Badgers.

The culling of badgers has been extended to cover more areas across the country, from Cornwall to Cumbria, the aim being to cull between 24,550 and 42,029 animals. Figures issued by DEFRA indicate that since 2013 bTB incidence in cattle has fallen from 10.4% to 5.6% in Gloucestershire, and from 24.4% to 12.0% in Somerset. In Dorset however the disease has risen from 15.9% to 20.6%.

Doubts have been expressed recently by vets and scientists connected with past studies of the problem as to the validity of the methods DEFRA used to obtain these figures. Estimates of the total number of badgers in any culling area have been obtained by desk studies not by field counts, and the cull targets derived from these. Where there are deviations (up or down) from the expected target figure once the cull has taken place, it has been explained away by assuming that the original total figure for the cull area was inaccurate and adjusting it suitably, a process usually known as ‘moving the goalposts’.

There are also questions as to whether incidence or prevalence of bTB in cattle should be used as a measure of infected numbers. As noted here previously a new Phage Test has been used in Devon instead of the usual skin test and has been shown to pick up bTB considerably earlier than the skin test. There is thus likely to be a reservoir of the disease in cattle prior to the skin test which is spread to other cattle and, via slurry spreading, to badgers and other animals such as deer.

Our farmer neighbours are suffering intolerable losses as infected cattle are culled. When are they going to insist on effective detection of the disease together with improved biosecurity, manure management (particularly slurry spreading), Badger vaccination and, yes, targeted Badger culling.