Confusion over badger cull results
3 December 1999
Confusion over badger cull results
By Trevor Lawson
MAFF has become embroiled in another tuberculosis-related controversy within days of successfully overturning a European ruling asking it to stop its TB badger culling trial.
At a meeting of the Bern Convention in Strasbourg on Tuesday (30 November), more than 40 European signatories to the 25-year-old wildlife treaty agreed the trial could continue.
The move overturned a previous ruling which called on the government to suspend the experiment, which ministers hope will reveal whether culling badgers reduces TB in cattle.
Conservationists had claimed the cull breached the convention because badgers would be made extinct in “pro-active” areas, where all badgers are supposed to be killed.
But Chris Cheeseman, from MAFFs TB research programme, said the ministrys own modelling showed at least 35% of badgers would be left in those areas after the trial.
MAFFs own information suggests, however, that as many as badgers as possible must be removed – and recolonisation prevented – in pro-active areas for the trial to work.
Dr Cheeseman said that 75% of badger setts which were active before the first culling took place were already active again – a claim which baffled conservationists.
“The whole purpose of the trial is to compare the effects of removing badgers with not removing badgers,” said Elaine King, the National Federation of Badger Groups conservation officer.
“If theyre not removing all the badgers, we dont see how the statistics can work.”
Under the conditions of being allowed to continue with the cull, the government must provide detailed annual reports of its full research programme and the trial results.
But junior agriculture minister Baroness Hayman rejected claims that the predicted survival rate cast doubt over the validity of the trials.
There was “absolutely nothing new” in the figures”, she told the BBC Farming Today programme.
“I dont think it [questions the trials validity] because the independent scientific group which steers the trials took what is a worst-case scenario, if you like, assuming the very least in terms of coverage.
“They took that into account when assessing what they needed for statistical validity in the trials.”
Bovine tuberculosis infects around 0.4% of the UK herd and is rising. Farmers fear that a ban on beef exports could be reimposed if the figure reaches 2%.