisher=1&SearchText=badger&SortString=ProjectCode&SortOrder=Asc&Paging=10#Description">commissioned research</a> to estimate the impacts of pilot badger culling on cattle TB but no results have been published to date, nor are any benefits <a href="http://sciencesearch.defra.gov.uk/Default.aspx?Menu=Menu&Module=More&Location=None&ProjectID=18287&FromSearch=Y&Status=2&Publisher=1&SearchText=badger&SortString=ProjectCode&SortOrder=Asc&Paging=10#Description">anticipated</a> so soon after the start of the annual culls. Culled badgers <a href="http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmhansrd/cm140128/text/140128w0001.htm#140128w0001.htm_wqn69">have not even been tested</a> for TB.</p>
<p>Since changes in cattle TB take so long to emerge, in the short-term the government measures culling success in terms of reduced badger numbers. This is an appropriate measure because, perversely, killing too few badgers increases cattle TB rather than reducing it. </p>
<h2>The effects of badger culling</h2>
<p>In a randomised controlled trial conducted in 1998-2007, cattle TB was <a href="http://archive.defra.gov.uk/foodfarm/farmanimal/diseases/atoz/tb/isg/report/final_report.pdf">consistently elevated</a> where culling reduced indices of badger numbers by <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-7998.2007.00353.x/abstract">10-35%</a>. By contrast, nearby farms saw gradual <a href="http://archive.defra.gov.uk/foodfarm/farmanimal/diseases/atoz/tb/isg/report/final_report.pdf">reductions</a> in cattle TB where large-scale culling reduced the same indices by <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-7998.2007.00353.x/abstract">69-73%</a>. To achieve similar benefits (and to avoid increasing cattle TB), the 2013-4 culls were intended to reduce badger numbers by <a href="http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20120616115816/http://archive.defra.gov.uk/corporate/consult/tb-control-measures/100915-tb-control-measures-condoc.pdf">at least 70%</a>.</p>
<p>The first two culls, conducted in 2013, clearly <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/300382/independent-expert-panel-report.pdf">failed to achieve this aim</a>. Government scientists, overseen by an independent expert panel, estimated the reduction in numbers by identifying individual badgers from hair entangled in barbed wire traps. <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/300385/ahvla-extension-efficacy.pdf">They estimated</a> that between 37 and 51% of badgers were killed in the Somerset cull zone, with between 43 and 56% killed in Gloucestershire.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69380/original/image-20150119-14495-1feper7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69380/original/image-20150119-14495-1feper7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69380/original/image-20150119-14495-1feper7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69380/original/image-20150119-14495-1feper7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69380/original/image-20150119-14495-1feper7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69380/original/image-20150119-14495-1feper7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69380/original/image-20150119-14495-1feper7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69380/original/image-20150119-14495-1feper7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">If only badgers could read.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jayneandd/4500728087/in/photostream/">jayneandd</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For the second year of culling, the government discarded both independent oversight and the hair trapping method which had revealed the first year’s failures. Before the 2014 culls commenced, the government’s planned monitoring methods were so inadequate that I <a href="https://theconversation.com/british-government-on-the-badger-cull-ask-scientists-for-help-then-ignore-them-31435">warned</a> “any future claim that the 2014 culls have reduced badger numbers sufficiently to control TB will be completely baseless”.</p>
<p>Although ministers and farming representatives do indeed now claim success, the numbers tell a different story. There are no published estimates of the percent reductions achieved by the 2014 culls. Instead, claims of success are based on the number of badgers killed in Somerset, which <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/bovine-tb-summary-of-badger-control-monitoring-during-2014">reached the minimum target</a> required by the culling licence (the Gloucestershire cull spectacularly failed to meet its target, killing just <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/388646/annex-a1-wg-final-summary.pdf">274 badgers</a> against a <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/347536/badger-cull-setting-min-max-numbers-2014.pdf">target of 615</a>).</p>
<p>Yet the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/347536/badger-cull-setting-min-max-numbers-2014.pdf">Somerset target</a> was derived from the lower bound on the range of possible badger numbers, rather than from the best estimate. If the estimation method was accurate, there would be a 97.5% chance that the true population size was greater than this lower bound, and hence that the target was too low. Despite having met this target, statistically it is still far more likely than not that the 2014 Somerset culls failed to reduce badger numbers by 70% as planned.</p>
<p>Simple calculations provide further evidence of ineffective culling in Somerset. Government scientists estimate that, before any culling took place, the Somerset zone contained <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/347536/badger-cull-setting-min-max-numbers-2014.pdf">between 1,876 and 2,584 badgers</a>. The total number of badgers killed (<a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/388647/annex-a2-ws-final-summary.pdf">341</a> last year plus <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/300385/ahvla-extension-efficacy.pdf">955</a> in 2013) comprises just 69% of the lowest estimate. Taking into account the fact that births and immigration would have increased badger numbers between the two culls, the population cannot have been reduced by “at least 70%” if the government’s population estimates were correct.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/347536/badger-cull-setting-min-max-numbers-2014.pdf">Government documents</a> describe Somerset’s low target as “precautionary”. But from the perspective of disease control – the justification for killing otherwise protected wildlife – it risked worsening cattle TB and was hence the opposite of precautionary. With separate <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/347536/badger-cull-setting-min-max-numbers-2014.pdf">maximum targets</a> in place to avoid killing too many badgers, the only risk reduced by a low target was the risk of a cherished project being branded a failure.</p>
<p>Failing to reduce badger populations sufficiently risks exacerbating cattle TB, potentially making a bad situation worse. Farming leaders have managed to press forward with badger culling in the face of <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2012/oct/14/letters-observer">scientific consensus</a>, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/oct/29/badger-cull-campaigners-lose-legal-battle">legal challenge</a>, <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/news/2014/09/11/two-years-badger-cull-remains-unpopular/">public opinion</a> and a groundswell of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24223894">protest</a>. In future they may look back on such victories as Pyrrhic: one more such victory might undo the farmers they strive to support.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/36388/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rosie Woodroffe is grateful to receive research funding and in-kind support from Defra. Concerns raised here should not be interpreted as criticisms of any individual, nor of sterling efforts to control the TB problem.</span></em></p>In the flurry of the holiday season, many people will have missed the government’s verdict on the 2014 badger culls, published on December 18. Farmers’ representatives have branded these recent culls “successful…Rosie Woodroffe, Senior Research Fellow, Zoological Society of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/314352014-09-09T05:32:48Z2014-09-09T05:32:48ZBritish government on the badger cull: ask scientists for help then ignore them<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/58456/original/v9xnkfsy-1410176626.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">All your fault.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/11561957@N06/10317142804">b/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Bovine tuberculosis (TB) is expected to cost British taxpayers nearly <a href="http://www.defra.gov.uk/animal-diseases/a-z/bovine-tb/about-bovine-tb/">£100m in 2014</a>. Scientific evidence is a vital weapon in the fight to protect cattle from TB. Why, then, has the government just fought and won a legal battle to avoid consulting independent scientists on its most high-profile TB control effort?</p>
<p>Wild badgers play a role in transmitting TB to cattle, and culling badgers seems an obvious solution. A new round of badger culls is about to start, but it is <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/badger-cull">risky</a> . A complex interaction between badger behaviour and TB transmission means that the results of culling could, depending on various factors, increase TB levels, instead of reducing them. To add to that, badger culling is expensive. </p>
