.........
The
proceedings are reported in the language in which they were spoken
in the committee. In addition, a transcription of the simultaneous
interpretation is included. Where contributors have supplied
corrections to their evidence, these are noted in the
transcript.
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Dechreuodd y cyfarfod am 09:03.
The meeting began at 09:03.
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Cyflwyniad, Ymddiheuriadau, Dirprwyon a Datgan
Buddiannau
Introductions, Apologies, Substitutions and Declarations of
Interest
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[1]
Mark Reckless: Good morning, or good evening, I believe, in
New Zealand. Thank you very much for staying up so late to talk to
us; we really do appreciate it. Our witness is Dr Paul Livingstone
who was the TB eradication research manager for New Zealand’s
Animal Health Board. I think you’re now retired from that
role, so we’re very grateful for you making yourself
available.
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09:04
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Tuberculosis mewn Gwartheg yng Nghymru
Bovine Tuberculosis in Wales
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[2]
Mark Reckless: Could I start, as Chairman of the committee,
just by asking about some of the major differences between New
Zealand and Wales? Clearly, New Zealand is a larger country than
Wales and less densely populated, even if Wales is relatively
sparse compared to the UK. I just wondered about the method of pest
control. We, here, are primarily worried about badgers and the main
method has been shooting. I just wondered if you could explain the
wildlife that causes concerns in New Zealand and is seen as behind
spreading TB and what the mechanisms of pest control are.
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[3]
Dr Livingstone: Good morning. It’s really an honour
and a privilege to be able to present—[Inaudible.] Is
that coming through all right?
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[4]
Mark Reckless: Can you start again? We had the first bit
that came through, and then there was a bit of a gap. Could I ask
you to start the answer once more?
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[5]
Dr Livingstone: Sure. So, just before I start, good morning.
It’s an honour and a privilege to present to you this
morning. Can you hear that?
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[6]
Mark Reckless: Yes, thank you.
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[7]
Dr Livingstone: Okay. So, going back—I’ve got
some slides here that may assist us in showing some of this
material. Is that all right?
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[8]
Mark Reckless: We can try. We have a picture of you and a
table. Whether we’ll see the slides, I don’t know, but
let’s have a go.
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[9]
Dr Livingstone: I’ll take you back to the beginning, I
think, probably to let you know about our wildlife. So, we’ll
try this. Okay. Can you see that all right?
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[10]
Mark Reckless: No. Unfortunately, we just still have a
picture of you and your table, and the above and back of your
computer.
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[11]
Dr Livingstone: That’s a shame. Okay. We have areas
where we have been TB testing since 1965, and we continued each
year to test these herds for infection. In 1970, we brought in what
was known as block testing, where we went in and we tested every
animal in every herd in the areas every three months. Every animal
was tested, had a mark, had paint on its back to show it had been
infected, and paint on reading day to show it had been read. For
any animal that had any increase, we used the caudal fold as our
means of testing—not the neck test—so it was a very
sensitive test. Any animal that reacted went straight for
slaughter, and then we would fly the area with a helicopter and
we’d shoot any animal that didn’t have a cross on its
back. That made sure that all animals were presented for testing.
Do you hear that?
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[12]
Mark Reckless: Yes. Can I just clarify—? You were you
shooting the animals, including cattle that you hadn’t
previously marked, from the air? Is that correct?
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[13]
Dr Livingstone: That’s correct. Any animal that
hadn’t been presented for testing was killed.
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[14]
Mark Reckless: And was that humane? I mean, coming from the
air in a helicopter, isn’t there quite a high chance of
missing or only injuring the animal?
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[15]
Dr Livingstone: These guys are marksmen. They shoot it
through the head every time. So, they did this and they tested
every three months for two years. The levels stayed constant in
these cattle and these herds. At that stage, they found TB in
possum populations in these areas, and they then started to control
possums. They continued testing cattle, but suddenly the infection
rate dropped down. It went down from something like 85 per cent of
herds infected to less than 25 per cent over a period of two years.
So, we’ve been testing, testing, testing—no change.
Suddenly, due to possum control, it just dropped down. As a result,
we found that TB in possums was our source of infection for cattle
and, in fact, something like 90 per cent of our newly infected
herds were due to TB in wildlife—possums and, in some cases,
ferrets.
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[16]
Mark Reckless: What mechanism was used to control the
possums?
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[17]
Dr Livingstone: In farmland, we used trapping with leg-hold
traps, and cyanide poison. In forest areas, we used extensive
aerial 1080, which is sodium fluoroacetate—poison in a cereal
bait.
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[18]
Mark Reckless: Just to clarify the second point on the
farming. Was that a type of poison as well or a different
mechanism?
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[19]
Dr Livingstone: Cyanide is a type of poison that is in a
capsule; the possum grinds it in its teeth—it grinds and
opens that capsule.
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[20]
Mark Reckless: Thank you very much, Dr Livingstone. I will
now bring in other members of the committee, starting with David
Melding.
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[21]
David Melding: Hello, Dr Livingstone, and, again, thank you
very much for agreeing to give evidence. I wonder if you could talk
about the efficacy and the timescales in particular of the
eradication plan. I have to say, I’m new to this committee
and to the challenges of rural affairs and the agricultural
community; I’m a fairly urban person. But, when a 40-year
plan for eradication is proposed, that seems a very long timescale.
I realise, for cattle herds, it’s shorter than that, but can
you just talk about why that’s the timescale for the eventual
eradication—in all mammals, I think is what is meant by
that—and what progress are you making towards the more
immediate target for cattle, which I think is 2026, if I’ve
got that right?
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[22]
Dr Livingstone: Getting TB out of farm herds in New Zealand
is relatively easy. By testing, slaughter and using ancillary tests
such as the gamma interferon test, we have a sensitivity of
somewhere around 93 or 95 per cent. So, with repeat testing, we
quite quickly get TB out of infected herds. The problem that occurs
is that you’ve got the reinfection of herds from TB in wild
animals, and we have TB in possums. It was up to 39 per cent of New
Zealand’s land area that had TB possums acting as a source of
infection for cattle. It’s now down to about 32 per cent of
New Zealand. So, it’s dropped down and, as a result,
we’ve eradicated infection from possums. As a consequence,
we’ve cleared infection from those herds. So, the length of
time is actually the time taken to eradicate infection out of the
possum population, and the time there is due to the money—it
costs a lot of money to actually control possums. We spend normally
somewhere around about $55 million a year controlling possums, and
about $18 million a year controlling TB in cattle.
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[23]
David Melding: Dr Livingstone, it seems a lot of the debate
in Britain has focused on, quite rightly, issues of animal welfare
but also the humane control, then, of the badger population and how
that might be achieved. I wonder if you get that sort of
resistance. Are possums as cute and lovable as badgers, as far as
the general public are concerned? But my main point here is that,
actually, the scientific and veterinary advice we’re getting
from the Welsh Government is that the main thing in terms of TB
control and reduction is around the size of the cattle herds. Is
that something you would agree with?
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[24]
Dr Livingstone: With regard to the size of cattle herds,
yes, the larger the herd size, the more difficult it is to get it
out of them. We will have herds of, say, 650 cows, they’ve
tested clear, infection gets into that herd and, say, six months
later, we can get 250 of those 600 cows being tuberculous and being
slaughtered. So it can go very fast through a herd, but then they
can respond very quickly to TB testing. So, yes, larger herds are
more difficult to get the TB out of than smaller herds, but we can
still achieve that through frequent testing.
