The TB Debate

About TB

Tuberculosis (TB) is a disease which, in its various forms, can infect a wide variety of animal species. The most important "human" form of TB affects people in very poor areas of the world (such as parts of Africa and elsewhere), but it travels around the globe wherever people live in very poor living conditions or where they have compromised immune systems. There is also a "bird" form of TB, which affects wild, pet and farmed birds - this being called Avian TB. Financially the most damaging form for farmers and taxpayers is "cattle" or bovine TB (bTB), as this affects dairy and beef cattle, and other species - occasionally even including humans. Although there is a small risk of infection, bTB does not generally get into the food chain because milk from cows is pasteurised to kill any bugs and meat is inspected at the slaughterhouse. Well-cooked meat is safe to eat.

Minimizing the Risks

To minimise he risk of bTB transferring into the human food chain, and to reduce the risk of it spreading to other animals, DEFRA have a testing program for cattle. In the past, DEFRA and farmers organisations believed that a very limited cattle testing regime was good enough to locate infected cattle, so they could be slaughtered before they could spread the disease. However, most cattle were never tested in their lifetimes, and this meant that bTB could spread around as cattle were moved through livestock markets and into different areas of the countryside. The horrors of the Foot and Mouth debacle in 2001 made the bTB situation much worse - this was because all the cattle were killed in huge areas of the countryside, meaning that those areas had to be re-stocked with cattle bought in from outside the area. This often meant that areas which were "clean" from bTB, became infected as infected cattle were shipped in in large numbers.

Other ways in which the likelihood of a bTB infection can be reduced is to adopt better farming practices. These recommendations usually involve maintaining good land-management practices (such as thick hedgerows and fresh running water supplies for animals); as well as using fencing to keep cattle separated from other farms and from wildlife species. Running a farm on organic or near-organic lines seems to suggest that such cattle do not succumb to bTB infections as easily.

Other Species

Unfortunately, bTB in cattle can spread to other cattle in the same farm, as well as nearby farms if cattle are not separated by wide hedgerows or fences. The disease can also pass from cattle into other common species, such as cats, rats, deer, badgers, earthworms and others. It is believed that bTB passes from cattle to wildlife species when wildlife forage on pastures recently grazed by infected livestock. The bTB infection may be present in body tissue and fluids from infected cattle - this including saliva/sputum, milk, urine and excrement. It is highly plausible that badgers become infected from infected cattle, because badgers use their noses to flip over infected cowpats to get to the earthworms which live underneath; or because they eat earthworms which get infected by passing through the cow pats. The argument that cattle infect badgers with bTB is made more plausible because modern high-tech tests have shown that on some individual farms in the South-West of England the a single highly-particular strain of bTB infects both badgers and cattle on the same farm.

There have also been proven examples of cattle becoming infected with bTB, due to infected cats drinking milk from dairy cattle as well as from species like deer

DEFRA and NFU Mistakes

DEFRA and the NFU believe that infected badgers represent a significant source of re-infection to cattle, so DEFRA (and previously MAFF) used cyanide gas to exterminate badgers on infected farms, until they had to stop when it was deemed to be unacceptably cruel and ineffective. Since then, neither MAFF nor DEFRA have made any significant scientific progress to explain precisely how badgers infect cattle with bTB; or how bTB transfers around between different animal populations.

For the past 30 years or so MAFF (followed by DEFRA) has been saying that it would take, perhaps, 10 years to develop a treatment to inoculate cattle against bTB. Despite paying hundreds of millions of pounds to "compensate" farmers for killing their animals, neither DEFRA or MAFF managed to fund a research program which could have solved the problem for ever.

Controversial badger cull

The badger is now a protected species and it is illegal to harm them in any way or to kill or capture them without a licence. However, the DEFRA undertook a "controlled" massive badger extermination program (known as the Krebs trial) of badgers to control bTB on farms in designated parts of the country. This was despite evidence that other wildlife can also carry the disease, and in the face of what have to be seen as major flaws in the theory and practice of the cull. DEFRA's approach has been widely condemned by experts both at home and abroad as being unscientific and unjustified, but so far, despite much opposition, the Cull continues.

The first major point "proved" by the Krebs trial was that killing badgers appears to provide a very slight reduction in cattle TB where badgers are killed, but just outside the killing zones, the amount of TB goes up; making things worse overall. Whilst the science is not accepted by every-one, the Krebs experiment suggests that badgers would have to be completely wiped out across the entire counties of Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Somerset, Avon, Gloucestershire and large areas of Wales and the Midlands to reduce TB in cattle overall. Importantly, the reduction in bTB in cattle would be far less important than if cattle were simply to be tested for bTB using modern accurate testing programmes.

Most badger groups very strongly believe that the solution to bTB infections in cattle is predominantly down to improved cattle testing, better animal husbandry, fewer cattle movements, having closed cattle herds (where potentially infected cattle are not brought in or allowed to visit for breeding purposes) and eventually inoculating cattle so that they could not become infected and therefore not pass on the infection.

Worryingly, many people think that DEFRA's policy advisers do very little more than regurgitate what they have been told by the NFU and other cattle-owners organisations. It remains to be seen whether DEFRA will follow the scientific lead; or whether they will bow to pressure from the NFU and other organisations who are using badgers as a scapegoat for their less-than-ideal practices.

Situation in Lancashire

The good news for Lancashire is that our farmers tend to have relatively clean farms and follow well-managed agricultural practices, and the incidence of bTB in local cattle is very low. As a badger group we are grateful for Lancashire's farmers for the efforts they make to keep Lancashire free from bTB.

Importantly, Lancashire's badgers remain free of bTB. It is not possible to catch bTB from a badger in Lancashire.

Keeping things clean

The NFU and some other organisations have mislead people about how badgers are rehabilitated. A badger released back into the wild after treatment for injuries is reintroduced as near as possible to where it was found - this means that badgers are not shipped round the country. If their home range is not known, rescue organizations such as the RSPCA or Secret World release them in a known "dirty" area, so that any wildlife infections are not inadvertently introduced into "clean" areas.

For more information

For more information, use our links, which include the Badger Trust website. This has all the latest information and has some very good links to the House of Commons select committee reports on badgers and bTB.