badger cull – Page 4 – The Badger Crowd

BTB decline – has cause & effect been shown?

Posted on 20/02/2024 by The Badger Crowd

Cattle testing, and not badger culling, is helping control bovine TB in England

Published, peer-reviewed science on the efficacy of badger culling has failed to find an association between intensive badger culling and either the incidence or prevalence of bovine TB in cattle herds (here). In plain English, data on levels of bTB show that badger culling has had no effect on the level of disease in cattle. This is the only published peer-reviewed science on post-2017 data from the ton of bTB statisitics produced by farmers and vets across England over many years. Ask yourself why that is, and also why the government claims it has worked but refuse to discuss it.

The pro-cull response to anyone publicly questioning badger culling efficacy has been (not surprisingly) to follow government rhetoric, and claim that it has caused a 56% reduction of bTB in cattle to-date. Such comments are repeated by those associated with the secretive bTB Partnership of farmers and cattle vets: ‘just look at this graph showing bTB falling over the period of the culls’. The phoney mantra that accompanies various homemade graphs is often an emphatic and self-confident ’look how well badger culling is working’, or ‘you can’t possibly argue with this huge decline in disease’, and ‘bTB is lower than it’s been for years’.

These summaries of the last 11 years of bTB control are simply unsubstantiated however. They repeatedly overlook the scientific necessity to show the relationship between cause and effect. Something that the Zuckerman, Dunnet and Krebs reviews also failed to establish using basic science principles. Put simply, cause and effect is the relationship between two things, when one thing makes something else happen. Ie. Can it really be claimed that it is badger culling that has brought about the decline in disease?

For the answer to that to be yes, it would be necessary to show that levels of disease were affected only by badger culling and nothing else. Levels of disease are clearly affected by a number of variables other than badger culling. As bTB is primarily a cattle disease, with most (if not all) infection arising from other cattle, the type & frequency of cattle testing will have a huge effect on detectable disease.

So has cattle testing on farms within the badger cull zones changed? Yes it has. Testing has tightened hugely, albeit painfully slowly, as can be seen in the graphic below. It has increased in frequency, and additional testing methods have been introduced too.

In reality, data point to increased and improved cattle testing being the cause of gradual bTB decline in cattle. The graph below illustrates that the decline in bTB across the south west counties of the High Risk Area (HRA) began on average around 2015, 5 years after annual cattle testing began, but before the roll-out of badger culling (coloured arrows indicate point at which badger culling began). It was earlier in other HRA counties. Cattle testing was having an effect well before badger culling could have.

Here (below) is a fresh set of HRA data from abattoir surveillance, detecting disease from previously undetected but infected herds. It also records the response to annual tuberculin testing peaking around 2012.

Published government data for Bovine TB cattle herd breakdown (OTF-W) incidence for the years 2021 and 2022 can now be added to the county-based reference series published in 2022 (1). This shows continued synchronised decline across the High Risk Area counties at similar constant rates, following establishment of annual SICCT testing from 2010 (Figures 1 and 2).

Similar, but slower decline in BTB epidemic in the Republic of Ireland since 1999 (2), has reduced incidence there to 4.4%, but it has been effectively static or rising since 2018 (3). In England, more frequent SICCT testing, with some use of interferon gamma IFN-y and additional tests, have similarly reduced cattle-to-cattle transmission. If levelling off in England is now anticipated, increased and routine use of the more sensitive live bacteria (bacteriophage) blood tests, (as validated for human health checks), for pre-movement cattle testing is needed. There could be need for recourse to cattle vaccination, with bacteriophage, a reliable blood test option for divergence (DIVA infected vs vaccinated) testing too.

Comparison of cattle TB in areas that have undergone culling with those that have not, further suggests cattle measures are by far the most likely cause of disease decline since 2010. In the 2022 paper (1), multiple statistical models checked the data on herd breakdowns over time and failed to find any association between badger culling and either the incidence or prevalence of bovine TB in cattle herds. The models that most accurately fitted the data were those that did not include badger culling as a parameter, suggesting that factors other than culling (cattle testing) were more likely to be the cause of the reduction in disease in cattle.

So it really is not scientifically credible for anyone to claim that the reduction in bovine TB is the result of badger culling. Or to keep up with the tired and fake claims of a need to use ‘all the tools in the box’. The evidence strongly suggests otherwise. The introduction of numerous cattle measures and increased sensitivity of testing has brought about disease benefit as it has done in previous epidemics.

The problem that remains is that notwithstanding the slaughterhouse pattern (above), while OTF-W* incidence is falling, OTF-S* is not. Beyond a few false positives, this suggests that the rate of detection of early infections may not be as fast as that of later infections. If badger culling was working, OTF-W* and OTF-S* should both be falling as new infections are prevented. It is not. As in Republic of Ireland, where badgers have been mass killed for decades, undetected infection is embedded in the herds and being spread by cattle movements within wrongly labelled ‘clear’ herds. As it was from the pockets of bTB remaining in the 1960s and 1970s in England. This is the challenge, and this is what needs addressing. False claims from those who wish to keep blaming badgers are unhelpful and are not ‘following the science’, just trying to manipulate it. Opposing badger culling is not a ‘political position’ as the NFU claim, it is simply following good science.

*Note:
OTF-W = Officially TB-free status Withdrawn
OTF-S = Officially TB-free status Suspended

References

1 Langton TES, Jones MW, McGill I. Analysis of the impact of badger culling on bovine tuberculosis in cattle in the high-risk area of England, 2009–2020. Vet Rec 2022; doi:10.1002/vetr.1384

2 More SJ, Houtsma E, Doyle L, McGrath G, Clegg TA, de la Rua-Domenech R, Duignan A, Blissitt MJ, Dunlop M, Schroeder PG, Pike R, Upton P. Further description of bovine tuberculosis trends in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, 2003-2015. Vet Rec. 2018 Dec 15;183(23):717. doi: 10.1136/vr.104718. Epub 2018 Nov 28. PMID: 30487295; PMCID: PMC6312888.