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[25]
David Melding: I should have said it’s also movement
between herds; that was the other key thing. So, is it a
combination, then? Are there a lot of restrictions on the herd size
and the movement that’s permitted and the, I have to say,
quite radical measures that are also taken? I suspect they would
meet with a level of public resistance at the moment here in Wales.
That’s not to say we shouldn’t hear the evidence from
you. But is it most of one and some of the other? Can we vary this,
or do you have to have strict approaches, both to cattle size and
movement, and the willingness to shoot lots of wildlife,
basically?
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09:15
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[26]
Dr Livingstone: First of all, you can’t restrict a
farmer’s herd size. The farmer is there to make money out of
his production and, therefore, the herd size is very much dependent
on what they can afford. So, we don’t restrict anything
around herd size, but we do require that, if you’ve an
infected herd, you are under quarantine, and if you live in an area
where we have TB wildlife, then, in fact, you’re also placed
under a movement restriction, meaning you have to have pre-movement
testing to move from those areas.
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[27]
Mark Reckless: David, I think you had a final point about
exports and TB.
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[28]
David Melding: I’m not sure you’ll be able to
answer this question, because it takes us over to another area, but
you may well be in a position to. You will know that the United
Kingdom has voted to leave the European Union. Currently, our
membership of the European Union gives us some protection around
the attitude that other countries, not just in the European Union,
take to red meat imports from the United Kingdom. We’ve heard
from the farmers unions that, without this level of protection,
other countries might cite our TB status as a reason to restrict
trade with us. Has this been a problem for the red meat industry in
New Zealand?
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[29]
Dr Livingstone: It’s a very interesting question. When
we come to look at our strategy, when you do the cost side, there
is no benefit to farmers from doing a TB scheme. There is nothing
that we can identify that would impact on our ability to export
meat to the United States or Europe. There has been no indication
that, because of our TB status, they would not accept our product.
But, I guess we’ve always been concerned that if we let TB go
again in the possum population and the number of infected herds
went up to what we used to have back in the 1990s, then, in fact,
countries or their consumers might put a block on us. So, we have
built that into—. When we build our models for economic
costs, we build a possibility that that might happen. But,
there’s no evidence to say that: if we talk to our industry
people, they say there is no evidence that TB is impacting on their
ability to trade.
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[30]
David Melding: Thank you very much.
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[31]
Mark Reckless: Can I bring in Sian?
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[32]
Sian Gwenllian: Good morning. What’s the evidence that
you use in favour of the method of controlling wildlife as the way
of eradicating TB?
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[33]
Dr Livingstone: Sorry, what do you mean by the evidence?
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[34]
Sian Gwenllian: The evidence—the scientific evidence
on which you base your plan and your way of tackling the
problem.
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[35]
Dr Livingstone: Okay, are you asking whether we are
satisfied that the possum was our source of infection.
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[36]
Sian Gwenllian: Yes, and what evidence—how is that
quantified in scientific terms?
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[37]
Mark Reckless: You seem to refer back to the 1970s, when you
had a go at starting killing possums and then TB dropped a lot. Was
there any evidence to suggest it was possums and what’s the
evidence now as to how important possums or other wildlife sources
are?
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[38]
Dr Livingstone: Unfortunately—if I had a slide,
I’d be able to show it to you. But we started doing possum
control in 1972, and that saw the number of infected herds drop
from—we don’t know how high, but we got it down to
about 500. Then, the Government of the day stopped funding for
possum control and the number of infected herds went up to 1,694 by
1994. So, this was a response to not doing possum control, even
though the TB testing kept going at the same frequency. So, there
was no change to the frequency of TB testing, yet the number of
infected herds went from 500 to 1,694, and then we started to get
more money for possum control. So, everywhere where we’ve
done possum control, subsequently, we’ve seen a reduction in
the number of infected herds. So, subsequently, now we’re
down to 43.
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[39]
Sian Gwenllian: So, just the fact that it has
decreased—just the correlation between the numbers
happening—rather than scientific evidence.
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[40]
Dr Livingstone: There have been a number of programmes that
have looked at it scientifically and written up in papers on that.
I guess, if I take you back to maybe the first scenario, we had a
person with a farm where he had a major river through his farm. We
found TB possums on one side of his river. We brought in 29 calves
from a TB-free herd, put them across where the possums were, and
six months later we tested those cattle. Of the 29, 26 reacted to
the test and 16 had gross lesions of TB. They were all infected
from possums. There was no contact that they had with cattle.
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[41]
Mark Reckless: One of the barriers against badgers and
pests—well, eradication or action that would reduce their
numbers here is that many people in British society have a
particular affection for badgers. The second area that we have to
consider very carefully is the issue of perturbation when perhaps
farmers might think that killing badgers could help with TB. If
that happens, certainly on a small scale, the evidence seems to be
that the badgers then move around much more and actually increase
the spread of TB. Are either of those issues—? The public
affection for the animal: does that apply to possums in any way, in
the way that it does for badgers here? And also, what’s the
issue around perturbation?
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[42]
Dr Livingstone: Okay. First of all, before man arrived in
New Zealand, we only had three mammal species, and they were all
bats. So, everything since man has arrived has been introduced. So,
we’ve introduced possums, introduced rats, introduced stoats,
introduced ferrets, and these animals are all preying on our native
birds. So, as a consequence, native bird populations are dropping
down, and native insects are dropping down, because they’re
being eaten by these animals. So, anything we do that destroys
possums also destroys rats and there’s secondary poisoning of
stoats. So, we cut out that predator group and our native bird
population increases. So, there’s a conservation benefit that
we achieve from the TB control programme, as well as killing TB
possums.
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[43]
Mark Reckless: Can I bring in Jenny with a quick
question?
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[44]
Jenny Rathbone: So, just to clarify, what you’re
intent on, then, is a possum eradication programme regardless of
whether they have TB or not. Is that right?
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[45]
Dr Livingstone: No, it’s not. Our role is to eradicate
bovine TB. So, when we believe we’ve eradicated it from an
area, then we stop doing possum control and the possum numbers will
then increase, but they will be TB free. So, it’s not our
role to eradicate possums; our role is to eradicate TB. We’ve
taken them down to very low densities, which prevents TB from
cycling within that population that’s left, and therefore the
disease drops out.
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[46]
Mark Reckless: Is there just a linear relationship between
killing more possums and reducing the amount of possums with TB and
the spread of it? Is there any issue around perturbation, which we
find when we kill some badgers? It makes the badgers move much
more, and spreads the TB amongst them, than would be the case if we
weren’t killing them. Is that not an issue at all with
possums?
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[47]
Dr Livingstone: We’re doing large-scale poisoning. It
may involve something like, say, 80,000 to 90,000 hectares that we
would do control on. If it’s farmland, then we have the whole
jigsaw of areas that come together. Currently, we have somewhere
around about 9 million hectares under possum control at various
degrees. So, perturbation is not a problem. The density is too low
for possums to perturbate.
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[48]
Mark Reckless: Thank you. Could I bring in Jayne?
