Animal Welfare: Infectious Diseases

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, for initiating this important debate. It is rather unfortunate that we have so many diseases, with such high price tags attached to each of them, to discuss this evening. However, I shall limit my remarks to bluetongue and TB. I have three questions on bluetongue. If the Minister is not able to answer them, I am happy for him to write to me. My questions concern future policy on a disease that could be eradicated in the short term in this country. However, re-infection from the Continent is always a possibility. First, what advice is Defra giving on the risk to this year’s lambs and spring born suckled calves given that the bluetongue vaccine will be licensed only for stock over four months of age? Does Defra believe that immunity is passed from mothers that have been vaccinated against bluetongue to unvaccinated offspring? Bearing in mind the risk of much greater demand beyond May due to bluetongue, what funding or contingency planning is in place in relation to the National Fallen Stock Company or other bodies to provide an increased level of clearance service for fallen livestock? That last question is relevant only if the outbreak continues and gets worse. Secondly, TB and badgers is a very difficult issue for many noble Lords and is not as clear-cut as many people who take one side or the other claim. Badgers are a much loved part of our countryside and excite responses in people that few other animals do. I declare an interest as I have three badger setts and a large number of badgers on my estate in Northumberland. However, the love of the British people for badgers does not seem to affect their car use. On driving to the station in Northumberland to travel down here by train, I counted five badgers that had been run over between Rochester and Newcastle. That seems to happen every year at this time when they are on the move. I received an interesting briefing from the NFU containing two maps of Britain in 1998 and 2004 respectively, indicating where TB outbreaks occurred. It is an indication that we are losing the battle. Indeed, as the noble Lord, Lord Plumb, pointed out, more than 28,000 cattle were affected last year at the not inconsiderable cost of £90 million. As was stated, that has a massive impact on farmers who have to deal with the consequences. We in Northumberland are in the happy position of having badgers and livestock. TB is not a major issue in that county but, of course, the situation may change. The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, mentioned a cull. A cull has to go hand in hand with biosecurity because TB can easily be passed from herd to herd if biosecurity measures are not put in place. However, these pose difficulties in many cases, especially with farmers in the upland areas being under such financial pressure. Therefore, a cull is not an easy solution. The Minister will throw up his hands in horror when he hears me say that for the past year I have been undertaking what I believe is the largest eradication programme of any vertebrate in this country; namely, of squirrels. I mention this because in a year and a bit we have taken out 15,004 as of this morning. We have had enormous success throughout Northumberland because we have been given access to every part of the landscape. There are only two areas to which we have not been given access, and we received permission to go on to one of those areas today. I am not sure that will be the case with badgers. That will be an interesting issue, if a very large area is to be undertaken. Will it be possible to eradicate setts in every area without the consent of the landowners? I am not sure that that consent would be given. We have worked very hard with landowners to go on to the land but there are going to be areas where it will be very difficult. In that case, is legislation going to be needed? Regarding the size of the area that we are talking about, the EFRA committee talked about areas that should be, ideally, greater than 265 square kilometres. We have almost cleared Northumberland, which is 2,500 square miles. That is not to say that we do not think that there are small populations that we have not been able to deal with. With badgers, that is a major issue. The problem that we have had—this is learnt from hard experience—is that you can take out vast numbers in an area, but it is the last few squirrels that are the hardest to deal with. For example, in Slaley forest we took more than 3,500 squirrels out of that one woodland. When you have individual squirrels and very small pockets of squirrels, what happens—I think this is happening with the badger populations—is that, as social creatures, they will move great distances to look for other populations to be near. That is probably why when you have a cull in badger populations you see those individuals that you have not dealt with moving very large distances indeed to find other badgers. If a cull is to take place, the EFRA report talked about looking for hard or soft boundaries. I do not think that there are hard or soft boundaries in this country. Even if you talk about rivers being a hard boundary, badgers can go just about anywhere. There are large numbers of bridges over rivers. We found that squirrels were almost using them as motorways to go across, and I do not think that would change with badgers, so you are talking about a very large area for a cull. That has its own implications. My own view is that a cull should be undertaken in certain areas where the situation is at its worst, because we tend to forget in the debate that tuberculosis does not have an unnoticed effect in badgers. It sickens the badger populations, and they also die a horrible death. When we are talking about the eradication of tuberculosis among cattle, we should also be talking about the eradication of tuberculosis among the badger population, because a healthy badger population is also an aim that we should be looking to achieve. I very much hope that the Government will be looking to work very hard on the oral vaccination that is being worked on in Gloucestershire, I believe, which has had some very effective results there. It is not difficult to find badger setts, and leaving the vaccination in salt licks has been shown to be extremely effective. That could deal with many of the problems. I wish that this was a situation where there was one side or the other that would be an answer to this problem, but I do not believe that is the case.