3 Gov.ie 2023. National Bovine TB Statistics, Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine.

U-turn on phase out? Defra to consult on 100% badger culling.

Posted on 14/02/2024 by The Badger Crowd

Eleven years of intensive badger culls in England have left over a quarter of a million mostly healthy badgers, dead using cruel methods. This has been justified on the back of a hypothesis that any infected badgers frequently spread bovine TB to cattle. There is very little science to back this up, and no credible evidence that culling badgers has any effect on cattle TB.

Badger culls aimed to reduce infected and uninfected badger numbers by 70% within cull areas, but population numbers are not known, confounding the basic assumption of the theoretical benefit. Badgers may be wiped out or bounce back quickly, but nobody is monitoring with any accuracy and reporting. This current policy of intensive culling is due to finish at the end of January 2026. But what happens after that? We may see an attempt to set something up very soon to take over, as the ruins of the current pro-cull government crumbles away with a shockingly bad record on nature protection.

Public consultation on the next phase of Defra’s bovine TB eradication policy has been attempted for over a year, rowed back on, and is now thought to be imminent. The 2020 ‘Next Steps’ bovine TB policy suggested that the follow-on policy would aim to phase out intensive (70%) badger culling, but allow 100% culling (as in the failed Cumbria culling effort) but only in ‘exceptional’ circumstances.

What will these ‘exceptional’ circumstances be?

It seems likely that to qualify as exceptional, a farm or defined area will need to have found a dead badger within an unknown distance which has tested positive for bovine TB or have been found with the same strain of bTB present in the local cattle. However, this proves nothing as the directionality of transmission is not known. You could cull badgers anywhere on this basis. It is not rational. We know that once a strain is introduced by cattle it can rapidly pollute the countryside with TB bacteria for considerable distance.

Such culling attempts have been termed epidemiological culling, or ‘epi-culling’, which is a contradiction as it breaks many epidemiological principles and discredits the veterinary profession. Already the APHA Risk Pathways approach has been discredited following the successful independent report on the subject in 2023. The reasoning behind epi-culling sets a low bar in simplifying the implication of badgers infecting cattle, when presence of disease in badgers does not prove causation of disease in cattle. It never has done. The problem of undetected bTB in cattle is due to poor sensitivity of the tuberculin (SICCT) testing over decades. Poor testing and unwise cattle movements, coupled with residual infection remain by far the most likely cause of all herd breakdowns. The knowledge of the last ten years points directly towards the paucity of testing, while some researchers twist the evidence to bolster government policy.

It is almost as if this is a pre-planned effort to enable badger culling to become a free-for-all, and this has been suspected by some, from the beginning. Removal of badger protection by stealth, not science. The licensing method of future culling is unclear and if it is ‘farmer-led’ as the Godfray Report (2018) suggests, what will that mean in practice? Without cull companies and detailed veterinary supervision, the approach could be even more of a shambles than it has been thus far, particularly in terms of welfare. Details of the new plans are about to be made public shortly it would appear.

What will ‘epi-culling’ look like?

Since 2018 APHA have been experimenting crudely with ‘epi-culling’ in Cumbria and Lincolnshire. This new style culling aims to kill 100% of badgers within designated areas but of unclear size. This pilot has failed to eliminate bovine TB however, (see Chapter 5 of ‘A bovine tuberculosis policy conundrum in 2023′ ) and simply served to highlight recurrent infection in a handful of farms and how concentrated testing effort can remove bTB from a few dozen herds. Clearing of these herds by intensive effort will still leave the Cumbria Area 32 a full failure in terms of demonstrating that badger culling can reduce bTB in cattle. This is no model for the future.

Badger vaccination?

Vaccination of badgers may be offered after epi-culling from year 3 as in Cumbria Area 32. This is a massive operation that the NFU may have agreed to in some kind of deal enabling more culling. The entire Edge Area may potentially be available, with cluster areas already having been prepared. Wildlife Trusts and others may, if not careful, become obligated to support and justify the process of culling with the offer of vaccination follow-on. An unwise route, supporting the pretence that vaccinating badgers will help reduce disease in cattle. This is unproven and effectively a unsubstantiated deception that will be a cover for more badger culling, both licensed and illegal. Badger vaccination is likely to be offered for the HRA with possibly more culling – this is the biggest worry of all. We hope not. Badger Groups need to be aware of the risk of being manipulated to promote vaccination projects to farmers under false pretences, which will in effect facilitate more culling to 2038 and beyond.

Is badger culling scientifically justified & has it worked?

The science behind culling is uncertain & becoming unevidenced. A peer-reviewed paper, Langton, Jones, and McGill (2022) failed to find any association between the industry led badger culling 2013 – 2019, and either the incidence or prevalence of bovine TB in cattle herds.

The paper has two main findings. Firstly, data show the slowing increase, levelling off, peaking and then decrease in bovine TB in cattle in the High Risk Area (HRA) of England during the study period, all well before badger culling was rolled out in 2016. This suggests that the cattle-based measures implemented from 2010, and particularly the introduction of the annual tuberculin skin (SICCT) test are most likely to be responsible for declines in disease.

The second finding came from a look at the amount of cattle bTB in areas that had undergone a badger cull and compared it with the amount of disease in areas that had not had culling. This was done over a six year period 2013-2019, so before and after culling was rolled out. Multiple statistical models checked the data on herd breakdowns over time and failed to find any association between badger culling and either the incidence or prevalence of bovine TB in cattle herds. Models that most accurately fitted the data were those that did not include badger culling as a parameter, suggesting that factors other than culling (time, cattle testing etc) were likely to be the cause of the reduction in disease in cattle.

Defra does not accept the findings of this peer-reviewed study but have not produced a credible peer-reviewed rebuttal to it, and (following the change of DEFRA leadership from Richard Benyon to Robbie Douglas-Miller) they still refuse to engage on the matter. They also refuse to release their ‘secret’ and withheld data, and thus-far have not produced their own published science to show that badger culling is effective in reducing bTB in cattle. A preprint (Birch et al 2023) by APHA staff is discussed here and here.