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[49]
Jayne Bryant: Good evening, Dr Livingstone. With the
development of the national TB strategy in New Zealand, perhaps you
could explain some more of your views on the mechanisms that are
being used at the moment to reduce the risk, such as the
registration of deer and cattle and the movement control areas.
Perhaps you could expand on that a little bit.
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[50]
Dr Livingstone: We require all cattle to have
radio-frequency identification, individual ID tags, which I assume
you guys do also. And all herds have to be registered—all
animals are to be registered. And we’re attempting—we
haven’t been successful—to get all movements put
through so that we have that on the database. So, if animal A moves
from farm A to farm B, we know that. We have good data from animals
that go to the slaughter, but we don’t have very good data
from animals moving between farms at this stage. And that’s
an area where we have a hole in our system and we’re working
to try and improve that. So, we do require registration, we do
require animal ID, but what we’re going forward to
do—because, as I said, we believe most our infections are
from wild animals or through movement from suspect areas—is
we are aiming to try and reduce our amount of testing, from
currently about 4.5 million a year down to less than 1 million,
through using data from animals, herd history and area history. So,
areas where the animals are high risk, we want to be able to trace
them, and do testing on the herd that they go into, but all the
other animals, we won’t bother with our testing, because
they’re not at risk.
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[51]
Jane Bryant: So, the national take on this has been that
that’s made the biggest change, and the resourcing towards
this, I believe.
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[52]
Dr Livingstone: It will be, yes. In going forward,
we’d look to go from spending, say, $10 million on testing
down to maybe $2.5 million to $3 million on testing, as a result of
being able to reduce our testing.
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[53]
Jane Bryant: Thank you.
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[54]
Mark Reckless: Can I go to Jenny?
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[55]
Jenny Rathbone: I just wanted to ask how farmers have been
involved in the governance arrangements on this, both in
determining which are going to be movement control areas and what
the compensation arrangements are.
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[56]
Dr Livingstone: Sure. If we go back again to the 1980s, when
the Government, which was funding our programme—they funded
the whole programme, and they stopped the amount of money going
into possum control, and, as a result, we required farmers to
continue testing but weren’t doing anything about the possum,
then the farmers got very angry about that. So, it would be a bit
like when the All Blacks are playing Wales, if there was a biased
ref, and he was giving the penalties all to one side, the other
side would be more brassed off. And so, what was happening here was
farmers saying, ‘Why are we required to test, but
you’re not doing anything about the wild animal—the
source of infection?’ So, the farmers then went to the
Government and they basically took over the programme. The farmers
now manage the programme, they administer it, and they set the
policy on compensation, around movement control, for that system.
So, farmers when they came in, they said, ‘Farmers will only
receive 65 per cent of their market value.’ So, that was what
farmers wanted, and that was what was put in. So, that was all
farmers got for their reactors—65 per cent.
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[57]
Jenny Rathbone: So, in most communities, you’ll have
good farmers and then you’ll have lazy farmers. How do they
manage those who are less precise in the way they manage their
animals?
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[58]
Dr Livingstone: Again, there are legal requirements for
farmers to test, and if farmers don’t test or don’t get
rid of reactors, we will come and enforce them to test. If they
don’t test, we go in and shoot the animals. So, we have that
power and we do that. That’s rare, but we do it. And we
require, if there’s a farmer who won’t get rid of the
reactors—we will go and muster those animals and send them
for slaughter. And so, we would require those people to—. And
we would take legal cases against anyone who otherwise breaks the
rules.
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[59]
Jenny Rathbone: The very large sums of money you’ve
spoken about earlier, the $55 million on possum control and the $80
million on cattle control—does that come out of money that
might otherwise be used on developing agriculture? What impact does
it have on the income of farmers?
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09:30
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[60]
Dr Livingstone: It was only $18 million on testing and
compensation. We have a budget of about $80 million, of which
wildlife was $55 million and testing was about $18 million. The
funding for all the cattle testing and
compensation—it’s funded by farmers. There’s no
Government input to that. Government funds half of the
wildlife-control programme. So, of the $55 million, Government puts
in about $27 million.
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[61]
Jenny Rathbone:
So, the farmers fund the rest of the
wildlife programme as well as the compensation
programme?
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[62]
Dr Livingstone:
As well as the testing and compensation
programme, yes. It’s funded through a levy on all cattle
slaughtered. Currently, it’s $11.50 for every animal
slaughtered that comes into the TB-control programme. In addition,
the dairy industry, because dairy cattle aren’t being
slaughtered so frequently as beef, have a levy on their produce of
about 1 cent per kilogram of milk solids, and that, again, comes to
our programme.
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[63]
Jenny Rathbone:
So, is that universally accepted by the
farming community—this arrangement?
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[64]
Dr Livingstone:
Yes, we’ve got an 85 per cent
satisfaction rating from farmers. We survey them every two years on
this and there definitely seems to be a very high satisfaction with
that.
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[65]
Jenny Rathbone:
Thank you.
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[66]
Mark Reckless: Vikki, I think you want to follow up on
that.
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[67]
Vikki Howells: Thank you, Dr Livingstone. It’s evident that
you’ve got a lot of support from the farming community for
your policies. What about the environmental sector? What’s
their view on the policy as a whole?
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[68]
Dr Livingstone:
Okay, there are two views. One is that,
when we’re doing control on farmland, and something around,
probably, 80 per cent of our work is on farmland, there is no
concern by most people. Obviously, there is the odd person who has
a farm cat that might get caught in a trap and they get concerned.
But in most cases, there is no concern. The big concern comes when
we’re spreading aerial 1080 bait over large areas of forest.
Again, the majority of conservationists are supportive of it
because we kill all the wildlife that is affecting native birds.
But there are certainly some groups—. I’d say somewhere
around about probably 10 per cent to 12 per cent of the population
are opposed to the use of 1080 poison, no matter who’s doing
it.
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[69]
Vikki Howells: I wonder, speaking hypothetically, if you were to
change the method that you are using to control the possums, do you
think there’d still be that same degree of opposition from
environmental groups.
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[70]
Dr Livingstone:
If we changed from using sodium
fluoroacetate? I don’t know. We’re in the process of
looking at other alternative toxins, but we’ve had feedback
from these people saying, ‘No matter what you do, if
you’re going to be applying bait aerially and
indiscriminately, we will be opposed to it.’ I don’t
know how many of you have seen New Zealand, but it’s a pretty
rugged country. There’s no way that you can actually walk
through it and trap possums to the density levels that we
require.
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[71]
So, to get rid of TB—. Normally, in
that forest, we’d look at somewhere around between 10 and 15
possums per hectare. And for TB control, we need to reduce that to
somewhere around about 1 possum per 5 hectares and hold it at that
level for a minimum of five years to break that TB cycle. So,
it’s a massive reduction of population, which trapping is
unlikely to achieve.
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[72]
Vikki Howells: Thank you. So, just to summarise, then, there’s
not a body of opposition that just objects to the killing of the
possums per se?
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[73]
Dr Livingstone:
Because they are an introduced
pest—there is a small population who earn their income from
the skins and fur, but, basically, ‘no’.