<p>This is why, in 2013, the government started a pilot that it hoped would be give them a cheap and effective way to control cattle TB. Farmers, rather than government, would pay for the culling. And, rather than being cage-trapped, badgers would be shot in the wild. </p>
<p>This pilot was started in just two areas – and for good reason: the whole approach was untested, and the stakes were high. Marksmen shooting at night might endanger public safety. Shooting free-ranging badgers might cause suffering. And, worst of all for the aims of the approach, failing to kill enough badgers, fast enough, would worsen the cattle TB situation that the culls were intended to control.</p>
<p>In the face of <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/oct/13/badger-cull-mindless">such uncertainty</a>, the government adopted a commonly used approach. It <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/pilot-badger-culls-in-somerset-and-gloucestershire-report-by-the-independent-expert-panel">appointed</a> an Independent Expert Panel to assess the safety, humaneness and effectiveness of the pilot project. The expectation was that this panel’s conclusions would reflect scientific evidence, whether or not they supported government policy.</p>
<h2>Bring in the experts</h2>
<p>The Independent Expert Panel <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/pilot-badger-culls-in-somerset-and-gloucestershire-report-by-the-independent-expert-panel">found</a> that farmer-led culling was far from effective. Tasked with killing at least 70% of the local badgers within a six-week period, cull teams only managed to kill between 28% and 48%. Culling periods were extended, but still the total kill rose to only something between 31% and 56%, according to <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/300385/ahvla-extension-efficacy.pdf">government figures</a>. Unless more badgers could be killed, and faster, farmer-led culling risked worsening the problem it was intended to solve.</p>
<p>The 2013 culls also failed to meet their <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/300382/independent-expert-panel-report.pdf">targets for animal welfare</a>. Between 7.4% and 22.8% of badgers were still alive five minutes after being shot and were assumed to have experienced “marked pain”.</p>
<p>Despite facing these failures, the government decided to repeat culls in the same areas in 2014. If effectiveness and humaneness could be improved sufficiently, culling might be extended to more areas in 2015. If not, the government might need to reconsider their policy. One would think, then, that measuring effectiveness and humaneness would be a central goal of 2014’s culls.</p>
<h2>Then ignore their advice</h2>
<p>The Independent Expert Panel, together with government scientists, selected the most accurate and precise ways to estimate the effectiveness and humaneness of the 2013 culls. Measuring effectiveness is challenging because – being nocturnal and shy – badgers are hard to count. The panel overcame this problem by using genetic “fingerprints” to identify badgers from hair snagged on barbed wire. They measured humaneness primarily through independent observers recording the time that shot badgers took to die.</p>
<p>The panel recommended that the same approaches be used for subsequent culls. But the government rejected this <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/300424/pb14158-defra-response-independent-expert-panel.pdf">recommendation</a>. This year there will be no attempt to count badgers in the cull areas, either before or after the culls. The time badgers take to die will not be recorded. There will be no oversight by independent scientists.</p>
<p>Instead, the effectiveness of the culls which start tonight will be judged using a method so utterly inadequate it was barely considered in 2013. Key data will be collected by marksmen themselves: people with a vested interest in the cull being designated “effective” and “humane”, who in 2013 collected data so unreliable it was considered unusable by the panel. Available information suggests that any future claim that the 2014 culls have reduced badger numbers sufficiently to control TB will be completely baseless.</p>
<p>Why the change in approach? Government cites cost, and hired some expensive lawyers to defend its position when the Badger Trust sought, and eventually lost, a judicial review of the decision to scrap independent scientific oversight of this year’s culls. Yet the cost of pushing forward with an ineffective culling policy would far outweigh the cost of properly assessing effectiveness and humaneness.</p>
<p>Government has repeatedly referred to its programme of badger culling as “<a href="http://www.defra.gov.uk/animal-diseases/a-z/bovine-tb/badgers/culling/">science-led</a>”. One would expect a science-led policy to entail gathering reliable information on management outcomes, and using this and other evidence to inform future decisions. Choosing – against formal expert advice – to collect inconsistent, inadequate and potentially biased data is an insult to evidence-based policymaking. When ineffective culling can make a bad situation worse, failing to collect the evidence needed to evaluate future policy fails farmers, taxpayers and wildlife.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Next, read this: <a href="https://theconversation.com/cattle-herd-model-reveals-best-ways-to-halt-spread-of-tb-and-a-badger-cull-isnt-one-of-them-28640">Cattle herd model reveals best ways to halt spread of TB – and a badger cull isn’t one of them</a></em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/31435/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rosie Woodroffe gratefully acknowledges research funding from Defra.</span></em></p>Bovine tuberculosis (TB) is expected to cost British taxpayers nearly £100m in 2014. Scientific evidence is a vital weapon in the fight to protect cattle from TB. Why, then, has the government just fought…Rosie Woodroffe, Senior Research Fellow, Zoological Society of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/286402014-07-02T19:57:31Z2014-07-02T19:57:31ZCattle herd model reveals best ways to halt spread of TB – and a badger cull isn’t one of them<p>Bovine tuberculosis is a major problem in the UK: in 2013 around 8m cattle were tested and <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/mar/12/bovine-tb-cattle-slaughter-numbers-fell-in-2013">32,000 slaughtered</a> at a cost of an estimated £100m, including compensation – a huge economic burden that makes controlling the disease essential.</p>
<p>However, far from controlling bovine TB (bTB), over the past 20 years or so there has been a 10% increase in cases each year. This rise, and the role of TB-infected badgers, is fiercely debated. Badgers were first associated with bTB in the 1970s, but despite the lengthy and expensive <a href="http://www.defra.gov.uk/animal-diseases/a-z/bovine-tb/badgers/culling/">Randomised Badger Culling Trial</a> in the late 1990s there is still limited scientific consensus.</p>
<p>One of the main difficulties in trying to untangle the routes through which bTB is transmitted is the fact that it spreads unseen. In general, infected animals are only identified through a <a href="http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/editorials/34032329/heaf-test-version-cattle-tb-test">skin test</a>, which in itself we estimate to be only 72% sensitive – so 28% of infectious animals are undetected by a single test. With more than a quarter of infected animals going undetected, controlling the disease’s spread is difficult, and identifying how it spreads harder still.</p>
<p>Published in Nature, we have <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature13529">developed a mechanistic model</a> of the spread of bTB within and between around 134,000 cattle farms in Great Britain, between 1996 and 2011. This model accounts for multiple routes of transmission: direct infections between cattle, indirectly through the environment, and through the movement of infected animals between farms. Because the model is mechanistic it allows us to test the effects of different methods of control on how the disease spreads.</p>
<h2>Building a model</h2>
<p>Due to the lack of detailed data, our model does not explicitly include badgers (cattle are ear-tagged, their movements recorded, and are frequently tested for bTB; the same can’t be done for wildlife). Instead we model the combined environmental reservoir of infection – this includes infection from pasture and wildlife species, although it is impossible to separate these two elements. </p>
<p>We don’t feel that this detracts from our findings, as the model is able to accurately capture the trends of infection over time and the geographic spread. We haven’t found any evidence that our model underestimates the rate of infection in regions where badgers are common, which would occur if the model underestimated their importance.</p>
<p>Our modelling approach was able to shed light on the relative strengths of different transmission routes. Unlike the real world where infections can only be seen by testing (and then with limited accuracy) within our simulation model we can track infection perfectly. This allows us to tease apart the causes of infection. </p>
<p>We find that newly infected farms are most frequently due to movement of infected animals, rather than spread through the environmental reservoir, but most importantly the majority of infection originates from the minority of farms. More than 90% of infected farms clear the infection before they cause any secondary cases, while about 2% of farms infect 10 or more other farms. </p>
