Email to Tewkesbury Borough Councillors ahead of their debate on the badger cull

Dear Councillor,

You will be considering the pilot badger cull trial in Gloucestershire at your meeting on Monday 1^st October. I understand you have the JCS debate first, which if it is anything like the debate we had in Cheltenham could be quite long. However, I hope that even if you do not get to the badger cull item until quite late that you are able to give it the full and proper attention that it deserves.

You will probably have an awful lot of paperwork for Mondays meeting but please spare a few minutes to read this email because I hope it covers some of the key issues around this controversial subject when coming to a decision at your meeting:

·         the high levels of public interest in the pilot badger culls,

·         criticism of the policy from the scientists on whose work it has been justified,

·         the possibility that bTB could be spread from outside the cull zone affecting other farmers (through the perturbation effect),

·         concerns about public safety expressed by the police and

·         Increased threat of wildlife crime committed against badgers outside the culling zone.

Given the above I was very concerned to see from the meeting papers that when your scrutiny committee originally looked into this matter one of your speakers, Mr Jan Rowe, was allowed to address you even though he is a director in the company responsible for carrying out the cull in Gloucestershire. In my view Mr Rowe has a clear pecuniary and prejudicial interest in this matter as someone whose company is licensed to carry out the cull and I would have thought that it would have been more sensible for your council to take an expert view from someone not so directly involved in it.

There is huge public interest in the proposed trial badger culls as has been shown by the speed at which Dr Brian May’s online petition has gained support – having gained over 131,000+ signatures in a very short space of time - http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/38257

Supermarkets M&S, Waitrose and the Co Op have confirmed they will not be selling milk from suppliers within the culling zone. People are using their consumer power to let farmers know what they think. These are trial culls and could be rolled out elsewhere but in the trial areas the cull must continue for years once started. If the British public do not want to buy milk or beef from areas where badgers are culled and supermarkets continue to respond to their customers concerns, it could have a catastrophic impact on the demand for milk and beef produced by farmers in Gloucestershire. I have changed my shopping habits as a direct result and I know many other people have as well. This will have a serious economic impact on our rural economy here which I believe your council has a duty to have an interest in.

The pilot badger culls are being described by the Government as part of their science-led approach to tackling bovine TB. However, the architect of the Randomised Badger Cull Trial (Lord Krebs) – the scientific experiment on which the Govt bases its claims has described the proposed pilot badger culls as a ‘crazy scheme’. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19623931 ).

The RBCT cost £50m of public money, took 10 years and saw 11,000 badgers being killed. The conclusions of that enormous piece of scientific research was that killing badgers could make no meaningful contribution to reducing incidents of bovine TB in cattle and instead recommended vaccination and improved bio security as the way to tackle the disease. It is simply disingenuous of national politicians to say there is no alternative to culling, there are alternatives but Govt would need to invest money in them as opposed to the pilot culls ,which the already hard pressed farmers are being expected to pay for themselves.

This new ‘pilot’ cull will not test or investigate the reduction in bTB using the method of free shooting of badgers at night (a method which was never used in the RBCT where badgers were cage trapped and shot). It is a test to find out whether they can kill 70% of the badgers in the cull area, and kill them humanely. Not whether this method will reduce bTB. If the government decide that they can achieve their kill rate without wounding too many this will be rolled out across the South West, killing up to 130,000 badgers.

The RBCT experiment found that at best, using cage trapping and shooting over 10 years, culling could reduce the increase in the incidence (not the overall amount of bTB) by 16%.  This is what’s called a relative reduction, not an absolute reduction. Something else therefore, other than badgers is causing the background rise in bTB.  The scientists involved in the RBCT and the ISG do not believe that the new method of culling can achieve this. In fact they believe it could make the situation worse (but no-one will be measuring that).

The Independent Scientific Group’s final report in 2007 based on the Randomised Badger Culling Trial concluded that culling was not an effective option, even if conducted rigorously and systematically. The ISG  analysed various strategies that could be pursued at lower cost – including licensing farmers to conduct a cull, rather than having it co-ordinated by government.

It concluded: “We consider it likely that licensing farmers (or their appointees) to cull badgers would not only fail to achieve a beneficial effect, but would entail a substantial risk of increasing the incidence of cattle TB and spreading the disease.”

In order for the pilot culls to try and reduce bTB, at least 70% of badgers in an area should be killed (to avoid the perturbation effect – see picture below) but establishing accurately how many badgers there are in such a large area as is proposed will be very difficult if not impossible to achieve. Shooting free running badgers at night is not an easy task as they are low slung, thick skinned animals and as mentioned before this method of killing badgers not been subject to scientific testing.