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[74]
Mark Reckless: Dr Livingstone, thank you for the description of the
particular approach you have in New Zealand. I think, from our
perspective, the description you give of the reduction of the
possum population is one that would have very considerable public
resistance in the UK, were anyone to propose that for
badgers here, which is the main area of TB transmission from
wildlife at least. What I wondered is: from your experience in New
Zealand, and your work and your knowledge of the issue, are there
other countries where you think there has been particularly good
practice, or from which you have learned, or would want to
recommend a potential approach to this committee?
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[75]
Dr Livingstone: As far as dealing with wildlife?
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[76]
Mark Reckless: In terms of TB management and, ideally,
eradication, particularly where there is a wildlife element to its
spread.
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[77]
Dr Livingstone: I think it depends on the purpose of the
programme. If the purpose of your programme is to eradicate bovine
TB from your cattle population, then you’ve got to look at
all the factors that are the source of infection for that cattle
population. And I guess my concern with, say, your Welsh programme
and the English programme is that the programme is very good when
you’re getting the TB in the cattle population—what
you’re proposing is excellent—but, in fact, the
elephant in the room is that the wildlife is not being done
anything about. And I accept that you can’t go and kill
badgers the same as you can possums, but I guess my concern is that
somewhere, someone has to do some work and say, ‘Well, okay,
we’re going to vaccinate the badgers’, and you guys are
all trying that. So, I guess, if it was New Zealand, we
would—. Let’s say we had TB in our kiwi
population—we can’t kill the kiwis, so, therefore,
we’d have to do something to make sure that we stop the
disease in that population. And that’s going to cost a lot of
money, but then it comes down to how important is getting TB out of
your cattle population. And that’s what I mean is—. We
would have done a costing exercise and looked at all the options,
and then our stakeholders would make a decision on which of these
options they’d want to go with. And, in that case, obviously,
killing would not be an option, so, you’d have to look at
what these other options are and what the costs are, and then
someone’s going to have to make a decision about who’s
going to pay, because that’s what it comes down to—this
is some costly stuff—and then get going and do it. I guess
that would be my concern: you guys have known about this for a long
time, but, actually, haven’t done very much about
it.
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[78]
Mark Reckless: Yes, there have been a variety of approaches,
and I think our farmers in particular would be concerned if there
were to be no action. Various approaches have difficulties and
opposition from various stakeholders, but this committee is doing
our best to assess the process and make recommendations.
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[79]
We will, I believe, circulate a transcript of your evidence, just
in case there’s anything you feel needs correcting or that we
didn’t get down correctly. And I think that the committee is
likely to produce a short report in the new year. We’re very
grateful for giving us the opportunity to draw on your evidence,
and, in particular, for staying up so late this evening in New
Zealand to talk to us. Thank you very much.
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[80]
Dr Livingstone. Let’s hope you could hear the
information I presented.
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[81]
Mark Reckless: I now propose, if I may, that the committee
very briefly moves into private session under Standing Order
17.42.
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Gohiriwyd y cyfarfod rhwng 09:39 a 09:43.
The meeting adjourned between 09:39 and 09:43.
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Twbercwlosis mewn Gwartheg yng Nghymru
Bovine Tuberculosis in Wales
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[82]
Mark Reckless: Bore da. Good morning. Thank you for joining
us. We’ve just had a witness from New Zealand, who has been
telling us about TB eradication and what they’ve been doing
to possums over there. And he used the analogy of a rugby match
between Wales and New Zealand—as you may have seen, but, for
the record—
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[83]
Mr James: We saw it.
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[84]
Mark Reckless: An analogy where—
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[85]
Mr James: [Inaudible.]
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[86]
Mark Reckless: —nothing being done about the wildlife
population was seen as analogous to a referee awarding all the
decisions to one side or another in such a match. I just wondered,
though: the Cabinet Secretary, she’s made a statement on TB
eradication and some potential changes in the Government approach.
Do you see elements of that that we can work with that are
improvements, or at least potentially, from the farmers’
perspective, and also will you encourage your members as well as
your organisations to feed back into that consultation that the
Cabinet Secretary is running?
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[87]
Mr James: Well, absolutely, we will encourage people to
respond to it. But, honestly, in all consultations, there are some
aspects that suit certain farmers and some that don’t, and
one particular one, if I can pick up—in the high-incidence
areas, it talks about small beef herds and it talks about larger
dairy herds, that they have different circumstances, let’s
say, or a different experience. And the reaction I’m getting
is from the smaller beef, particularly suckler, herds, because they
rely on selling their calves at a point—post-weaning, they
would move them all. A lot of them have never had TB but
they’re in this high-incidence area and they see this as a
major impact on their businesses really, so that’s a critical
one. That’s one we will be responding—I’m sure
all of us would be responding—quite strongly on, because they
see themselves as tarred with a brush that they’ve got no
control over, and it is a big issue. So, that’s the one where
I think—I’ve personally had more people come to me
about that subject than any other.
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09:45
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[88]
Dr Fenwick: I would completely agree with Stephen, although
I must emphasise that we don’t have a mandate to speak on
behalf of our members. We’re a democratic organisation,
we’re holding meetings across Wales to gauge our
members’ opinions on the current consultation, and we will be
putting those together and submitting them, naturally. The meetings
that we’ve attended to date—from those meetings,
it’s clear that there are a range of opinions on any
individual policy that’s being proposed. However, the one
clear message—. And that varies from region to region,
naturally, as one would expect, but also it even varies within
individual parishes. I think the one thing that’s coming out
very clearly from every single region is that the focus on
cattle—given that we already have the strictest cattle
controls in the northern hemisphere, if not the world, here in
Wales, and we are now talking about escalating them, people are
very concerned that we are bolting and locking the front door while
leaving the back door and all the windows completely open because
of the other source of transmission. You’ve heard very
similar opinions being expressed from New Zealand this morning, as
I understand it. We caught snippets of what was said just earlier
on.
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[89]
Dr Wright: If I could add to that, I think one of the
problems that we’ve had is there is disparity within the
counties, because obviously people come at it from different
standpoints. I think one thing that’s been clear from our
responses from members is that there’s a lack of evidentiary
support for some of the cattle control measures that are imposed in
the consultation, or potentially imposed. It doesn’t allow
you to prioritise measures or to determine which ones have a
disproportionate effect on the farm business and less impact on
disease control. So, until you can prioritise measures,
what’s happening in the consultation is that you just impose
a raft of measures without necessarily identifying to farmers which
have the greatest impact. So, at the moment, I think members are
finding it quite difficult to actually make decisions on what will
really have a good impact on disease control whilst allowing them
to manage their businesses.
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[90]
Dr Fenwick: Can I just add to that? And that is because the
consultation document, for all its merits or failures, has very
little evidence in terms of the statistics that underpin the
policies being proposed. There is virtually no evidence to say,
‘Well, this is what we’ve measured looking at TB over
10 years’, or whatever, and, ‘This is why we think this
is an appropriate action’. There are a few references to why
it’s thought to be effective, but there is a complete lack of
concise evidence to show what the expected and anticipated impact
of the various different policies would be.
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[91]
Mr Howells: Can I add as well, really, that, in principle,
regionalising TB policy and looking at different measures for
different areas, in principle, we wouldn’t be opposed to? But
the devil is in the detail.