<p>Our model shows just how complex and multifaceted bTB transmission is, with cattle-to-cattle transmission, failure to detect infectious cases, the movement of infected animals to other farms, and the effects of TB in the environment all playing a role. It is this complexity that continues to deny those seeking to eradicate the disease any easy solutions.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/52793/original/dzxdwn52-1404227359.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/52793/original/dzxdwn52-1404227359.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/52793/original/dzxdwn52-1404227359.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=556&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52793/original/dzxdwn52-1404227359.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=556&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52793/original/dzxdwn52-1404227359.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=556&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52793/original/dzxdwn52-1404227359.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=699&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52793/original/dzxdwn52-1404227359.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=699&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52793/original/dzxdwn52-1404227359.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=699&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Model’s prediction vs recorded data of (a) reactor (infected) cattle, shaded region shows 95% credibility from 5,000 simulations, and (b) distribution density of infected cattle.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Brooks-Pollock, Roberts, Keeling/Nature</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The way forward</h2>
<p>We tested a range of control measures in our model simulation to see what effects they might have. We assumed that these measures began in 2005 and were continued for six years, after which we evaluated their impact. Of ten we simulated, only three measures were found to stop the annual increase in cases.</p>
<p>By far the most dramatic is whole-herd culling of all cattle on infected farms. This would rapidly bring the epidemic under control, as it removes the danger of infected but as yet undetected animals. But it would entail a 20-fold increase of cattle slaughter in the first year, and the political, social, and economic consequences that would bring. However, with the cost of bTB at £100m a year and rising, some form of highly targeting culling could be economically viable.</p>
<p>Vaccinating cattle, which slows the disease’s progression in animals, is also predicted sufficient to prevent the increase in cases, although only just. Such a vaccine would not have the effectiveness we associate with mass vaccination programmes in humans. In any case, the vaccine is <a href="https://theconversation.com/after-the-cull-badger-and-cattle-vaccines-are-still-needed-to-fight-bovine-tb-19746">currently unlicensed</a> and runs into problems with EU legislation.</p>
<p>More widespread and regular testing and slaughter of infected animals in the initial years would identify more cases (we only find bTB when we look for it, after all) and lead to more slaughter, but over time the benefits of a more stringent regime are felt and cases fall in later years. A similar effect can be achieved if we developed a better test for bTB.</p>
<p>What the model also predicted was the relatively limited effect of focusing on environmental factors would be. Even with a 50% fall in the between-farm transmission of infection due to the environment (simulating a substantial badger cull, for example), the rise in cattle infections over six years continues, although at a slower rate.</p>
<p>All three of these measures (culling, increased testing and cattle vaccination) have associated economic costs and benefits, which the government, the livestock industry and the general public must assess to decide the correct course of action. What our simulation provides, based on the latest data, is a way to predict and put numbers to a range of potential policy options. Clearly there is a need to reverse this costly and damaging bTB epidemic, and we hope our findings will help inform decisions in the future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/28640/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matt Keeling receives funding from Defra, BBSRC, Dept of Health, ESRC and EPSRC</span></em></p>Bovine tuberculosis is a major problem in the UK: in 2013 around 8m cattle were tested and 32,000 slaughtered at a cost of an estimated £100m, including compensation – a huge economic burden that makes…Matt Keeling, Professor, Director of Warwick Infectious Disease Epidemiology Research, University of WarwickLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/262612014-05-06T12:14:46Z2014-05-06T12:14:46ZThe badger cull is not the answer to hedgehogs’ problems<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/47873/original/s7gz3fpx-1399374061.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Cleaned out - badgers can make quick work of even spiny hedgehogs.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://bedfordshirewild.blogspot.co.uk/2010/08/alameda-ampthill.html">Steve Plummer</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>What to do, when two of Britain’s most loved animals run up against each other?</p>
<p>In a study <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0095477">recently published</a> in the journal PLOS One, we found that the numbers of hedgehogs living in suburban areas in rural England doubled following the reduction in badger numbers through culling. This research points to the badger, widely popular in certain quarters but of major concern in others, having a significant impact on the hedgehog, Britain’s <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/jul/31/hedgehog-uk-natural-emblem">best loved mammal</a>. </p>
<p>The Defra-funded research was part of a wider project to evaluate the ecological consequences of the Randomised Badger Culling Trial (<a href="http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20081107201922/http:/defra.gov.uk/animalh/tb/culling/index.htm">RBCT</a>) conducted between 1998 and 2006. This long-running operation met with stiff resistance from many conservation and animal welfare groups. But it did offer an unrivalled opportunity to study the impact that an important predator has on prey and competitor species. </p>
<p>This type of research is particularly important as it provides information upon which to base conservation and environmental management decisions. This is particularly the case in areas that are extensively managed or affected by human activity, which leaves them missing many parts of their original food webs. For example, where large predators are missing (wolves, for example), medium-sized predators left unchallenged can have other knock-on ecological impacts. </p>
<p>One such predator, the badger, has long been known to prey on hedgehogs. This isn’t necessarily a cause for concern, as predator-prey relationships are natural and essential parts of functioning ecosystems. Hedgehogs and badgers have co-existed for millennia in Britain – well before the arrival of humans, and in the thousands of years since.</p>
<p>However studies during the 1990s showed that where badger density was high they may have a profound effect on hedgehog numbers and their ability to move around the landscape. Animal rescue and rehabilitation organisations discovered that badgers were causing high rates of mortality among hedgehogs released back into the wild in some areas.</p>
<p>Evidence from two citizen science surveys, run by the <a href="http://www.ptes.org/index.php?page=394">People’s Trust for Endangered Species</a> over the past decade, point to a substantial national decline in hedgehog numbers. There are many suspects behind this decline – habitat loss and fragmentation as towns and villages expand, the loss of hedgerows which provide them cover and nesting sites, warmer winters and drier springs that disrupt their hibernation and invertebrate prey species, pesticides, roadkill, and a thriving badger population. But without a robust long-term national hedgehog monitoring scheme, it’s very difficult to determine the precise timing and cause.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/47874/original/swhqf2fv-1399374566.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/47874/original/swhqf2fv-1399374566.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/47874/original/swhqf2fv-1399374566.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/47874/original/swhqf2fv-1399374566.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/47874/original/swhqf2fv-1399374566.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/47874/original/swhqf2fv-1399374566.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/47874/original/swhqf2fv-1399374566.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Beloved they may be, but hedgehogs are in decline.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Young_hedgehog.jpg">Tony Wills</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Badgers on the up</h2>
<p>In the early-2000s, a team of us investigated patterns in hedgehog and badger populations across hundreds of square kilometres of rural southwest England and the midlands. One important finding was that hedgehogs <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-7998.2006.00078.x/abstract">appeared to be absent</a> from large swathes of pastoral grasslands where they are thought to have once been commonplace. Instead we found that hedgehogs had moved almost exclusively into the villages and towns within these landscapes. It was also apparent that the likelihood of finding hedgehogs in parks and gardens declined as the density of badger setts nearby increased.</p>