Following on from Langton et al, a pre-print looking at the original RBCT analysis has found that alternative & more appropriate analyses of the data found no effect of badger culling (Torgerson et al. 2023). This is important, because the RBCT has been used as the basis for all culls since 2013. If badger culling during the RBCT produced no measurable disease benefit, the justification for badger culling has no scientific rationale.

What about the ecological impacts of 100% badger removal?

Under Judicial Review of their decision to licence badger culling, DEFRA undertook in 2018 to monitor the ecological impacts of 70% badger removal. This has not happened, with some vague fox count numbers used as a smoke screen. There was cheating and disgraceful behaviour in court in 2022.

So what will be the ecological impact of trying to remove entire populations of badgers, in patchy ways? What will be the licensing requirements for epi-culling and how will species and habitat impact assessments be provided? How will Tony Juniper at Natural England continue to support culling? Will he keen to keep saying that there is nothing to see?

Despite the frailty of the science behind badger culling, despite the lack of monitoring of the ecological impacts of culling, despite the financial cost and the cruelty, it looks as if the government is about to proceed with yet another ugly and ill-conceived badger culling consultation for its disastrous bovine TB policy.

Key badger scientist reviews recent badger culling science

Posted on 09/01/2024 by The Badger Crowd

Professor David MacDonald, founder and Director of the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit at the University of Oxford has reviewed the latest science on badger culling in a new report, ‘A Commentary on Current Policy’ for the Badger Trust charity.

MacDonald, is one of a group of senior scientists at Oxford who advised on and helped instigate the Randomised Badger Culling Trials (RBCT) from the mid 1990’s, work that has been used to inform government policy on bTB ever since. From 2010, this policy has been to carry out intensive widespread badger culling in the west of England, and it has resulted in the (often inhumane) death of around an estimated 250,000 badgers starting in 2013.

Macdonald who informed but did not take part in the controversial experiments reflects in his commentary, “…it was ‘interesting’ that exactly the same scientific evidence was used to decide, on the one hand, for a badger cull in England, but, on the other, against a cull in Wales”.

Until now, no senior academic has written publicly about the single large-scale published analyses (Vet Record, March 2022) that looked at badger culling outcomes, or about the new uncertainty over the long-accepted analyses of the RBCT highlighted in a scientific preprint by Torgerson et al. 2023 (now published, Torgerson et al 2024). Usefully, MacDonald does both, and has also had a close look at another pre-print by The Animal and Plant Agency (APHA) (Birch et al. 2023), which considers the efficacy of what it calls the ‘badger culling policy’, which is actually a wide programme of cattle testing and movement control measures, of which badger culling was one, rolled out gradually from 2016.

What are the most important points from this new inciteful commentary? Here are several important views that he has expressed:

Walking his way through the publication of Langton et al (2022) in Vet Record, MacDonald recounts the immediate rejection by Defra & the Chief Veterinary Officer of the conclusions of the paper, the subsequent admission of by Defra of their own errors, and the resulting impasse.

Of the Torgerson et al (2023) preprint, MacDonald writes “They found that the conclusions of the 2006 analysis are sensitive to the method of analysis used. Indeed, the analytical approach that Torgerson’s team judge to be the most obvious for the purpose, provides no statistical evidence for a culling effect, whereas a model comparison method aimed at selecting a model with the best out-of-sample predictive power indicates that the best model does not include the treatment effect of killing badgers. According to those statistics, killing badgers during the RBCT made no difference to the herd breakdowns, whether measured by either OFT-W or by OFT-W + OFTS.”

Importantly and from a practical governmental perspective he adds:

“Policy-makers reflecting on the statistical merits of these findings should hold in mind John Bourne’s quote (above) about the practical usefulness of badger culling even when the ISG accepted their statistical robustness.”

Of the Birch et al (2023) preprint, MacDonald says that the APHA “… do not claim to have measured the consequences of badger culling, and indeed they have not”, and, “there is still no clearcut answer regarding the impact of this approach to badger culling on controlling bTB in cattle or, more broadly, whether it’s worth it.”

David MacDonald’s new commentary is, therefore, a welcome review of the latest developments in badger culling science and well worth a read alongside a much longer general report on badger culling produced by the Badger Trust, ‘Tackling bovine bTB together‘. Both reports are available from the Badger Trust website.

Badger scientists at Oxford University who dominated the badger culling review, planning and experiments between 1995 and 2007 have been reluctant to speak out in a comparable way since the 2016 cull roll outs, some because they moved away, others perhaps because they remained involved. The controversy surrounding badger culling may be the reason some steer away from engaging on various elements of the science and the destructive mass killing of Britain’s favourite sentient animal and its young cubs, most of whom are completely healthy. It would be great to see more of the scientists who were involved in the RBCT engage in a similar open way, acknowledging the uncertainty and new learning that suggests badger culling was always irrelevant and unnecessary.

Looking at the big picture, it is worth noting that Defra still have no simple explanation of their concerns about the published 2022 study that showed that badger culling did not reduce bTB in cattle between 2013-2019, let alone a peer-reviewed rebuttal. Following the change of DEFRA leadership from Richard Benyon to Robbie Douglas-Miller (in November 2023), they have again written (January 2024) refusing to engage on the matter. Perpetual secrecy and lack of engagement that bears similarity to the sub-postmasters scandal. Defra still refuse to release their ‘secret’ and withheld data, and thus-far have not produced their own published science to show that badger culling is effective in reducing bTB in cattle. Meanwhile, government Ministers bandy about unpublished percentages of so-called benefit.