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[92]
Mark Reckless: Yes. I know the Cabinet Secretary would
emphasise it’s a consultation, and yes that the paper has
some limited evidence and it would be useful if there were more. I
do know that she really would welcome good numbers of responses
from members as well, of course, from what you do as organisations
collecting that. So, the more you could encourage your members to
put the farmers’ view, I think the better for your
perspective.
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[93]
Mark Reckless: I wondered—. Talking about evidence,
we’ve had a previous session where we heard academics, and we
interrogated at least some of the evidence, and I think
our—or, at least, my—impression overall was that
there’s an obvious understanding that farmers, you have this
terrible situation and you want something to be done, but I think
some of the evidence that we received was that the small or even
medium-scale extermination of badgers, because of the perturbation
effect, leading badgers to move area once that was done—there
seemed to be quite compelling evidence of that leading to an
increase in TB, and it was only really when they got to very
large-scale badger eradication, or at least population reduction of
infected badgers, that there was any evidence of a positive effect.
Do you broadly accept that, or would you challenge my summary of
the evidence we received in our previous session?
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[94]
Dr Fenwick:
I think perturbation, certainly, is
a concern and needs to be taken into account, but we should also
bear in mind that perturbation is not seen in the Republic of
Ireland, so that’s a very important factor. There are big
questions about the differences between the scientific opinion here
in the UK on wildlife control measures, be it in terms of badgers
or any other animal, and the opinions of those around the globe.
You’ll be aware of the harsh criticism of the Welsh
Government’s decision to vaccinate by EU continental vets and
scientists who just couldn’t see the logic in it. That was a
clear outcome of the report submitted a number of years ago
following an inspection here in the UK. We also need to bear in
mind that the perturbation effect disappears in terms of culling.
So, there was perturbation, apparently, from the figures during the
five years of culling, but in the two and a half years after that,
perturbation disappeared, and therefore the positive impacts of
culling were far greater than they were when originally
reported.
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[95]
Also, when you take the data from
the randomised badger culling trials and you analyse them without
the distortions applied in terms of modelling—. There were
some mathematical distortions to the
data—‘corrections’ they called them—but if
you take the plain data, the perturbation effect is either
negligible or non-existent in terms of the raw data, so it simply
wasn’t seen when you looked at the raw data; it only comes
out of the system when it’s run through mathematical models,
and that’s an important factor. So, I don’t think the
jury is back in on perturbation; I think there are some peculiar
questions to be asked in terms of the effect of perturbation. We
don’t actually know what impact, if any, there would be were
we to remove animals that were positively identified as
positive.
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[96]
I think it is fairly appalling,
actually, that the reactive cull was called to a stop early on,
because the whole point of a scientific trial is that you want to
find the outcome. We don’t know the outcome of reactive
culling, which probably would’ve been far more acceptable to
the public, because they called those trials to an end, because
they thought there was perturbation. But that perceived
perturbation could’ve been a small number of additional
outbreaks during a very short period; it could’ve just been a
local anomaly, rather than something that would ultimately be seen
to be scientifically genuine after a proper five-year
trial.
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[97]
Mark Reckless:
If there are any papers you’d
like to draw to our attention or you feel that the committee should
give consideration to, please do highlight or send those in to
us.
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[98]
Dr Fenwick:
Certainly.
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[99]
Mark Reckless:
Mr James.
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[100]
Mr James: I agree with Nick on the Republic of Ireland.
That’s an important part of that evidence, and that most
certainly is available as well. We’ve had a couple of
examples in west Wales in the last couple of months, and it’s
been covered by the BBC. Gwyndaf Thomas from Meidrim in
Carmarthenshire had an area of woodland removed. They were tested
clear—a clear herd, a clear TB test—in July 2015. They
were on manual testing; they were tested in July 2016, this year,
the July that’s gone past, and they had 108 reactors on the
first test; there were gigantic lumps on them. And then, they
tested 60 days later or thereabouts and lost over 80. In fact,
they’ve lost now 220 cows out of 330 cows, some of which were
shot on the farm, because they were heavy in calf and they could
see the calves kicking around in their stomachs—. When the
calf dies inside the cow, because it’s in an advanced
condition in terms of size, you can actually see it kicking against
the belly of the cow. But the reality was, in this case, there was
an area of about 10 or 15 acres of woodland on his farm boundary
taken out. In other words, it disturbed the wildlife.
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[101] What happens
when that happens—and maybe Nick, Hazel and Peter might be
able to answer this better than me—but something happens that
triggers a badger that’s severely infected to move in an
uncontrollable way to create that much disease so quickly on a
farm. We know that disease from cattle to cattle doesn’t move
very quickly, and there’s plenty of evidence. I have personal
evidence where we’ve had breakdowns in the autumn and we
clear them over the winter. It happened to us in 2012. But the
reality in this case—and we’ve seen it where gas
pipelines or a new road goes through an area—is that, again,
it disturbs the badgers and it causes major problems in those
areas. There is an acceptance of perturbation but I don’t
think that’s an acceptable thing, for a disease like this, to
say, ‘Because perturbation causes increased disease’.
We should attack that as well, shouldn’t we? The situation on
this farm in Penygraig in Meidrim is ridiculous. To lose 220
milking cows at the prime of life—. They are at the prime of
life. Their income is based solely on that now, and it’s
destroyed them. It really has destroyed them. It’s that sort
of thing that we’re—. We need to move on.
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[102] I’m
actually a farmer. I’m the president of the NFU Cymru. The
reason I got into this role in the first place was because of TB. I
started by giving my opinion, having lived with TB since 1993. Ten
years ago, I was on the programme board in the Welsh Assembly. Ten
years on, we haven’t moved a step further forward in terms of
that particular farm in Meidrim. It’s still happening on
those farms. It’s urgent—it’s urgent that
something is done. It’s desperate as far as farmers out there
are concerned, in certain areas. In north Wales, it’s not the
problem. Then I give you the example also in Merionethshire, where
there’s a beef pedigree herd that can’t sell their
animals in Perth. They’re the cleanest cattle in the world
because they’re tested annually, but they can’t take
them to Perth to the Charolais sales there because they come from
an annual testing area. So, there are two extremes there. So, to a
degree, part of this consultation addresses that, but it
doesn’t, at the moment, address that problem that they had in
Penygraig near Meidrim this year.
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[103] Mr
Howells: Can I just add as well? We’re all coming at this
from the sort of—that the approach taken to eradicate TB
needs to be based on science, it needs to be based on evidence-led
and not political. To my mind, it was quite disappointing to see
the Cabinet Secretary stand up in the Senedd and absolutely rule
out any England-style cull. She said that quite categorically. But
we haven’t got any evidence or data yet from what’s
happening in England. To rule it out before we know whether it is
effective or not is disappointing. If we are about—or if the
Welsh Government is about—taking decisions based on evidence
and being led by evidence, then we can’t just dismiss the
approach being taken in England out of hand.
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[104] Dr
Wright: Can I just add as well that I do think that the
perturbation effect is probably over-emphasised? I agree with
Nick’s comments about some of the previous trials. I also
think that we have to bear in mind that there are ways to manage
perturbation when you design badger control policies. So,
it’s not an either/or situation; it’s not as though we
have a situation where we say, ‘Badger control will
automatically lead to perturbation’. There are ways of
culling and controlling that allow you to move forward in a more
reasonable way. In fact, the vaccination policy in the intensive
action area in Pembrokeshire didn’t make scientific sense
because it was vaccination within an endemic disease area.