<p>But is this correlation, or is it causation? To address this question, we surveyed hedgehogs in a number of areas which were geographically and ecologically similar, but with different levels of badger culling. Hedgehog numbers in suburban areas <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0095477">doubled</a> during the five years of badger culling, and remained static in areas without culling. This demonstrated for the first time that badger predation is a strong limiting factor for hedgehog populations in these particular habitats.</p>
<p>But badgers and hedgehogs have always co-existed in Britain, why might there be an issue now? Until the mid to late 20th century, heavy persecution of badgers kept them at low numbers. The Badgers Act of 1973 introduced protections, enhanced by the <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1992/51">1992 Protection of Badgers Act</a>. Consequently surveys published in January revealed that in the 25 years since the first survey in 1985-88, the number of badger social groups in England <a href="http://www.nature.com/srep/2014/140123/srep03809/full/srep03809.html">has doubled to around 71,600</a>.</p>
<p>In pasture-dominated and mixed agricultural landscapes, and in some suburban habitats, badgers thrive with have plentiful denning opportunities and abundant food resources. The largest increases in the density of badger social groups have occurred in the landscapes that dominate southern, western and eastern England. These are also the areas where hedgehog declines are likely to be most severe.</p>
<p>So while there is evidence that increasing badger populations play a significant role in the hedgehog’s decline, the relative weight of the impact of badgers against the other many factors likely affecting hedgehogs is far from clear.</p>
<h2>Badger culling won’t save hedgehogs</h2>
<p>Even with evidence of this link, it does not necessarily follow that badger culling would, or should, play any role in tackling the decline of the hedgehog. Given a multitude of ecological, social, practical, financial and legal reasons, it is impossible to see how it could ever be part of any conservation strategy. </p>
<p>Rather, we need to understand how to manage our countryside in a more ecologically informed and progressive manner, acknowledging that there are bound to be many trade-offs along the way. This could include creating habitats such as very large areas of woodland that could favour hedgehogs over badgers, besides offering significant environmental and social value for us. </p>
<p>We should also consider more radical solutions, such as restoring the ecologically important elements of our ecosystems that we are missing – such as larger predators, including brown bears and lynx – <a href="https://theconversation.com/bears-wolves-lynx-europe-is-going-wild-19917">as is happening in mainland Europe</a>. That two of Britain’s most recognisable species should appear to be pitted against each other in this way may just be what’s needed to prompt a debate on how we can encourage greater diversity, in form, content and function, in our rural landscapes for the future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/26261/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Young does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>What to do, when two of Britain’s most loved animals run up against each other? In a study recently published in the journal PLOS One, we found that the numbers of hedgehogs living in suburban areas in…Richard Young, Co-Chair, SSC Small Mammal Specialist Group, International Union for the Conservation of NatureLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/197462014-02-28T06:05:13Z2014-02-28T06:05:13ZAfter the cull: badger and cattle vaccines are still needed to fight bovine TB<p>Bovine tuberculosis (TB) is the biggest threat to the livestock industry in England and Wales. At present, bovine TB is still not under control in parts of these countries, and there is no single measure that on its own is likely to change the situation dramatically.</p>
<p>Vaccination of cattle or badgers, or both, could make a contribution to TB control. At present, the most likely vaccine for tackling bovine TB is <a href="http://www.who.int/vaccine_research/diseases/tb/vaccine_development/bcg/en/">Bacille Calmette–Guérin</a> (BCG), but this does not guarantee full protection and vaccinated humans and animals can still be infected and develop disease. </p>
<p>Limited field studies underpinned by essential laboratory studies <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/government-maintains-a-badger-colony-to-help-develop-tb-vaccine-euthanising-63-in-just-two-years-9145000.html">using colonies of captive badgers</a> and cattle have demonstrated that vaccinating badgers and cattle with BCG can reduce the progression, severity and excretion of bovine TB, which should reduce the risk of infection and transmission of the disease. </p>
<p>The only TB vaccine specifically for badgers, <a href="http://www.defra.gov.uk/ahvla-en/files/vetGuidelines.pdf">BadgerBCG</a>, was licensed by the UK <a href="http://www.vmd.defra.gov.uk/">Veterinary Medicines Directorate</a> in 2010. After 10 years of studies by the Animal Health and Veterinary Laboratories Agency (<a href="http://www.defra.gov.uk/ahvla-en/">AHVLA</a>) and the Food and Environment Research Agency (<a href="http://www.fera.defra.gov.uk/%E2%80%8E">Fera</a>), laboratory tests demonstrated that it significantly reduced the severity and excretion of infection.</p>
<p>Results of a four-year <a href="http://randd.defra.gov.uk/Default.aspx?Menu=Menu&Module=More&Location=None&Completed=0&ProjectID=16715#Description">field study</a> confirmed these results, and also revealed an indirect effect: non-vaccinated cubs captured were significantly less likely to test positive to TB when more members of their group had been previously vaccinated. The groups with the highest levels of vaccination consistently had the strongest indirect effect.</p>
<p>BadgerBCG is currently being used in the <a href="http://wales.gov.uk/topics/environmentcountryside/ahw/disease/bovinetuberculosis/badger-vaccination/?lang=en">288km<sup>2</sup> intensive Action Area</a> in Wales funded by the Welsh Government, and in parts of England, including a Government funded Badger Vaccine Deployment Project (<a href="http://www.defra.gov.uk/ahvla-en/science/bovine-tb/bvdp/">BVDP</a>) in a 100km<sup>2</sup> area of Gloucestershire. The aim of the BVDP is to study the practicalities of deploying an injectable vaccine, to train those who wish to vaccinate badgers, and to build farmer’s confidence in the vaccine. Defra supports the use of badger vaccination along with culling as components of a wider package of measures in England to address bovine TB.</p>
<p>The vaccine is also being used by a range of lay vaccinators in England who have been trained and licensed. But vaccinating badgers with BadgerBCG means having to trap the animals, which is difficult, time-consuming and expensive. Providing a vaccine that can be deployed in bait to be eaten is the best prospect for vaccinating large numbers of badgers over a wide geographical area. It may also prove cheaper – but there is no oral badger vaccine that’s ready to be used. </p>
<h2>Cattle need vaccinating too</h2>
<p>So while vaccinating badgers against bovine TB should result in reduced infection rates in cattle, there is no direct evidence for this. Computer modelling indicates that sustained badger vaccination campaigns could lower TB incidence in cattle, but by precisely how much in reality <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0039250">isn’t known</a>.</p>
<p>BCG in cattle has been examined experimentally and in a <a href="http://cvi.asm.org/content/17/10/1533.long">field study in Ethiopia</a>. The results indicated that around 60% of vaccinated animals would be protected, but as with other species, use of BCG in cattle would provide a spectrum of protection – some animals being partially protected and a few not responding at all.</p>
<p>Before we have a BCG vaccine that’s UK licensed for use in cattle, field trials must be conducted in the UK. Vaccinating cattle against bTB is <a href="http://www.fwi.co.uk/articles/05/10/2012/135507/eu-laws-stifle-progress-on-cattle-vaccination.htm">prohibited under EU legislation</a>. This is because vaccinated animals can react positively to the tuberculin skin-test, and so cannot be differentiated from infected cattle during the current <a href="http://www.defra.gov.uk/animal-diseases/a-z/bovine-tb/animal-keepers/testing/">test-and-slaughter control programme</a> using bovine tuberculin. Different tests will be required, and work is underway to develop the most promising. The redrafting of the EU Animal Health Legislation also potentially offers an opportunity to make the necessary changes to the legislation to permit their use.</p>
<p>Vaccinating cattle alone is not a panacea, and as long as the possibility of reinfection from badgers remains, it is likely to only reduce rather than eliminate TB from British livestock. So to be most effective, cattle vaccination needs to be used alongside other control measures, such as the test and slaughter of cattle and control of disease in badgers.</p>
