The government resolutely stood by its plans to press on with badger culls in the South-West as part of its bovine TB eradication strategy, after a tense debate between MPs in Westminster Hall on Wednesday.

The badger cull was extended to five new areas this year, as ‘pilot’ culls entered their fourth year in Gloucestershire and Somerset. However, the government’s deeply controversial strategy remains unpopular with the general public and appears to be losing supporters; the British Veterinary Association - though it believes some form of culling is necessary - has withdrawn its support for the government’s free-shooting strategy (which the culls were ostensibly established to trial).

28,000 cattle were culled under TB rules in 2015, at a cost to the public of around £10m. However, independent scientists and conservationists maintain that culling badgers is an expensive, ineffective and cruel response to the disease. Lord Krebs, the architect of badger culling trials conducted under the last Labour government, on which the Coalition government based much of the initial cull design, has said culling can make “No meaningful contribution” to efforts to wipe out bTB. Krebs has recommended introducing a vaccination programme and improving biosecurity on farms, and has dismissed the cull as a “Crazy scheme.”

Wednesday’s debate in Parliament was called by SNP MP for Caithness Dr Paul Monaghan, who said of bTB “It can [be] passed to cattle and other species including badgers, rats, cats, deer, foxes, moles, hedgehogs, worms and I understand even flies. The predominant mode of transmission in cattle however is nose to nose, and of course trading which promotes it between herds.”

He pointed out that, though Scotland is bTB free, and Wales appears to be in the process of bringing the disease under control, cases in England are on the rise, and the current testing regime is far from effective. Dr Monaghan said the current situation of huge costs to the public purse, widespread disruption in the farm industry and the psychological burden on farmers is the “impact of the failure to effectively address the disease.” He said without effective measures to tackle bTB the situation will only worsen as it spreads north and eastwards.

However, he maintained that badger culling is not the way to solve this growing problem, and said the targeting of badgers is “inexplicable.” Dr Monaghan said testing by independent groups has shown that only 1.6% of badgers - even in the areas with highest incidence of bTB - are considered capable of spreading disease. He said no serious scientific work has been published that supports badger culling to reduce bTB instance in cattle since the Independent Scientific Group oversaw the Randomised badger culling trials in the 1990s and early 00s and concluded that culling is an ineffective means of control.

Tewkesbury MP Laurence Robertson joined the debate, stating that farmers in his constituency, where one of the badger culling trials is taking place, have claimed it is having an effect on bTB levels in the area. This claim was dismissed as being anecdotal and “certainly not borne out by the scientific evidence.”

In January it was reported that the EU Commission provided the UK government with half of its budget for bovine TB control €31m (then worth £23m) which went on 4 different programmes. Dr Monaghan said this money is now at risk in the wake of the Brexit vote. North Herefordshire MP Bill Wiggin noted that farmers could benefit from access to vaccination after Brexit, as this is currently illegal under EU law.  

Tory MP Geoffrey Clifton-Brown claimed that markspeople in the cull zones have had to resort to shooting free-running badgers, as anti-cull activists have damaged traps. Without interference from activists, he said, the cull could be conducted much more efficiently using caged shooting. However, the first two culls were initially set up to trial the cheaper, decentralised free-shooting tactic (though freedom of information requests have since shown that caged-shooting was also used from relatively early on in the first year of culling, when markspeople failed to shoot their quotas of free-running animals).

In his concluding remarks Dr Monaghan called on the government to do away with the skin test, adopt gamma interferon blood testing for the disease and increase cattle biosecurity, combined with a policy of vaccinating badgers in high-risk areas to replace culling.

Minister defends government policy

Responding on behalf of the government, farming minister George Eustice acknowledged that bTB is a “Big challenge” in England, Wales and Northern Ireland - where badger culling could take over from a vaccination policy.

He said the government is already taking action in all of the areas suggested by MPs contributing to the debate, and added that cattle controls are at the heart of the government’s control programme, with annual testing in the high-risk and edge areas of England, four yearly testing in the low risk area, and testing every six months in bTB hotspots in the edge area (under the government’s control policy, England is split into three areas: high risk, low risk and edge). He said government is consulting on increased use of the gamma interferon tests and added “We are also looking at what more can be done in other species.”

Eustice went on to say that Defra is making money available through grants to help farmers improve biosecurity, including for water troughs that badgers cannot access, and is looking at improving manure management (research has suggested that the spreading of manure could be one route of infection) and breeding cattle for bTB resistance.

He maintained that there is a scientific case for culling, and that, contrary to Dr Monaghan’s claim, links have been drawn between TB infection in badgers and cattle. “The science is clear and the veterinary advice is clear,” he said. “I would not sanction a cull of badgers unless it were necessary. Apart from anything else it’s very expensive. I’m not the sort of person who wants to kill wildlife for fun.”  

Opposition MPs react to lack of transparency

Even so, opposition MPs asked the Defra Minister George when the government plans to release independent assessment of the culls in Somerset and Gloucestershire, which have entered the fourth year of culling (the two pilot culls were planned to last for four years, and if the government stands by its initial plans, 2016 should be the final year of culling in these areas). After the first culls came to an end in 2013, a panel of independent scientific advisors found that the strategy had failed to meet two of the government’s three self-set targets. The panel was disbanded after this first year and subsequent years’ culls have been monitored by cull licensing body Natural England.

Reacting to the debate, Claire Bass, executive director of Humane Society International UK, said, “It was clear from Minister George Eustice’s response that the government will continue to ignore the scientific evidence and persist with a cruel cull that has not, and will not, eradicate cattle TB.

“We echo the comments of Dr Monaghan MP who called the killing of badgers ridiculous and redundant, and who was quite right to ridicule the persecution of badgers by pointing out that llamas, cats, bats, flies and earthworms also carry bTB and yet a cull of these species would be seen as preposterous.”

She added, “Steve Double MP’s assertion that badgers are ‘Britain’s biggest rodent’ was a low-point in a debate that saw pro-cull MPs and the Minister trot out tired and ill-informed excuses for a cull policy that is failing both badgers and farmers.”