Obviously, that doesn’t have an effect on infected badgers.
But actually ring-fencing vaccination around a cull zone could
protect some badgers and could minimise the perturbation
effect.
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[105] The other thing
I would say is that, within the consultation, there is a wealth of
evidence required to move at all on badgers. I think the number of
farms within the consultation that will potentially benefit from
any badger control policy is rather small, given the number of
herds, and given the fact that you have to have a huge amount of
evidence with which to move forward. But there’s not the same
courtesy afforded to cattle within the consultation. So, I think
what we’re doing at the moment is we’re saying that the
standards for moving forward on badgers, and the evidence required
for badger control, have to be much more robust and much higher
than they do for cattle. That’s something that I think we
should fundamentally object to.
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[106] Dr
Fenwick: Chairman, let’s not forget that the scientific
advice given to the previous Welsh Government, and in particular to
John Griffiths, was that culling, as originally intended, in an
area with geographic boundaries would have been £3.5 million
more effective than vaccination. That’s the advice given to
the then Welsh Government, which was ignored, as we all know. That
£3.5 million is effectively because you kill more cattle. We
have seen nothing in that area that suggests that that scientific
advice was not accurate at the time.
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10:00
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[107]
Mark Reckless:
Thank you. Can I bring in Jenny
Rathbone?
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[108]
Jenny Rathbone:
Just going back to this regionalised
approach, I think I detect that you, in general, support a
regionalised approach, based on the fact that, in north Wales, we
have a relatively TB-free area, whereas there are other parts of
west Wales, and the area bordering England and the south, which
have high levels of TB. I appreciate you’ve got particular
concerns about suckler herds within the high-risk areas, but, in
general terms, do you think that having a regionalised approach,
based on where the TB outbreaks are, is a good one?
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[109]
Mr
James: Yes, I
believe so. But, as I said, it does swallow up some extremes in
there as well—the suckler cows. I’m a dairy farmer. We
do sell calves. We sell beef cross calves, and, at the moment,
we’re under TB restrictions and have been since early August.
So, at the moment, we’re rearing our beef calves and that
adds cost to us. But, because we’ve been in a TB area for so
long, we’ve adapted our business to accommodate that, and a
lot of us in my—. That example is repeated across—. It
is an extra cost. The one positive from it, from a personal point
of view, is that our milk prices are starting to go back up.
Therefore, this time last year, it would have been a very negative
effect on us as a business because we’d have been carrying
this extra cost. These calves, we have Belgian Blue crosses, which
we’ll sell at about three weeks to a month old in Carmarthen
market, if we’re not under restrictions, and they can make up
to £250. So, you can imagine, if you’ve got four of
those, it’s £1,000. But when you keep them,
there’s a cost to rearing them. But that’s the issue
for us as dairy farmers. But, to those suckler herds, it’s
very much part of that business. So, it’s how you accommodate
that and how you—.
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[110]
We’ve talked about
information, basically. If the buyer knows that this herd, although
it comes from a high-risk area, has never had—. We need that
information to be there, accessed easily as well, and that should
be part of it. So, we need that database so that buyers can make
informed decisions, because you can buy cattle from—. And
we’ve sold cattle after we’ve gone clear over the
years, and we’ve never had a problem. Nobody’s ever
come back to us and said, ‘Because we bought cattle that came
from your herd, we’ve now got TB.’ That’s never
happened in my experience. But allowing farmers to make informed
decisions is an important part of that, so we need to emphasise
that in this response as well.
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[111]
Jenny Rathbone:
But, as you have both a dairy herd
and a suckler herd—
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[112]
Mr James: No, I haven’t got a suckler herd;
we’re pure dairy. To be honest, I haven’t got major
issues; what I want is TB got rid of in my part of the world, and
in all of Wales, and wherever it is. Let’s get on top of TB.
I was listening to Paul Livingstone, and he mentioned that the
issue wasn’t with possums, it was with TB. And I would say
the same. The issue isn’t with badgers, it’s with TB,
but badgers carry it, and we know that. So, that’s the
issue.
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[113]
Jenny Rathbone:
On the specifics, how would you be
able to ring-fence a suckler herd in a high-risk area and be able
to certify that they were not going to be cross-infected by a dairy
herd on an adjacent farm?
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[114]
Mr James: What I am saying is that, in my experience, if
this herd has never had, in all the time that that particular group
of animals—and that evidence is there. If I say to you,
‘I’ve never had TB’, you’re just taking my
word for it. But, veterinary practices and Government have got this
information, so that should be attached to these animals, saying
‘Look, these animals, this farm has never had a TB breakdown,
so the risk, even though it comes from a high-risk area, is
smaller.’ Therefore, it helps that decision going forward.
There is an issue of a post-moving test, and they can do that. On
post-movement testing, I’ll be honest with you, over the last
20 years, I have post-movement tested animals that I have brought
in. This is 12, 15 years ago—we bought some cows and we
post-movement tested them, because I recognised the issue, and I
didn’t want to bring a disease from somewhere else into my
farm. But that’s a personal decision. But, obviously,
post-movement testing adds cost. Therefore, when they’re
buying cattle, that’s taken into consideration. So, what
I’m saying is that if this herd has been clean and has never
had TB, that information should be available easily for the buyer to make
an informed decision.
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[115]
Jenny
Rathbone: Okay. I mean—
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[116]
Dr Wright:
Sorry, I was just going
to go back to the regional approach question. Obviously,
we’re still consulting with members. I know that the actual
question of regional approach isn’t within the consultation
as a question per se, but we are still discussing that with our
membership. What I would say is that the approach can be divisive
in the sense that Stephen gave the example about clean herds and
protecting those and actually having that information, but the
consultation for a low-risk area also proposes identifying some
herds as high risk. That will be divisive, because in an area like
Anglesey, for example, where less than 0.2 per cent of herds
actually have a breakdown, as per the definition in the
consultation, and yet within that there is a proposal to identify
herds as risky. And it doesn’t define in the consultation
what a risky herd would be, or the definition of that, and what
practices would mean that that herd is defined as risky. So, the
regional approach will be divisive among our membership, and at the
moment we’re not a position to say for certain what our
members would say about the approach, but I would suggest that
perhaps it’s not necessarily straightforward.
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[117]
Jenny
Rathbone: The
consistent advice that we seem to be getting, though, is that
cattle in large herds are much more at risk than cattle in small
herds. Is that what your members would accept as
correct?
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[118]
Dr
Fenwick: It’d be interesting to see the
exact data on that. That’s one of those many pieces of data
that haven’t been provided as an annex, for example, to the
consultation document, as I understand it. I’m not suggesting
it’s not true, but it would be nice to see what is currently
almost an anecdotal piece of evidence being presented as a proper
piece of data, including in relation to the different
regions.
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[119]
Jenny
Rathbone: Okay. You talked about all the
controls being at the front door and nothing much happening at the
back door. Do you accept that there is not a great deal of public
support for the wholesale slaughter of badgers as there seems to be
in New Zealand for the wholesale slaughter of possums?