Defra’s consultation on the 2020 ‘Next Steps’ badger culling policy

Posted on 14/12/2023 by The Badger Crowd

In recent years Defra have made no secret of the fact that they aim to continue badger culling after the current intensive culls finish at the end of January 2026. The 2020 bovine TB policy outlined the intention to continue badger culling in ‘exceptional’ circumstances. APHA have been piloting a new ‘reactive’ style culling policy that aims to kill 100% of badgers, otherwise known as epidemiological culling or ‘epi-culling’ in Cumbria and Lincolnshire. This pilot has failed to eliminate bovine TB however, (see Chapter 5 of ‘A bovine tuberculosis policy conundrum in 2023′ ) and simply served to highlight persistent infection in a handful of farms.

‘Epi-culling’ has been licensed by Natural England since 2018 despite its ongoing failure. Badger Trust was told by Lord Richard Benyon (Minister of State at Defra) in written correspondence, and by Eleanor Brown (now deputy Chief Veterinary Officer) at a meeting, that a consultation on this new epi-culling policy would be launched this year. This now seems not to be the case. In this recent article in VET Times, a Defra spokesperson was asked whether the anticipated consultation would begin before Christmas. The reply was “we are working to provide further detail at the earliest opportunity.”

Initially it was thought that the consultation would be in winter 2022 or Spring 2023. This was delayed to Summer, then Autumn, and then the middle of November. It may yet appear, perhaps this winter, but indications are that Defra are rethinking.

The National TB Conference in Worcester on 29^th November might have been an opportunity to set out Defra’s intentions going forward. The programme for the event listed senior speakers/participants including Lord Benyon (Defra Minister), Christine Middlemiss (CVO) and James Wood (Head of Department of Veterinary Medicine at Cambridge), long-time supporter of badger culling. But Lord Benyon did not even turn up, & it was left to a few of the pro-cull vets to make statements on their personal ‘views’ about the success of badger culling. Perhaps they had hoped that APHA’s pre-print on the effects of badger culling might have been published by now. But there are serious issues with this analysis, see here and here.

So why has the consultation on epi-culling been delayed? Are Defra beginning to realise that badgers are not a significant player in bovine tuberculosis after all?

Three possibilities………

The epidemiology of bovine tuberculosis science does not support their position on epi-culling, (see this independent report). APHA’s latest epidemiology report has changed its method of assessing attribution of disease, (see here).
The science behind culling is uncertain & becoming frailer. A peer-reviewed paper in 2022 failed to find any association between the industry led badger culling 2013 – 2019, and either the incidence or prevalence of bovine TB in cattle herds (see Langton et al 2022). Following on from this analysis, a pre-print looking at the original RBCT analysis found that alternative & more appropriate analyses of the data found no effect of badger culling (Torgerson et al).
There will probably be a General Election next year. Pushing out a consultation on a scientifically fragile badger cull policy, that is also cruel, potentially ecologically damaging and economically unsound is not a vote-winner for a political party. A majority of the public remain opposed to badger culling.

Meanwhile, in the House of Lords on December 12th, Conservative peer Lord Colrain, asked “What progress they have made towards identifying a vaccine for eradicating bovine tuberculosis?” Labour peer Lord Granchester took the opportunity to quote a reduction of 51% in herds under restriction in Cheshire, appearing to claim this as a win for badger culling, and suggest that it would make sense “to allow all areas of England to undertake a cull to control disease in cattle, disease in badgers and stress in rural communities before introducing vaccination?” He failed to mention that Cheshire has actually had more gamma testing than any other county in the country as shown in the bar chart below. It is the increased use of gamma testing that is most likely responsible for the observed decline in herd breakdowns.

It is still a bit unclear what Labour will do with bovine TB policy if they are elected to government in due course, with their messaging inconsistent at present. Shadow Defra Minister Steve Reed recently told journalists at the Countryside Land and Business Association conference that there is enough reason to believe that badger culling is a way of preventing transmission, so “in the short term we have to continue with that”. Sue Hayman (former Shadow Environment Minister) meanwhile said at the launch of a Wildlife Link report recently, that badger culling would be brought to an immediate end. Current Shadow Environment Secretary Daniel Zeichner was quoted in The Guardian (here) in October saying “I’ve spent a long time looking at this…….We’re going to make England bovine TB free by 2038, but with a range of measures that do not include culling.”

None of this is satisfactory. Secrecy cloaks every move, and stakeholders remain outside what should be an open and careful discussion of the various technological and economic options. It is in no one’s interest to let factional lobbying and secret deals continue with the wasteful and cruel outcomes seen over the last ten years.

We have now reached the point where a handful of pro-cull lobbyists are promoting their ‘views’ on the success of badger culling and making statements that are simply not borne out by the facts. Dick Sibley (a vet who has worked on alternative bTB testing approaches), in a recent letter to Vet Record, comments on “the unfortunate paucity of scientific evidence” that currently underpins current advice, and concludes that “the effect of the mass killing of hundreds of thousands of badgers has been disappointing, to say the least”.

The latest government epidemiology summary shows that half of breakdowns are now herds with embedded disease, herds breaking down for a second, third or more times. Why? Because infection is not being caught by conventional testing. It is not that hard to work out why public money has been frittered over the last ten years on a policy with no end point. It has been deemed just too tough to grasp the nettle and get on with the difficult and expensive job of better testing and some herd depopulation, with farms left fallow for several years. This reality cannot be put off any longer and the economics of a new campaign need to be clear for all to consider, with relevant measures to achieve prompt bTB control, not decades more of subsidised nonsense.

Has APHA finally seen the TB light?

Posted on 23/11/2023 by The Badger Crowd

A shift of emphasis

Was it the damning April report on the failed Cumbria badger culls that has led to the clear change in the way that APHA’s is now attributing source of bTB infection in cattle? Have the crazy proposals for the so-called ‘epidemiological culling’ policy been recognised for the epidemiological nonsense that they are?

Or is it simply that the raft of Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS) results clearly indicate cattle movements as the main distributor of bovine TB? Either way, the new epidemiology report for England published this November shows a dramatic shift of emphasis in the attribution of source of infection.

While previous APHA reports have laboured to claim that around half of cattle bTB infections are attributed to badgers, the analysis for 2022 of the results of ‘bovine tuberculosis epidemiology and surveillance in England and Great Britain‘, published earlier this week (20^th November) (read here) tells a different story.