<p>An oral badger vaccine and a vaccine for cattle are expensive tools to develop and there is no guarantee that they will reach market. Best estimates put it at 2019 for an oral badger vaccine and EU acceptance of a cattle vaccine by 2023 at the earliest. We persist nonetheless, as the vaccination of badgers or cattle – while unlikely to be single solutions to the problem – are important components of what must be a comprehensive, multi-faceted programme to ultimately eradicate the disease.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/19746/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark Chambers receives funding from Defra. He is affiliated with the Animal Health and Veterinary Laboratories Agency at which he is Head of the Department of Bacteriology.</span></em></p>Bovine tuberculosis (TB) is the biggest threat to the livestock industry in England and Wales. At present, bovine TB is still not under control in parts of these countries, and there is no single measure…Mark Chambers, Professor in Veterinary Bacteriology, University of SurreyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/195702013-10-28T06:30:10Z2013-10-28T06:30:10ZTuberculosis, tracking devices, and the social lives of badgers<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33849/original/vc9qr98y-1382909040.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">When disturbed, badgers' social groups scatter and spread TB more widely.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ben Birchall/PA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Badgers in the UK are an important wildlife reservoir for <a href="http://www.defra.gov.uk/animal-diseases/a-z/bovine-tb/">bovine tuberculosis</a>, a disease that leads to the <a href="http://www.farmersguardian.com/home/latest-news/38000-cattle-slaughtered-because-of-tb-in-2012/54141.article">slaughter of thousands</a> of cattle each year at a significant cost to the tax payer. But the badger cull that has taken place, and looks set to continue, is playing into one of the complexities of badgers’ lives that has made tackling the disease difficult.</p>
<p>As part of <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0039068">our research</a> I fitted proximity-logging collars to 51 badgers to follow them during their day-to-day social lives. By tracking their movements we could investigate whether an individuals’ infection with TB influenced their lives, and those of fellow badgers. These state-of-the-art devices track the animals’ location, and record the interactions of animals wearing them when they come within a pre-defined distance of each other, in our case 64cm - about a badger-length.</p>
<p>The first part of the study, published in the journal <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00265-012-1467-4">Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology</a>, showed that badgers that strayed away from their social groups’ main burrow (known as a sett) in favour of sleeping in outlying setts were more likely to carry TB.</p>
<p>Taking this a step further, our subsequent article published in <a href="http://www.cell.com/current-biology/retrieve/pii/S0960982213011238">Current Biology</a> showed how these patterns of movement within the sett are related to interactions among badgers within their social group, but also between those from different groups. We found that badgers infected with TB were less well connected with their own social groups compared to those that were uninfected. These infected badgers were more prone to form social links with badgers from other groups, and this is what facilitates the transmission of TB infection across badger populations.</p>
<p>For all sorts of epidemics in wildlife and in humans, such as the common cold, some individuals are known to behave in a particular way that makes them more likely to spread or contract the disease. It’s been acknowledged for some time that individual badger behaviour is likely to be a key factor in how the disease spreads and is transmitted to livestock. The evidence that this research has provided underpins previous observations of the counter-productive effects of culling.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33848/original/9m6mj2sb-1382908787.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33848/original/9m6mj2sb-1382908787.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33848/original/9m6mj2sb-1382908787.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33848/original/9m6mj2sb-1382908787.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33848/original/9m6mj2sb-1382908787.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33848/original/9m6mj2sb-1382908787.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33848/original/9m6mj2sb-1382908787.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Here be badgers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">STML</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Professor <a href="http://www.exeter.ac.uk/esi/people/mcdonald">Robbie McDonald</a> who supervised this work alongside others at the University of Exeter and <a href="http://www.defra.gov.uk/ahvla-en/">AHVLA’s National Wildlife Management Centre</a>, refers to infected badgers in this system as “spread capacitors”. In a similar fashion to the electronic capacitor, they are passive components that are able to hold and discharge infection, but tend to stabilise rates. In contrast, a badger that is highly socially mobile acts as a “super spreader”, infecting others disproportionately because of their high social connectedness in the network.</p>
<p>In another aspect of the study, led by our collaborator <a href="http://www.rvc.ac.uk/Staff/jdrewe.cfm">Dr Julian Drewe</a> from the Royal Veterinary College, the proximity-logging collars were also <a href="http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=8933051">fitted to cattle</a> gazing near to the woodland where the same collared badgers lived.</p>
<p>This revealed that direct contact between badgers and cattle on pasture in Woodchester Park, Gloucestershire (an area with a fairly high density badger population that has been <a href="http://randd.defra.gov.uk/Default.aspx?Menu=Menu&Module=More&Location=None&ProjectID=12021">intensively studied</a>) was relatively rare despite ample opportunity. However, indirect visits by both species to badger latrines (a single point outside the burrow where badgers, tidy animals, keep their droppings) were significantly more common. This suggests that it is these and perhaps other indirect contact away from pasture, for example in farm buildings, that is the common route of TB transmission.</p>
<p>Taken together these findings suggest that efforts to manage the spread of tuberculosis are likely to be most effective when badgers’ social structure is maintained. The “<a href="http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/274/1626/2769.full">peturbation effect</a>” evidenced by disturbances such as culling, may break down badgers’ social groups. This leads badgers, including infected individuals, to scatter and perhaps further spread infection. With that in mind it is badger vaccination that may have the best chance of disrupting the flow of the disease, without disturbing the badgers’ networks and risking further, more widespread infection.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/19570/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicola Weber received funding for her PhD research from the U.K.Department for Environment, Food and
Rural Affairs (project SE3032).</span></em></p>Badgers in the UK are an important wildlife reservoir for bovine tuberculosis, a disease that leads to the slaughter of thousands of cattle each year at a significant cost to the tax payer. But the badger…Nicola Weber, Post-doctoral Researcher, University of ExeterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/190882013-10-11T05:25:11Z2013-10-11T05:25:11ZPolicy on the hoof approach to badger cull won’t tackle TB<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/32835/original/mtpg3888-1381423846.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">No goalpost is safe.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tim Brookes</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The chaotic failure of the government’s pilot badger cull in Somerset and Gloucestershire, aimed at curbing bovine TB, illustrates some of the problems that arise when policymakers ignore scientific studies and pursue their own agendas. This is, more often than not, simply to be “<a href="https://theconversation.com/swapping-science-for-shooting-wont-save-cattle-or-badgers-14835">seen to be doing something</a>”.</p>
<p>The marksmen have, unsurprisingly, missed their targets to remove 70% of badgers in the culling areas. Badger population estimates are being continuously revised and now the cull’s duration has been extended to between six and eight weeks, in the hope that targets can be met. If only those badgers didn’t keep <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-24459424">moving the goalposts</a>.</p>
<p>But this figure of 70% is entirely arbitrary anyway, picked to follow the previous protocol established by the <a href="http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20081107201922/http:/defra.gov.uk/animalh/tb/culling/index.htm">Randomised Badger Culling Trial</a> between 1998 and 2006. But the recommendations of this trial were also that culling be intensive, co-ordinated, and take less than two weeks, to avoid stirring up the badger population - the so-called <a href="http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/274/1626/2769.full">the perturbation effect</a> - causing them to scatter and spread bTB further. </p>