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[120]
Dr
Fenwick: I
accept that we have a very different view of badgers, and wildlife
in general, to the views held in other countries, probably because
we’re a very urbanised population in the UK. We also seem to
have a very particular love of badgers—maybe it’s
because of anthropomorphism, I don’t know—whereas deer,
rabbit and other animals are treated very differently. But I think
the most important thing and factor with regard to this is that
politicians who have voted for culling badgers all over the UK
recently, and as long ago as six, seven or eight years ago, have
repeatedly been returned to their constituencies, despite
significant campaigns waged by opposing parties against them on the
grounds of badger culling. Those people have consistently been
returned. So, when it comes to voting, the general public will, I
presume, vote on jobs, they will vote on hospital closures, how
much their mortgages cost, et cetera, but this is at the very
bottom of a very long list of priorities for the general public.
There is, unfortunately, a very strong but very small lobby that
persuades politicians otherwise.
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[121]
Dr Wright:
Can I also add to that,
because I couldn’t agree with Nick’s comments more,
actually? There’s also a large problem—and I have this
on a daily basis for the Farmers Union of Wales—where
I’m having to respond to members of the public’s
queries about badger culling versus vaccination, and whether we can
vaccinate cattle, and there is a lot of misinformation within those
campaigns. I’m not suggesting for a second that everybody who
campaigns against hasn’t done their homework and
doesn’t understand the issues, but I would say there’s
a very large percentage of misinformation. I have to consistently
reply to newspaper letters and articles from the public suggesting
that we are wrong and we should just vaccinate cattle, without
understanding there’s no DIVA test and that that would
jeopardise EU trade. So, I would suggest that quite a lot of the
pressure actually is bound by misinformation, and it’s
something that we work really hard to try and turn around, but I
still think there’s a role for other organisations and bodies
to do that as well, simply because if the wealth of information
that leads to public decision is wrong or is erroneous in some way,
then actually there is a potential for that opinion to change and
to move in a different direction.
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[122]
Mr James:
Can I just add that the
protection order suggests to a lot of the public it’s because
they’re challenged by numbers? Most protection orders are
because of—well, we’ve heard of giraffes, haven’t
we, today—are challenged in numbers, and that’s another message that people
think, but of course it’s nothing to do with it and
it’s a number basis, as well.
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[123]
Dr Fenwick:
Yes. They are probably the highest
population of any carnivorous wild animal that we have in the wild,
except perhaps for foxes. Their numbers are absolutely huge and
they are one of the least endangered species in the UK, and that
was acknowledged seven, eight or nine years ago by the independent
scientific group.
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[124]
Mark Reckless:
Can I bring in Simon and Sian?
Translation is available on channel 1 if you need it.
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[125]
Simon Thomas: Diolch, Gadeirydd.
Rwyf i eisiau parhau gyda’r drafodaeth ynglŷn â
difa TB mewn bywyd gwyllt. Mae’n rhywbeth sydd, o leiaf, yn
cael ei dderbyn yn gyffredinol rhwng y diwydiant a’r
Llywodraeth fod angen difa TB mewn bywyd gwyllt. Mae hynny’n
cael ei dderbyn, beth rydym ni’n trafod yn fan hyn
ydy’r dulliau o wneud hynny. Dyna le mae yna anghytuno neu
ddadlau dros y dystiolaeth.
|
Simon
Thomas: Thank you, Chair. I want to continue with this
discussion with regard to TB eradication in wildlife. It’s
something that’s generally accepted between the industry and
the Government that there is a need to eradicate TB in wildlife.
That is accepted, but what we’re discussing here are the
methods of doing that. That’s where there is disagreement or
debate about the evidence.
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[126]
Rŷch chi eisoes wedi sôn am Weriniaeth Iwerddon lle
mae yna fath arbennig o ddifa a ‘cull-o’ yn digwydd.
Beth am Ogledd Iwerddon? Mae enghraifft Gogledd Iwerddon wedi cael
ei ddefnyddio gan y Llywodraeth wrth lansio’r ymgynghoriad
yna, beth bynnag. Beth yw eich gwybodaeth chi o’r dulliau
sy’n cael eu defnyddio fanna? A ydy dal a saethu yn eang yng
Ngogledd Iwerddon, ac a yw e ar sail profi’r anifail i weld
os yw e wedi’i heintio ai peidio?
|
You’ve
already talked about the Republic of Ireland where there is a
special kind of eradication and culling happening. What about
Northern Ireland? The example there has been used by the Government
in launching this consultation. What’s your information on
the methods used there? Is trapping and shooting happening widely
in Northern Ireland, and is it based on testing to see whether the
animal is infected or not?
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[127]
Mr James: A allaf ateb yn
Saesneg?
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Mr
James: I’ll answer in English.
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[128] I sat on the
programme board, I told you earlier, and believe it or not, the
idea of testing, culling the positives and vaccinating at least the
non-positives—they didn’t guarantee that they
weren’t infected—was presented to us when I was on the
board. But the modelling at the time told us that culling
was—. This is obviously when culling, a long time
before—. It’s that area in north Pembrokeshire, but
before vaccination came along. So, we didn’t go ahead with
it, because it’s suggested—. Nick’s earlier
comments about perturbation and that modelling, maybe that was the
wrong decision anyway, but it was never given a trial. We’d
have been interested. Yes, that may well have been, but they
haven’t done the work, have they? They haven’t done the
work there. It’s not been going long enough.
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[129] Maybe down the
road when vaccine is available again, particularly on the edge
areas, the perturbation effect may be helped by that, going
forward. The endemic areas you’ve got to target, because we
know that badgers in those areas—. So, it was too early days
and it’s unfortunate that that vaccine was not made available
to let that carry on. So, the Republic is a far better place to
show—. Again, it’s reactive culling. The word
‘wholesale’, Jenny Rathbone, may be one that we
wouldn’t talk about. It isn’t wholesale culling,
it’s culling where the problem is and, yes, there’ll be
a lot of badgers, because, as Nick said earlier, there are a lot of
badgers in those areas.
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[130]
Simon Thomas:
A ydych chi’n cytuno, yr undeb
arall?
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Simon
Thomas: Do you agree, the other union?
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[131]
Dr Fenwick: Ydyn, yn gyffredinol. Mae’n rhaid inni
ystyried y ffaith bod y prawf ar gyfer TB ar foch daear yn un sydd
wedi gwella’n sylweddol.
Un o’r problemau yn y gorffennol oedd nad oedd y prawf hyd yn
oed yn cyrraedd 50 y cant, ond erbyn hyn, mae wedi gwella’n
sylweddol, ac mae hynny’n rhywbeth positif.
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Dr
Fenwick: Yes, generally. Of course, we have to consider the
fact that the test for TB in badgers is one that’s improved
considerably. One of the problems we’ve seen in the past was
that the test didn’t even reach 50 per cent, but by now it
has improved significantly, and that is a very positive
development.