Nationally suggestions are that there are 300,000 badgers in England. This means that if the cull is rolled out following the pilot, we could stand to lose 1/3rd of the nation’s badgers.  The majority of which will be healthy. Plus, there is no way of knowing for sure how many badgers are killed or wounded.  

According to the Bern convention it would be illegal to cause local extinction. Without an accurate count of badgers, there is a risk this could happen. Humane Society International has a complaint with Bern about the badger cull. I believe Tewkesbury Borough Council has a duty in respect to land which it owns to act to ensure that it does not contribute to a policy where badgers are made locally extinct in the part of Gloucestershire where the cull is to take place - contrary to the Bern convention. An interesting video on youtube discusses this issue http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_55z1AgLM_c&feature=youtu.be

If the 70% target is not reached in the Gloucestershire cull zone then it is highly likely perturbation would occur impacting negatively on farms just outside the cull zone. Again I believe your Council must be a responsible land owner and not allow anything to happen on its land which would harm or prejudice farmers elsewhere.

There IS a vaccine for cattle and badgers. Badgers are being vaccinated now by injection and an oral vaccine should be ready in two years. This vaccine has shown a 74% reduction in badgers testing positive for bovine tb and does not cause badgers to leave their territory and spread the disease further.  There is a cattle vaccine which is being used in Ethiopia and has shown positive results (much better than the result that can be achieved with a cull). We currently can’t use it because of EU regulations. Why is our government not putting pressure on the EU to allow it’s use?

Culling badgers will not result in healthy badgers. The RBCT found that culling badgers increases the level of the disease in the remaining population. You may have less badgers, but a higher proportion of them will be carrying the disease than before. This means that all the years of culling and gassing over the last 50 years have been making the situation worse.

Badgers rarely die of bovine tb. Very few badgers, even in hotspot areas of the South West are even infected with bovine tb. Of those, only a very small percentage will become ill and therefore infectious. The vast majority of infected badgers are more likely to die of other causes. If this were not the case, badger groups across the country would be dealing with tb on a daily basis. They aren’t.

You may have heard ‘No country in the world has beaten bovine tb without addressing the disease in wildlife’. This refers mainly to possums in New Zealand. Possums do not live in settled territories like badgers; they roam over much greater distances and interact with many other possums and species.  Possums are also a pest species in New Zealand, not a native species. They were killed by dropping poisoned bait from the air. Poison is indiscriminate and has killed many of New Zealand native and protected wildlife. You cannot compare apples with oranges, or possums with badgers due to their very different ecology and behaviour.

In terms of public safety police have expressed concerns about the pilot culls (http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/sep/19/badger-cull-public-safety-risk).

Detective chief superintendent Adrian Tudway, national co-ordinator for domestic extremism at the Association of Chief Police Officers, told Defra officials: "Farmers and landowners culling badgers with firearms (of any description) has potential to place armed farm workers in the near vicinity of protesters and activists, typically during the night-time; we regard this as a scenario with clear potential for harm to public safety … we believe there is a likelihood [of] incidents of lawful protest and lobbying as well as some potential for unlawful direct action, disorder and criminality." He also referred to reduced police resources owing to "the impact of the recent funding cuts".

At a County Council scrutiny meeting this week, Councillors from all parties agreed that the policy resulting to allowing culling on County Council owned land should go to full council for debate and possible amendment – at present tenant farmers only have to notify GCC rather than consult with them if they wish to allow badger culling to take place. One of the key issues identified was public safety when the culls are being carried out. With only two pilot cull areas set to go ahead, Gloucestershire will be at the focus of animal welfare protesters, many of whom are recruiting people to come here to try to sabotage the culls.

There is also a risk that the pilot culls give a signal that in is open season to kill or abuse badgers. Peter Charleston, staff officer at Acpo to Chief Constable Richard Crompton, who has responsibility for wildlife crime, told his boss in an email the cull would risk widespread illegal killing of badgers under the cover of culling: "Concerns relate to the possibility of open season being declared on badgers because of a perception that Defra is not really bothered about their protected status." Wildlife groups are already reporting that this is happening already.

As a public authority your council has a duty to protect its residents and the economic wellbeing of the area. I firmly believe that given the significant concern about this policy – as shown by scientists who undertook the RBCT, the police who are concerned about public safety, and the public that a strong signal from your council is needed to show that this council takes this issue seriously and in particular has not placed undue emphasis in its decision making on evidence of someone who is set to benefit financially from the cull going ahead.

Please follow the lead of the Forest of Dean District Council who today agreed not to allow culling on land they own.

Kind regards.

Klara.