<p>Why follow one recommendation and not the others? The current badger culling policy lacks any scientific coherence and appears to be based solely on political posturing by Owen Paterson to please the Tory party and the National Farmers’ Union. As such it will be very difficult to monitor, evaluate and justify. What level of bovine TB reduction is being sought? Over what time period? At what cost?</p>
<h2>Government ignores its own advice</h2>
<p>Professor Ian Boyd, the new <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/people/ian-boyd">chief scientific adviser</a> at the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), recently <a href="http://elife.elifesciences.org/content/2/e01061">attempted to justify</a> the ad hoc, policy on the hoof, bolster its scientific justification and clarify the role of scientists and scientific evidence in government policy. Scientists, he opined, should not “create conflict between themselves and policymakers, since this could set back the cause of science in government”. They should only communicate through “embedded advisers” (that is, himself) and be “the single voice of reason, rather than dissent, in the public arena”.</p>
<p>How unnerving for the scientific community? The funding implications for future research proposals are both obvious and alarming.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://archive.defra.gov.uk/foodfarm/farmanimal/diseases/atoz/tb/isg/">Independent Scientific Group</a>, set up by Defra, carried out the RBCT - to date the only reliable UK evidence there is. But Defra ignored <a href="http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmselect/cmenvfru/130/130i.pdf">the conclusions</a> of the £50m bTB control study they had requested. Despite the findings being peer reviewed by eminent scientists, its conclusions that “given its high costs and low benefits, badger culling is unlikely to contribute usefully to the control of cattle TB in Britain” have been wilfully ignored, seemingly to satisfy political whims.</p>
<p>Given that the government ignored their own report, was it because the ISG failed to join up the dots (data) correctly? Did the group exceed its brief, straying too far into the policy arena by carrying out a cost-benefit analysis? The government’s chief scientific adviser of the time, Professor Sir David King, dismissed the 280-page report after <a href="http://www.farmersguardian.com/the-badger-culling-debate/13292.article">a cursory day’s selective reading</a> with his chosen five experts.</p>
<p>Politicians and policy officials do not “listen carefully to what science says on difficult subjects” as Boyd states. They only listen to what they want to hear, and Hilary Benn and Owen Paterson have very different hearing aids. The role of science is to provide information to decision makers, but decision makers need to listen too. If we are to be told the Independent Scientific Group “got it wrong”, the scientific community needs to be given a more convincing explanation as to where and why.</p>
<h2>Four options, more confusion</h2>
<p>Control of bTB is very complex, and the UK government is struggling. The disease <a href="http://www.farmersguardian.com/home/hot-topics/bovine-tb/we-will-not-walk-away-from-tough-decisions-on-tb-paterson/59056.article">cost more than £1 billion</a> between 2004-2012, and up to 28,000 infected cattle are slaughtered each year. Current bTB control policy - rigorous cattle testing, slaughter of those that test positive, and compensation for the farmers - has done little to arrest either the incidence or spread of the disease.</p>
<p>Four different bTB options are currently being pursued across the British Isles: proactive badger culling in England, badger vaccination in Wales, test and vaccinate in Northern Ireland, and reactive badger culling in the Republic of Ireland. Boyd amazingly suggests that all four are “more or less correct”. This is a cop-out. We have a duty to test and demonstrate which one is more likely to be economically efficient and successful. This is taxpayers’ money we are playing with, and the consequences affect the livelihoods of farmers, and the lives of cows and badgers.</p>
<p>Defra should come clean and inform the public why the Independent Scientific Group findings are “incorrect” and why it binned the evidence to satisfy its political masters. What chance transparency, scientific honesty and evidence-based environmental policy? I fear that yet again we have set off on a costly and unsuccessful wild goose chase thanks to Defra’s structures, procedures and inherent biases. When will environmental scientists ever be listened to?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/19088/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Lingard does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The chaotic failure of the government’s pilot badger cull in Somerset and Gloucestershire, aimed at curbing bovine TB, illustrates some of the problems that arise when policymakers ignore scientific studies…John Lingard, Associate, Centre for Rural Economy, Newcastle UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/169202013-08-12T15:34:27Z2013-08-12T15:34:27ZPutting farmers in charge may be our best hope to control TB<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/29091/original/jz43j687-1376320144.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Badgers: they're not possums.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ben Birchall/PA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The precise locations and date of the imminent badger cull are secret, but the aim is clear: to see if marksmen can shoot and kill badgers humanely and efficiently. If so, a wider cull will follow.</p>
<p>For many farmers, this can’t come quickly enough. Badgers have been blamed for spreading bovine Tuberculosis (bTB) to cattle since the 1970s. The regulations that result in slaughter of infected herds can have terrible financial and social consequences for farmers and their families. Conservationists on the other hand point to the Department for Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs’ own <a href="http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20081107201922/http:/defra.gov.uk/animalh/tb/culling/index.htm">Randomised Badger Culling Trial</a> which suggested culling would have a limited effect at best, and would cost more than it would save. An alternative is to vaccinate badgers, cows, or both.</p>
<p>Scientists agree that badgers, England’s largest wild mammal, immortalised by Kenneth Grahame’s <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/learning/schoolradio/subjects/english/wind_in_the_willows/episodes/episode_4">Wind in the Willows</a>, are a significant vector of bTB. But by focusing on badgers, an ulterior question is missed: who has the right to govern nature?</p>
<p>Unlike the government’s failed attempt to <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12257835">privatise the Forest Commission</a> in 2011, this question has failed to ignite public controversy, yet it lies at the heart of Defra policy. Ever since the catastrophe of <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/world/2001/review_of_2001/1697976.stm">Foot and Mouth Disease</a> in 2001, governments have sought to rebalance the costs of animal disease. Defra estimates that managing bTB costs more than £100m a year, but acknowledge that those with most to gain from taking risks bear the least cost. Disease control policies have perverse incentives too: farmers who do their best to protect their herd from disease go unrewarded while those who act irresponsibly are <a href="http://www.nao.org.uk/report/the-2001-outbreak-of-foot-and-mouth-disease/">compensated</a>.</p>
<p>Defra’s approach to dealing with bTB recognises these problems, and it seeks to shift responsibility to farmers, who would then be responsible for planning and financing badger culling within <a href="http://www.defra.gov.uk/animal-diseases/a-z/bovine-tb/badgers/culling/">Defra guidelines</a>. The two pilot culls are examples: paid for by farmers, who set up badger-culling companies to decide when and where culling will take place by bringing on board sufficient farmers from local communities. This is a significant shift in the governance of nature and animal disease.</p>
<p>Worldwide this approach has helped eradicate bTB in other countries, and Defra is seeking to apply these lessons – principally from <a href="https://consult.defra.gov.uk/farming/tb/">New Zealand</a> – in order to make England TB free. On a fact-finding visit in <a href="http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/farming/beef/8584157/Badger-lovers-frustrate-Britains-TB-fight">April</a>, Environment Secretary Owen Paterson returned proclaiming the need to adopt the methods used there which have reduced the number of infected farms from <a href="http://www.tbfree.org.nz/annual-report.aspx">1,400 in 1995 to just 60 in 2012</a>. </p>
<p>This has been attributed to poisoning possums – the main vector of bTB in New Zealand. Significantly, these operations are controlled and organised by a company owned and funded by farmers. <a href="http://www.tbfree.org.nz/">TB-Free New Zealand</a> receives 55% of its funding from farmers, with the rest from regional and national government. Farmers have responsibility for bTB: they have driven down management costs, set up regional advice boards, and established new regulations to prevent the disease spreading.</p>
