27th October 2011
Thirty-seven per cent fewer cattle with bovine TB have had to be slaughtered in the first seven months of this year compared with the first seven months of 2009 in the county where the killing of badgers has been proposed. This heartening reduction is revealed in Defra figures [1] published only days before the final meeting of the Welsh Government’s independent panel of experts reviewing the scientific evidence base regarding the eradication of bovine TB in Wales.
It has been achieved in Dyfed [2], where the Welsh Government will be considering whether to allow badgers to be killed following the review of the science by the independent panel. David Williams, chairman of the Badger Trust said: “Surely any decision to kill badgers cannot now be justified. This reduction in Dyfed is too big, too rapid and too sustained to be ignored, even though the figures are only for the first halves of the years concerned. Furthermore, Wales as a whole saw a 28 per cent fall [3] over the same periods, again too big to be brushed aside. We are also concerned at the number of overdue tests”.
However, it is disappointing that bovine TB figures for England show a provisional 6.0 per cent increase in the number of new TB incidents for January to July, compared with the same period in 2010 [4]. Mr Williams commented that the comparison with Wales, and Dyfed in particular, indicated how effective the more stringent testing and movement controls have been in Wales, and called for the same rigour to be applied in England by the Coalition Government.
“It is high time to stop arguing about wasting time and money on trying to kill off badgers in the hope of a comparatively tiny benefit over a nine-year period”, said Mr Williams. We need universal annual testing of cattle, effective movement and registration controls and an end to farmers trying to evade them. Firm controls [5] worked supremely well in the past, bringing the annual cattle toll to as low as 628 in 1979 [6]. The annual total remained at about 1,000 a year for 20 years – and the 11-year reactive badger culling programme during that time had no effect overall”.
NOTES
[1] http://www.defra.gov.uk/
[2] 4,802 down to 3,000
[3] 6945 down to 4976
[4] 19,421 up to 20,603
[5] The Eradication of Bovine Tuberculosis in Great Britain by W D Macrae MRCVS, DVSM (Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food). Zoological Society of Great Britain from Symp. Zool. Soc, London. Mo 4, pp.81-90 (April 1961).
[6] Complied from historic Maff/Defra annual bovine TB records.