Outrageous attribution

It looks like the death knell for the perpetually dodgy and unscientific ‘Risk Pathways’ approach that was so heavily slated in the April report by independent scientists earlier this year. Risk Pathways was introduced in 2017, as evidence to cull badgers across the whole of west England and more. Every APHA ‘epi’ annual report since 2017 has contained a table with the consequence of condemning badgers to more culling.

Now, with the speculative nature of the approach well exposed, APHA have no choice but to do what they should have done before badger culling began – shift emphasis to the necessary cattle testing and herd management. These are the only measures that will actually move bovine tuberculosis in cattle towards elimination using the right cattle tests from the cattle testing toolbox.

See below in the 2021 analysis: the first column claims outrageously high attribution of source of infection to badgers, at over 50%.

In this years table for 2022 (see below), the column has gone, and the switch to uncertainty is complete.

Compare the pies

Compare also, the pie chart of disease sources from 2021 (below) with that for 2022 (below that). Where once badgers were getting 52% of the blame, 56% is now shown ‘blank’ – effectively showing as uncertain.

What is concluded from this welcome, but far too late in the day revision? The ridiculous blaming of badgers was just too unevidenced, too ridiculous. APHA can no longer deny that evidence now points to the source of bTB infection being all but totally from livestock and livestock infected pastures. And it can only be addressed by livestock measures.

APHA’s hopeless Disease Report Form (DRF) to coax vets into naming badgers as a cause of new cattle infections was heavily criticised by a Derbyshire Wildlife Trust veterinary report in 2019. In their supplementary file, also recently released, APHA now say:

“A new Disease Report Form (DRF), for recording cattle TB incident investigations, is under development. This aims to enhance data capture and review the methodology around how we assess source attribution to improve understanding of TB transmission pathways and the evidence base for biosecurity advice.”

Whole Genome sequencing can now be used to better understand transmission routes. There is no excuse for anything but bringing all badger culling to an immediate and permanent stop.

Setting out the truth about badgers in black and white

Posted on 23/11/2023 by The Badger Crowd

The Northern Ireland Badger Group together with the USPCA has published a new factsheet on dispelling the myths on the role badgers play in the spread of Bovine TB (bTB). This follows a recent court outcome which has stopped a proposed badger cull in Northern Ireland.

Last month, both organisations welcomed the ruling from a judge that a badger cull proposed by the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA) as part of its drive to tackle bovine TB, would now not proceed.

This new factsheet provides dispels the myths on the role badgers play in the spread of Bovine TB. It adds to a growing evidence base that culling badgers is not the answer to bTB.

Nora Smith, Chief Executive of the USPCA said:

“Last month, we welcomed the court’s decision as a positive step in protecting Northern Ireland’s diverse wildlife and badger population. The unnecessary killing of helpless badgers by free shooting will do nothing to address the problem we have faced for years with bovine TB.

“We have full sympathy for our farming community who have been devastated by the impact of bovine TB on their herds and who have been led to believe a cull of badgers will play a leading role in solving the problem. It will not.

“The latest evidence reaffirms the highest rate of transmission is cow to cow. There must be a new conversation around how we eradicate bovine TB and the focus must be on cattle movements, testing and biosecurity. In Wales, which has a more robust strategy to protecting both cattle and badgers, they have seen a marked reduction in bTB, while their badger population remains intact.

Mike Rendle, Northern Ireland Badger Group commented:

“The recent court ruling has forestalled the pointless killing of large numbers of badgers in Northern Ireland. It is now beyond any doubt that cattle to cattle infection is driving bovine TB in herds. There is no credible evidence that badgers play a significant role in disease spread.

“The problem lies with the reservoir of undetected infection in cattle. The current skin test, which may detect as few as half of the infected animals in a herd, is not fit for purpose. Farmers and cattle deserve better.

“I hope that by dispelling misconceptions about badgers and instead following the latest scientific evidence, we can all work together to develop an effective evidence-led policy to deal with the disease while protecting farmers’ livelihoods as well as our badgers.”

Read the new factsheet here.

What next for Northern Ireland’s bovine TB strategy?

Posted on 14/11/2023 by The Badger Crowd

As Northern Ireland’s Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA) considers the fallout from the recent court judgement quashing their plan to shoot badgers in Northern Ireland, what does the future now hold for their bovine TB strategy?

DAERA’s current policy carried forward the main elements of the strategy proposed in 2016 by the government-appointed TB Strategy Partnership Group (TBSPG). The TBSPG was a government-industry partnership which included senior industry figures and former civil servants. Notably, no member of the group had any expertise or background in badgers or wildlife.

Soon after its appointment, the TBSPG met with stakeholders to ‘seek their views’. Even at that early stage, the TBSPG made it clear that they thought a badger cull was necessary. There was a clear impression that they had already decided on a badger cull before any evidence-gathering or engagement, meaningful or otherwise, had taken place.

The TBSPG was succeeded in 2018 by another industry-led group, the TB Eradication Partnership (TBEP), under the same TBSPG Chairman. Similarly, the TBEP exhibited equal enthusiasm for a badger cull, with apparent little regard for the views of the badger/wildlife side. You can read about the TBEP membership in this Protect the Wild blog.

Following the recent successful Judicial Review taken by Wild Justice and the Northern Ireland Badger Group, any further attempt by DAERA to progress a badger intervention will require a new public consultation. Given the shambolic nature of the last consultation, any new proposal will require root and branch revision to have any chance of succeeding.

Meanwhile, two major pieces of significant and highly relevant new research have emerged.

Firstly, a comprehensive analysis of bovine TB data by Langton et al. failed to identify a meaningful effect of badger culling on bovine TB in English cattle herds. Instead, reductions in cattle TB incidence and prevalence showed a strong correlation with the introduction of cattle-based disease control measures.