<p>Possum poisoning is not without controversy in <a href="http://www.pce.parliament.nz/publications/all-publications/evaluating-the-use-of-1080-predators-poisons-and-silent-forests">New Zealand</a>, but cultural attitudes to wildlife vary considerably between our two countries. The possum – an import from Australia – is responsible not only for bTB but also the decimation of native <a href="http://www.doc.govt.nz/conservation/native-plants/rata/">Rata trees</a> and birdlife like the symbolic Kiwi. Killing possums to eradicate bTB also helps these native species survive, sustaining ideas of nationhood and New Zealand’s “100% pure” natural national identity. Farming is a significant part of New Zealand’s economy, and fears that bTB-free competitors such as Australia might usurp its market position are taken seriously. Fighting bTB in New Zealand is a national effort, and a farmer-led bTB control strategy works because it supports, rather than destroys, native wildlife and a vital national industry.</p>
<p>The lack of veterinary services in New Zealand (the first vet school was not established until 1963) meant that farmers have a long history of collectively organising and managing animal health services. This participatory ethos was part of the very first attempts to eradicate bTB in the 1960s, so when the NZ government wanted to step away from managing bTB, putative institutional structures to do so were already in place.</p>
<p>In England, partnership governance has been very limited, with successive governments reluctant to hand control to farmers. Instead politicians defer to scientific experts in order to distance themselves from politically unpopular decisions. Endless policy changes, delays and prevarication combined with worsening disease levels have meant farmers have felt increasingly isolated and unimportant, and have lost trust in government.</p>
<p>The practical limitations of field science combined with social and political influences over the way science is conducted has meant farmers have questioned its objectivity. They have little faith in scientific solutions to bTB, when scientific evidence appears at odds to their own experiences.</p>
<p>By contrast, the standpoint of “user pays, user says” in New Zealand has driven innovation rather than conflict and fatalism. The governance structures of TB-Free New Zealand allow farmers to create their own rules of responsible farming, based more on social norms than evidence. Vets and epidemiologists have had the space to experiment and innovate with diagnostic tests and control measures. Free from the restrictions of bureaucratic, standardised disease control regimes handed down through EU regulations that have hamstrung the English approach, in New Zealand control measures are adapted to different places and circumstances, with farmers brought on board.</p>
<p>Animal disease control programmes are products of quite specific social, cultural and economic circumstances. They reflect what is possible and acceptable in specific places at specific times. Importing a successful programme from one country to replace a moribund programme in another may appear attractive. But the very different circumstances mean that Defra are likely to find New Zealand’s solution provides no quick fix here.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/16920/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gareth Enticott currently receives funding from the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. His work on bovine Tuberculosis in the UK and New Zealand has been funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and the Welsh Government.</span></em></p>The precise locations and date of the imminent badger cull are secret, but the aim is clear: to see if marksmen can shoot and kill badgers humanely and efficiently. If so, a wider cull will follow. For…Gareth Enticott, Senior Lecturer in Geography, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/161012013-07-24T05:02:53Z2013-07-24T05:02:53ZBadger cull: why we must keep a close eye on animal health<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/27641/original/q5s5xq7q-1374071946.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Electron scanning microscope photo of Mycobacterium bovis bacteria.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">CDC</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Britain’s badgers stand on the brink of being shot, gassed or even forcibly fed oral contraceptives, all in the name of fighting the spread of tuberculosis in cattle. But what dangers does bovine TB (as it is known) really pose? Does this disease or others like it pose a threat to human public health?</p>
<p>Tuberculosis (TB) is one of the oldest diseases of humans and mammals. Modern-day TB originated from a hardy environmental pathogen that could survive in the hot dusty climate of East Africa. When humans moved out of Africa 15,000 years ago, TB went with them and adapted as a specialised human pathogen known as <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/tb/"><em>Mycobacterium tuberculosis</em></a>. Around the same time, with the development of agriculture and animal husbandry, TB also specialised into a strain adapted to live in cattle, <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/tb/publications/factsheets/general/mbovis.htm"><em>Mycobacterium bovis</em></a>. A disease that can move between different species in this way is known as a zoonosis.</p>
<p>The two TB strains are closely related, and although they have a preferred host, bovine TB has been found in many mammals, including humans - and badgers. In Europe, where milk was a main food source for thousands of years, many people believed in the connection between contaminated milk and human disease. By the turn of the 20th century, TB was the cause of between one in four and one in six deaths in Europe, and infection was endemic among the urban poor of the now industrialised world. As around a third of cattle in Britain were infected, establishing whether there was a link to infection in humans was of paramount importance.</p>
<p>In 1901, the <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2329397/">British Congress on Tuberculosis</a> debated the relationship between bovine TB and human infection. The world-renowned bacteriologist <a href="http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1905/koch-bio.html">Robert Koch</a> presented experiments which showed that cattle did not become infected when injected with human TB. This, he argued, demonstrated that bovine TB and human TB were distinct diseases and that it was not necessary to take any measures against bovine TB in humans.</p>
<p>But Koch was wrong. It was finally established that humans were susceptible to <em>M. bovis</em>, and between 1912 and 1937 65,000 cases of TB in humans were attributed to bovine TB. Pasteurisation of milk removed it as a route for human infection, with only three recorded cases of TB in humans from milk in 30 years. The test-and-slaughter eradication scheme in cattle which began in the 1950s had by 1980 cut cattle-to-cattle infection rates to record low levels. </p>
<p>Figures show that direct transmission of bovine TB to humans is rare but not impossible. Of the 30 human cases of bovine TB per year, around half come from consuming unpasteurised dairy products and around <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16740186">40% from direct exposure to cattle</a>. Human-to-human transmission is rare - one example came in 2005 with a cluster of six cases contracted in a <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6547973.stm">Birmingham nightclub</a> and traced back to a young farmer out on the town. In general, the rise in cattle cases has not been accompanied by a rise in human cases and it is certainly not the threat it once was.</p>
<p>While bovine TB is a well-known zoonotic infection, other zoonotic pathogens are only just being identified. One particular bacterium that is not often thought of as a zoonotic pathogen is <em>Staphylococcus aureus</em>, better known as <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/mrsa/">Methicillin-resistant <em>Staphylococcus aureus</em></a> (MRSA) due to its resistance to the penicillin family of antibiotics. MRSA is a global health problem, particularly in causing hospital-acquired infections. However, <em>S. aureus</em> has long been known to cause infections in livestock, such as mastitis in the udders of dairy cattle.</p>
<p>In 2005 a new type of MRSA associated with livestock called <a href="http://mbio.asm.org/content/3/2/e00082-12.long">ST398</a> was identified. Initially identified in French pig farmers, it has now been widely reported in pigs and other livestock, and in farmers, vets and slaughterhouse workers in contact with livestock. It’s also been found in <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23241232">cow’s milk</a> in the UK (don’t worry: the pasteurisation will kill it). Small outbreaks of ST398 have taken place in the wider human population, such as at a <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18445406">nursing home</a> and a <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18445406">hospital ward</a> in the Netherlands. The success of ST398 as a pathogen has actually increased the overall burden of MRSA infections in some countries in Europe.</p>
<p>Of particular importance is that many ST398 strains found in livestock and people in close contact with livestock are resistant to tetracycline antibotics, widely used in livestock production. Strains of the bacteria isolated from people with no contact with livestock are not resistant to tetracycline. This suggests the resistance to the drug stems from its farming use.</p>
