There should be no doubt in the minds of Members on both sides of the House that bovine tuberculosis has serious economic and emotional implications for a number of farmers in the United Kingdom. We need to find a sustainable and human solution to this scourge.
According to the scientific evidence, to achieve a significant reduction in bovine TB, badger culling would need to be take place over a huge geographical area—as large as 500 sq km. It would also need to be very intensive, virtually wiping out the badger population in the area.
The Government must make clear what they intend to do following the initial trials. Will their policy be to allow culling over a much larger area, with much larger numbers of dead badgers? That could pose a risk to the badger population as a whole. As Members are well aware, the problem is that a cull of less than 70% means ineffective disease control, while a cull of more than 70% means a risk of eradication of the badger population across the country. The Government claim to have devised much more effective culling methods, but how can we know when those methods have not been tried yet? Given that shooting badgers has never been used in the UK before as a means of control, it must be doubtful whether it would lead to the same results in bovine TB eradication as the badger trials conducted by the Independent Scientific Group on Cattle TB.
A follow-up report on the randomised badger culling trial, published in February 2010, warned of the need for any cull to be well planned and co-ordinated, and of the potential for small-scale or irregular culls to result in increases rather than decreases in bovine TB incidence. The Government have so far failed to co-ordinate the figures for the number of badgers in the cull areas for the purpose of meeting their 70% target. The latest survey data show the number of badgers in each cull area to be double the figure used by DEFRA to calculate the costs of the cull. DEFRA used a figure of 1,300 badgers in each 300 sq km cull area, but on 17 October it revealed in a written answer that the figures were actually 3,600 in west Gloucestershire and 4,300 in west Somerset. The Minister’s response to my question about the figures this week was also confused.
It is clearly difficult to monitor the badger population accurately. This week, Lord Krebs referred to a variation of between 1,000 and 5,000 in the space of just a few days. However, Natural England needs to know the actual number of badgers in each area in order to know how many must be killed. Without such accurate population data, it is hard to assess whether the 70% target can be met, or how the results of the trial can be compared with those of previous trials that were conducted on independent scientific basis.