Secondly, a study carried out by scientists at the Northern Ireland Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute (AFBI) found that cattle-to-cattle transmission was by far the most common form of disease spread. Cattle-to-badger transmission was considerably more common than badger-to-cattle transmission, and no badger-to-badger transmission was detected.

The science makes it increasingly clear that ineffective herd testing and the two million cattle movements annually are driving the persistence and spread of bovine TB in Northern Ireland, not badgers. As the body of evidence exonerating badgers builds, DAERA will surely struggle to justify any new badger removal proposal.

As it turned out, DAERA’s (now defeated) decision to implement an indiscriminate and cruellest possible badger cull was a spectacular own goal and a decisive setback to their bovine TB strategy. The responsibility for this debacle lies squarely with the architects of the strategy and those in the industry who supported and enabled it.

Perhaps predictably, the decision to inflict unacceptable suffering on large numbers of healthy badgers served to galvanise the conservation and animal protection sectors in opposition to the plan.

For its part, the badger side has seen its good faith and willingness to engage thrown back in its face. Confidence and trust in the process have been seriously undermined. The government has squandered yet another opportunity to make meaningful progress.

This is a watershed moment for DAERA and the industry. They can choose to embrace the science and tackle the reservoir of undetected infection in cattle, or they can continue to scapegoat badgers and face further legal challenges and delays.

APHA, evidence and distortion – the badger blame game continues

Posted on 09/11/2023 by The Badger Crowd

A new analysis of Bovine TB data by the Animal and Plant Health Agency

“Difference in Differences analysis evaluates the effects of the Badger Control Policy on Bovine Tuberculosis in England”, by Colin P.D. Birch, Mayur Bakrania, Alison Prosser, Dan Brown, Susan M. Withenshaw, and Sara H. Downs.

This new analysis was posted as a pre-print on 6^th September, on the ‘bioRXive server. You can view it here, although there is no access to the data to check it.

With the current programme of intensive badger culling winding down and coming to an end in 2025, up to a quarter of a million largely healthy badgers have now been killed. A new consultation on Defra’s intentions going forward under the 2020 “Next Steps policy is expected on or after 16^th November. This new scientific paper has therefore been constructed at an important moment for the future direction of new bovine TB policy.

Both Therese Coffey (Secretary of State for Environment Food and Rural Affairs) and Lord Richard Benyon (Minister of State for Biosecurity, Marine and Rural Affairs) have said in public and in correspondence that badger culling should continue. Mark Spencer, (Minister of State for Food, Farming and Fisheries), has been using the Birch et al pre-print in parliament to claim large disease reductions from badger culling.

But how certain is the science behind these claims of disease reductions, and the stated intentions to carry on culling badgers?

In a 30 minute presentation available to view on YouTube here, Tom Langton talks through recent scientific pre-prints and publications that have analysed bovine TB in cattle herds and badger culling. Inevitably it is a technical presentation as the issues and the statistics involved are complex. But at this critical moment, as bTB policy is further revised, the controversy and uncertainty surrounding the science of bovine TB control needs even closer scrutiny.

Rescheduled! Friday 24th November Badger Cull Protest – 10 Years On

Posted on 09/11/2023 by The Badger Crowd

Originally scheduled for 20th October, the ’10 Years On Badger Cull Protest’ had to be cancelled due to Storm Babet. But we are ready to go again on Friday 24th November.

The early years of the badger cull from 2013 saw over 50 protest demonstrations and walks in towns and cities around England. Badger lovers, nature conservationists and members of the public were incredulous and angry that the government was sanctioning a slaughter of tens of thousands of healthy iconic badgers on the basis of a weak scientific theory that badgers were significantly involved in the spread of bovine tuberculosis in cattle. Many famous names from the world of animal protection and wildlife TV programming turned up to add their voices to the public opinion strongly against the government policy promoted by then Environment Secretary Owen Paterson.

But those in charge of policy ignored the protestors. They were listening to more powerful lobbying voices in the farming industry and to land-owning politicians who spoke out strongly in favour of badger culling and through neglect, the continuing trade in infected livestock.

Ten years on, and despite suggestions that badger culling would be phased out, it has never been more intense. A new consultation on further, more intensive (100%) badger culling is promised before the end of the year. With an election coming up next year it is time to protest again. We need to make sure those who make horrific decisions about our treasured wildlife know that despite all the other critical issues affecting the UK today, we are still shocked and angry about this brutal, unscientific and immoral policy, wasting public funds for vested interest gain – and it will affect how we vote at the next election.

Dominic Dyer will with us on the day, with further speakers to be announced.

IF YOU CARE, PLEASE BE THERE!

Belfast Court Rules Northern Ireland Badger Cull Plans Were Flawed

Posted on 25/10/2023 by The Badger Crowd

Mr Justice Scoffield has quashed the NI government attempt to introduce controversial badger culling to Northern Ireland. Granting a judicial review brought by wildlife NGO’s funded by public donation, he said that consultees were not told enough – and in sufficiently clear terms – to enable them to make an intelligent response in the consultation exercise. The ruling concludes:

“The court was unimpressed by the respondent’s argument that disclosure of the business case would be too complicated or distracting for would-be consultees,”

“The fact that consultees did their best to respond on the basis of the more limited set of information which had been disclosed to them does not alter the respondent’s obligation to act fairly.”

In September 2022 year Legal Campaigners Wild Justice with Northern Ireland Badger Group (NIBG) were granted a High Court hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice in Belfast to challenge a cull of badgers in Northern Ireland HERE and HERE.

This legal claim contested a decision announced in March 2022 by the Minister for Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA), Edwin Poots, to allow killing of up to 4,000 badgers a year along the lines that DEFRA has been mass killing healthy badgers in England since 2013. The primary target was a decision of 24 March 2022 – set out in a statement made by the Minister that day and in a ‘Bovine Tuberculosis Strategy for Northern Ireland’ published by the Department shortly afterwards.

The claim brought was that consultation on the policy was incorrect and did not reach the requirements of lawful consultation. So, the decision to choose to control the badger population by allowing farmer-led groups to shoot free-roaming badgers was unlawful. The judge agreed.