<p>In the UK, the vast majority of zoonotic pathogens reach us via food. Some zoonoses are rare but serious and cause huge public concern, like <a href="http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs180/en/">variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob Disease (vCJD)</a> which has been linked to the consumption of cattle infected with Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE). Other zoonoses cause milder but more widespread infections, like <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/nczved/divisions/dfbmd/diseases/campylobacter/"><em>Campylobacter jejuni</em></a>, which is transmitted to humans via eating undercooked poultry and is the most common cause of food poisoning in the UK, causing over 70,000 cases a year. </p>
<p>One thing is clear from our current understanding of zoonotic infections past and present, is that human and animal health are inherently linked. Often the focus of research is human pathogens, but we need to maintain a watchful eye on both human and animal infectious diseases in order to be able to anticipate and manage new threats as they emerge.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/16101/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ellen Brooks-Pollock is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ewan Harrison's position is funded by a grant from the Medical Research Council (MRC).</span></em></p>Britain’s badgers stand on the brink of being shot, gassed or even forcibly fed oral contraceptives, all in the name of fighting the spread of tuberculosis in cattle. But what dangers does bovine TB (as…Ellen Brooks-Pollock, EPSRC Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of CambridgeEwan Harrison, Research Associate, University of CambridgeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/148352013-05-31T13:02:09Z2013-05-31T13:02:09ZSwapping science for shooting won’t save cattle or badgers<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/24740/original/ytcd88sz-1369961664.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=173%2C189%2C2440%2C1821&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Britain's best loved mammal, but no friend to cattle farmers.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ben Birchall/PA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>What do the pilot badger culls due to start this weekend in Gloucester and West Somerset hope to achieve? The official line is a 16% reduction of bovine tuberculosis (bTB) in cattle herds over the next decade.</p>
<p>That figure is actually the average outcome of the <a href="http://www.defra.gov.uk/animal-diseases/a-z/bovine-tb/badgers/history-controls/">Randomised Badger Culling Trial</a> (RBCT), a carefully implemented scientific trial which ran between 1998 and 2007.</p>
<p>Carried out and monitored by the Independent Scientific Group on Cattle TB, badgers were trapped and shot for a few days each year, and the incidence of bTB in cattle was assessed against comparable areas where there had been no culling. In contrast, the current cull will see farmers and their contractors shoot free running badgers over a period of six weeks each year.</p>
<p>The justification for transferring the empirical findings from a carefully designed, monitored and implemented scientific trial to one with a different design and different method of culling is questionable. </p>
<p>Both sides claim their positions are supported by “the science” – but both sides use it selectively. The farming lobby rightly claim badgers are a known source of bTB infection and that culling reduces the risk to herds. The <a href="http://www.wildlifetrusts.org/badgers-and-bovineTB">badger conservationist lobby</a> argues that the culls cannot achieve these aims. The RBCT found that reduction of cattle infections within culled areas were to some extent counteracted by increases in neighbouring areas. This is the so-called “perturbation effect”; culling disperses the normally tight-knit and territorially stable social groups of badgers, spreading the disease more widely. Those against culling claim this will be the cull’s dominant effect, while farmers argue it will be limited by natural barriers to badger movement such as coastlines, rivers, and motorways.</p>
<p>Other arguments are more emotive. Conservationists assert it is morally wrong to eliminate wildlife, even over relatively limited areas, or that the method is inhumane. This is not a realistic stance to adopt in the face of an <a href="http://www.farmersguardian.com/home/livestock/familys-bovine-tb-nightmare-highlights-horror-of-the-disease/53997.article">economically crippling</a> disease. The farming lobby assert they will not eliminate badgers, but remove only 70% of local populations. Why 70%? Because that is the proportion estimated to have been culled in areas where the RBCT ran, and it’s assumed that removing the same proportion of badgers will bring the same results. They say they only wish to remove diseased animals - but as there is no test for infection, a badger can only be found to be diseased (or healthy) once killed.</p>
<p>The trump card used by the Department of Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs (Defra) and farmers is that “something has to be done”. Herd infections have been rising for years, with almost a quarter of all herds in the west affected, 28,000 infected cattle <a href="http://www.defra.gov.uk/animal-diseases/a-z/bovine-tb/">slaughtered in 2012 alone</a>, and projected control costs of £1billion over the next 10 years. Obviously bTB cannot be eradicated without tackling the source of wildlife infection, but at present “eradication” is a pipe dream - merely reducing the current level would be a start. Cattle farmers argue that a 16% reduction <em>is</em> a good start. Badger groups argue the focus should be on dealing with the other 84% of the problem.</p>
<p>There are two unarguable propositions that emerge. First, whichever way you slice it badger culling is simply not economically worthwhile as a disease reduction method. Culling is a fiendishly expensive exercise and, however it is undertaken, the costs far exceed any benefits gained in terms of the value of reduced herd infections. Even Defra’s own “<a href="http://archive.defra.gov.uk/foodfarm/farmanimal/diseases/atoz/tb/documents/bovine-tb-impact-assessment.pdf">Impact Assessment</a>” published when the pilot culls were first proposed demonstrated this. Shooting badgers is the cheapest option, but the substantial cost to farmers might be better spent on treating the disease if and when it occurs.</p>
<p>Second, bTB is primarily spread not by badgers but by cattle among the herd, and present control policies are not working. Despite regular testing of herds and of individual cattle before they are moved between farms, infection has progressively spread. The established skin test is only 75% effective and this means, especially in heavily infected herds, that one in four animals slip through undetected to re-infect others. So “something else” has to be done - to bring bTB under control, and to lower the vast government expenditure on testing and farmer compensation for the compulsory slaughter of “reactor” cattle who test postive.</p>
<p>The obvious alternative is vaccination. Wildlife groups advocate badger vaccination as a better alternative to culling, and a vaccine has been developed. But while it lowers the badger infection rate, the effect this has on reducing bTB is unknown. It is expensive to trap, mark and vaccinate badgers, repeatedly for each new generation - the RBCT showed that trapping and killing was prohibitively expensive. Who would pay for vaccination?</p>
<p>The ideal solution is of course a cattle vaccine. But <a href="http://www.bovinetb.info/vaccination.php">there isn’t one</a>, and any prospective vaccine is far in the future. The problem lies with an EU Directive that requires member states to have an eradication policy for bTB. Vaccination doesn’t count as eradication, and so the longstanding test-and-slaughter policy remains.</p>
<p>The emphasis on eradication stems from the fact that bTB - different, but similar to human tuberculosis - can nevertheless infect humans. In previous generations this was a serious problem, but universal pasteurisation of milk and inspection of carcasses in slaughterhouses eliminated that concern long ago.</p>
<p>It is difficult to avoid concluding that we are dealing not with a scientific problem but a political one. The previous Labour government accepted the Independent Scientific Group’s conclusion in 2007 that, all things considered, badger culling could make “<a href="http://archive.defra.gov.uk/foodfarm/farmanimal/diseases/atoz/tb/isg/report/final_report.pdf">no meaningful contribution</a> to cattle TB control in Britain”. In opposition, the Conservatives promised the farming community they would reinstate culling, and those starting this weekend are the result.</p>
<p>Environment Secretary Owen Paterson hopes to see the cull rolled out to 40 areas across England. But compared to scientific evidence, hope has not shown itself to be a very dependable basis for disease control policy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/14835/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John McInerney has in the past received Defra research grants and served on a variety of non-departmental public bodies, including the Independent Scientific Group on Cattle TB.</span></em></p>What do the pilot badger culls due to start this weekend in Gloucester and West Somerset hope to achieve? The official line is a 16% reduction of bovine tuberculosis (bTB) in cattle herds over the next…John McInerney, Emeritus Professor of Agricultural Policy, University of ExeterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.