The claim argued that Mr Poots’ decision is unlawful because he issued the Article 13 (power to destroy wildlife) order under the Diseases of Animals 1981 Order, but that he had not made sure that there was no reasonably practicable alternative way of dealing with bovine TB in Northern Ireland.

Finally, the consultation had proposed shooting badgers as a preferred option, based on a “business case” which was not disclosed as part of the consultation documents. Because of this the consultation was not a fair procedure as those consulted were prevented from having a properly informed response without seeing it. Comparisons with Test Vaccinate Remove (TVR) approaches had not been fairly made and an APHA position that firmly place TVR approaches “on a par with proactive culling with respect to impact on cattle herd breakdowns” was not properly addressed.

As previously reported, with the help of the Northern Ireland farming industry press, the farming sector was being hoodwinked into thinking that badger culling could somehow help them. DAERA had been busy promoting badger culling with ‘roadshows’ making exaggerated claims, disseminating misinformation and use other propaganda tricks to try to garner cooperation.

All the lessons from England including the question marks over government badger culling science, going back to the 1990s are relevant too. It was barely possible to believe, after year-on-year failure in England and the Republic of Ireland, that DAERA wished to ignore their inadequate cattle controls and cull badgers over the next 10 years across Northern Ireland.

Also proposed was an element of experimental badger vaccination after the mass slaughter, a policy that government appointed experts in England in 2018 said was an unproven approach to the control of bTB in cattle.

DAERA may decide to appeal the decision or more likely to reconsult with a business plan that they have held secret, and will no doubt need to rewrite. Will they now go down the TVR route or cull and TVR – this too would be a huge mistake? With the present absence of an Executive and sitting Assembly at Stormont, it is unlikely that authorisation could be given in any case, even with a new consulted plan. What DAERA should do is think again. Even more new science has emerged since the claim began, showing why badger culling policy science has gone so badly wrong and culling badgers in any way is unnecessary.

Huge congratulations to Northern Ireland Badger Group and Wild Justice for bringing the case and to all those supporting the case and opposing the flawed consultation process.

Defra’s last stand?

Posted on 18/10/2023 by The Badger Crowd

APHA show a little bit of their hand at last

In March 2022, a peer-reviewed analysis of badger culling data was published in a top veterinary journal. It used all publicly available data. It showed no detectable difference in bovine TB breakdown between badger culled areas and unculled areas since 2013 (1). Now, after a government information black-out following their look at the data up to 2017, the Defra’s Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA) have at long last posted a pre-print of their own creation looking at their secretly held data up to 2021.

It is not clear why it has taken so long to release this new analysis, a draft of which was presented at a conference in August 2022 (2).

Cynics might say there has been a search for obscure statistical methods to get the results needed to try to show a badger culling has not been a 100% failure. And of course, it supported the pro-cull rationale to hold data secret and keep quiet about any weakness in policy. This served to enable the 2022 and 2023 killings of over 50,000 mostly healthy badgers, planned and executed by the willing and obedient hands of Natural England (3).

The new pre-print, posted 6^th September in ‘bioarchive’ (bioRxiv), is by six members of APHA staff. It tries to use an obscure technique: “Difference in Differences analysis evaluates the effects of the Badger Control Policy on Bovine Tuberculosis in England” to look at Bovine TB breakdown incidence (Withdrawn herds: OTFW) between 2009 and 2020 (4). There are many aspects of this new analysis which are problematic, but here are a few of the more obvious.

A new statistical method of analysis – ‘Difference in differences’ (DID)

This is the first time the DID approach has been used in badger cull analyses and it is simply inappropriate. DID compares the changes in outcomes over time between a population that is enrolled in a programme (a group subject to an intervention) and a population that is not (the control group).

The attempt here is to use the same areas in a ‘before and after’ way. There is no clearly defined control group, it is just the fragmented cull areas before they are licensed to cull. The 52 cull areas are surrounded by and influencing each other during a wide range of tightening testing interventions. They are, therefore, not adequately discrete in space and time, breaking a fundamental DID requirement. So not only is this (DID) an unorthodox approach, but it does not follow the basic rules of the unorthodox approach. It is looking a bit desperate already.

Notably, in the period 2016- 2020, pre-cull and cull areas closely juxta position. Pre-cull and cull cattle testing interventions of course influence changes in adjacent pre-cull and cull areas in an irregular and unpredictable manner, via the constant movement of cattle with different testing and control histories. It’s a mess, and surprising that this has been presented as an appropriate statistical method, considering the subject and the epidemiology involved.

Analysis does not distinguish between different causes of disease decline.

Does the analysis decisively link badger culling to decline in bovine TB in cattle? Not at all. Any possible effect of badger culling is confounded with the continuous multi-faceted and complex tightening of cattle testing that took place in an uneven manner over different and irregular time periods. Some of the very important bTB testing controls used, and the timing of their introduction, are incorrectly described and some of the most important ones are not even mentioned.

The Badger Culling Policy invention

There are places in the manuscript where a claim is made for a link to badger culling, ‘The effect of badger culling…’, but then later this is adjusted to ‘However, this data analysis cannot explicitly distinguish…….’ APHA have stated more than once in their recent epidemiology reports that the cattle breakdown data alone are insufficient to show an effect of culling.

Frankly there is no such thing as the ‘Badger Culling Policy’ (BCP) as framed by this report, beyond just killing badgers. It is an invention trying to characterize extensive cattle testing and movement control measures as just a part of the badger culling bolt-on, rolled out six years after testing control measures had been continuously tightened year on year. To pretend the extensive suite of testing and movement control measures is somehow a part of a whole is just a repeat of the ‘all tools in a box’ nonsense and it deceives. True, some of the more essential measures were increased from the first year of badger culling, but most of them were independent of it and ramped up gradually. So trying to pull them apart in a post-facto try-on will not impress the independent scientist, even if an obliging journal prints it, and industry and Defra promote it with their coterie of academic cheerleaders. Badger culling has just been a pointless distraction to cattle surveillance and control measures to address rampant cattle-to-cattle transmission.

So again, no, the analysis is not able to show causation by badger culling of any change in disease, and Defra and APHA’s judgement could be seen ill-judged by trying to convince anyone that this is credible. It is as clumsy as the Chief Vet’s apologies and efforts on Radio 4’s Farming Today in 2022. Defra boss Richard Benyon has been claiming big figures for badger cull benefits for years, but this does not provide any evidence for them.

What is the ‘true burden of disease’?

The new analysis has a surprising and unconventional interpretation of the ‘true burden of the disease’ or disease ‘prevalence’ in a population. It suggests that ‘incidence’ is the better indicator of true burden, which they must surely understand flies against first principles. It is ‘old thinking’ based on the out-dated views of farm vets who claimed that only visibly lesioned cows are infectious. Yes, incidence has been one unit of disease measurement, and it was the unit used by the RBCT to claim a benefit for badger culling. But science has moved on, and this is a strange attempt to live in the past.

The interpretation contrasts with APHA’s reports and understanding of disease controls if you look closely. It contrasts with the conclusions drawn from better comprehension of the SICCT (skin) test sensitivity and specificity, which has been clarified in recent years. Gamma IFyN testing has revealed a very significant reservoir of undetected reactors (diseased animals) in bTB infected herds, pointing towards undisclosed infection in undetected herds too. This ‘hidden’ reservoir in cattle that remains is what really matters for disease understanding and control. The true burden is bigger than the known breakdowns and identified reactors, why else would the disease persist? Both here and in Republic of Ireland where badgers have been relentlessly persecuted and SICCT and Gamma testing has failed for decades.

So why exactly did APHA attempt this clumsy redefinition of the ‘true burden of disease’. Perhaps because it needs to try to defend the original RBCT analysis which by controversial statistical modelling (5), managed to suggest a relationship between incidence and badger culling, having failed to find a relationship with disease prevalence. The effort applied to carry on killing badgers is deeply disturbing.

But wasn’t bovine TB already reducing before badger culling began?

Levels of Bovine TB were falling in many areas soon after annual SICCT testing was introduced in 2010. And well before culling started in most areas. However, the new APHA analysis reduces the analysis of pre-cull data to one data point. This conveniently helps to conceal the significant pre-cull decline and masks the true disease trajectory and results. A logarithmic scale is also used to distort visual effect. Not unlike methods used in the earlier Brunton and Downs reports.

Recent Edge Area data added into the analysis for what purposes?

The new analysis mixes data from 46 High Risk Area study areas with 6 from the Edge Area. These have very different epidemiological and disease control history profiles and the reason for mixing them is not explained. It looks like a deliberate attempt to manipulate the data. Pre-cull gamma testing was intense in the Edge Area. While the manuscript mentions additional gamma testing from 2017, gamma testing was erratic between areas and over time. There were considerable numbers of gamma reactors in many of the cull areas in cull years 1 and 2 of culling with similar disclosures levels to years 3 and 4, but pre-cull use in the HRA was generally low. Mixing them may give you a result you like, but it can be seen through for what it is.

In both HRA and Edge areas, bTB incidence was declining when many of the additional disease control rules were intensified, and badger culling introduced. The addition of this extra data makes it even more impossible to distinguish effects of badger culling and disease control measures that are known to drive down bTB.

Attempt to dismiss peer-reviewed 2022 study published without mentioning it

A comment in the text of the new pre-print says that it is not possible to match badger culled and control areas. This is not only incorrect but unevidenced, with unsubstantiated claims. The 2022 published and peer reviewed study that used this methodology effectively has not been cited. There is no mention of the even more obvious alternative to their complex DID approach, which would be to simply match a series of individual farms in culled and unculled areas. This approach is only available to APHA, which holds all individual farm records confidentially. Such simple monitoring could and should have been an expected outcome of a High Court ruling that required the government to ‘adapt and learn’ from badger culling. Why has it not been done? Perhaps it has been done but gave the wrong results?

Distinct lack of clarity

There is a definite need for clarity in the analysis presented, including the Appendix. This does not seem to be the output from the constrained DID analysis, but something else that is not fully described in the methodology. Analysis uses the lesser known system called STATA (nearly all analysts use R-code). The data is not supplied, and the Stata code is not supplied, so no one can replicate what has been done here. An author, when contacted, said these would be available following publication of the paper. Too late for others to comment on?

Does this draft show that badger culling has reduced bovine TB In cattle?

No, it doesn’t. Because the methods are inappropriate, the results are flawed, and so the conclusions are wrong. There is no way to distinguish between different interventions and change in herd breakdowns since 2013 with the approach taken. Might these results be misleading and deceive if published? Yes. Why has such a flawed analysis been produced now? Is it a try-on to justify Natural England’s new autumn badger blood-fest? Will Defra contractors, grant recipients and a friendly journal whisk it through peer review with recommended friendly reviewers? Probably.

A consultation on culling all badgers over wide areas is being cooked up despite previous policy promises. One could speculate that APHA have been told both by bosses and lawyers that they need to produce evidence that the culling policy has not been a complete waste of life, public funds, and other resources including masses of police time. They are desperate to do this, and get it out right in front of the move to ‘carry on culling’. This preprint aims to be the new truth about badger culling, but it’s all smoke and mirrors.

References

POSTPONED DUE TO BAD WEATHER! Stand by for new date. Badger Cull Protest 10 Years On

Posted on 11/10/2023 by The Badger Crowd

Speakers on the day will include:

Mary Barton – AKA Betty Badger & long-term Defra protestor
Mark Jones – co-author of peer-reviewed scientific paper showing failure of badger culls
Dominic Dyer – Born Free wildlife campaigner & Ex-CEO of the Badger Trust
Nick Cole – North-East Hampshire Badger Group

IF YOU CARE, PLEASE BE THERE!