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[132]
Ond, mae tystiolaeth yn dal i ddod o
Ogledd Iwerddon—dyna’r gwir. Ein barn ni ar hyn o bryd
yw y byddem ni’n leicio mynd nôl at beth oedd
wedi’i gynllunio yng ngogledd sir Benfro, hynny yw, cynllun
sydd yn gwneud i ffwrdd â’r broblem o
perturbation, ac rydym wedi trafod hynny’n gynharach,
os ydych chi’n ei goelio fe ai peidio. Ond, mae hynny’n un ffordd o gael rownd y
broblem yna. Mae wedi’i seilio ar ganlyniadau sydd wedi dod o
Loegr blynyddoedd yn ôl, ond byddem ni’n croesawu
unrhyw gamau yn y cyfeiriad iawn i ddatrys y broblem ym moch
daear.
|
But, the
evidence is still coming from Northern Ireland—that’s
the truth. Our own opinion at present is that we would like to go
back to what was planned in northern Pembrokeshire, that is, a
scheme that does away with the perturbation problem, and we
discussed that earlier, if you agree with it or not. But,
that’s one way of getting around that problem. That’s
based on results from England years ago, but we would welcome any
steps in the right direction to try to solve the problem of TB in
badgers.
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[133]
Mae’n werth ystyried hefyd,
buaswn i’n ei ddweud, nid dim ond profi’r bywyd gwyllt,
ond cael rhyw fath o brawf cyffredinol ynglŷn â’r
risg sy’n dod o foch daear. Hynny yw, yn lle mynd a’u
dal nhw a rhoi prawf gwaed i bob un, os nad yw milfeddyg yn gallu
ffeindio unrhyw ffordd arall y mae’r clwyf wedi dod i mewn
i’r fferm ac mae yna lot o foch yna, buaswn i’n dweud
bod yna siawns go lew, dros 50 y cant, mai moch yw’r broblem,
ac wedyn difa’r moch yna ac, mewn ffordd, mynd yn ôl at rywbeth mwy tebyg i’r
clean ring strategy oedd gennym ni tan 1986, lle roeddech
chi’n cario ymlaen i ddifa moch daear nes nid oeddech
chi’n ffeindio un mochyn efo’r clwyf.
|
It’s
worth considering as well, I would say, not just testing wildlife,
but having some kind of general test in terms of the risk posed by
badgers. That is, instead of catching them and giving them all a
blood test, if a vet can’t find any other way that the
disease has come into a farm and there are a lot of badgers there,
I would say that there’s a good chance, of over 50 per cent,
that badgers are the problem, and so cull those badgers and so, in
a way, go back to something similar to the clean ring strategy that
we had until 1986, where you carried on culling badgers until you
found no more badgers with the disease.
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10:15
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[134]
Simon Thomas:
Jest yn dal ar hynny, te, achos a
dweud y gwir, mae beth rydych chi’n ei gynnig yn
fanna—rwy’n deall eich bod chi’n dal i drafod
gyda’ch aelodau—ond nid yw hynny ychwaith fel y
cull sydd i’w gael yn Lloegr ychwaith, nac ydy? Achos
mae hynny—ni wnawn ni drafod hyn yn ormodol, efallai, achos
fe fyddwn ni’n cael tystiolaeth ar y cull yn Lloegr
fel pwyllgor, ond mae ganddo elfen o ddal gan y ffermwr a saethu
gan y ffermwr, ac ati, na fydd o reidrwydd yn effeithiol yng
Nghymru.
|
Simon
Thomas: Just on that point, because to be honest what
you’re proposing there—I understand that you are still
discussing this with your members—but that also isn’t
like the cull that’s happened in England, is it? Because
that—we won’t discuss that too much, perhaps, because
we are receiving evidence in committee about the cull in England,
but that is with capture by the farmer and shooting by the farmer,
and so on, which is not going to be particularly effective in
Wales.
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[135]
Ond, rwyf jest eisiau deall beth sydd
yn yr ymgynghoriad ar hyn o bryd, sef y cysyniad yma bod modd, o
bosib, lladd moch daear ar ffermydd unigol lle mae’r broblem
yn ddwys, lle mae problem wedi bod dros y blynyddoedd, lle mae
ail-heintio wedi digwydd dro ar ôl tro, lle nid oes
tystiolaeth, er enghraifft, fod gwartheg wedi eu prynu i mewn, ac
felly mae’n amlwg bod yna broblem yn y borfa ac yn y bywyd
gwyllt, ac ati; mae yn y fferm yna. A ydych chi’n gysurus
â’r cysyniad yna, a gyda dechrau yn fanna fel ffordd o
gasglu tystiolaeth ar gyfer y ffordd ymlaen?
|
But I just want
to understand what is in the consultation at the moment, that is,
the concept that badgers could be culled on individual farms where
the problem is particularly acute, where problems have existed over
the years, where there’s reinfection happening time after
time, where there’s no evidence, for example, that cattle
have been bought in, so it’s clear that there is a problem on
the pasture, in the wildlife and so on; it’s on that farm.
Are you comfortable with that concept and with that as a starting
point for gathering evidence for the way forward?
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[136]
Dr Fenwick: Buaswn i’n dweud ein bod ni’n
cychwyn ar y llwybr cywir trwy fynd yn y cyfeiriad o hyd yn oed
trafod difa, ond mae’n rhaid ystyried y ffaith nad ydy hynny
yn yr ymgynghoriad. Mae yn y datganiad, ond nid yn yr ymgynghoriad.
Ond yn sicr, mae unrhyw gamau—
|
Dr
Fenwick: I would say that we’re on the right track in
going in the direction of even discussing culling, but we have to
consider the fact that that isn’t in the consultation.
It’s in the statement, but not in the consultation. But
certainly, any steps in that direction—
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[137]
Simon Thomas:
Mae’n siŵr y buasech
chi’n manteisio ar y cyfle.
|
Simon
Thomas: I’m sure you would take advantage of the
opportunity.
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[138]
Dr Fenwick:—yn bethau i’w croesawu, wrth reswm,
ac yn debygol o weithio.
|
Dr
Fenwick:—are steps to be welcomed, naturally, and are
likely to work.
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[139]
Simon Thomas:
Ar y cwestiwn aflonyddu,
perturbation, sydd wedi codi sawl gwaith erbyn hyn, beth
yw’ch barn ynglŷn â’r amaethwyr, y bobl
sy’n nabod y cynefin, sy’n gwybod ble mae’r moch
daear yn mynd, beth maen nhw’n ei wneud, ac ati, ar y fferm?
Beth yw’r broses rydych chi’n gallu ei dilyn
gyda’ch aelodau i ledaenu’r wybodaeth orau ynglŷn
ag aflonyddu, ynglŷn â’r ffaith, os yw’n
digwydd o gwbl, fod tystiolaeth bod lladd anghyfreithlon dim ond yn
ychwanegu at y broblem yma, ac felly bod yn rhaid i ni ddeall bach
yn fwy ynglŷn â’r sefyllfa mewn ardaloedd penodol,
yn hytrach nag, efallai, y ffordd rydym ni wedi bod yn trafod y
mater yma hyd yma, sef ar lefel Cymru-gyfan, nad yw’n cymryd
i ystyriaeth y gwahanol ardaloedd a’r ffordd y mae’r
moch daear yn bihafio mewn gwahanol ardaloedd a’r ffordd y
mae’r amaethu yn gwahaniaethu hefyd?
|
Simon
Thomas: On the question of perturbation, which has arisen
several times, what is your opinion about farmers and those who are
familiar with the habitats, who know where the badgers go, what
they do, and so on, on the farm? What is the process that
you’re undertaking with your members to disseminate the best
information on perturbation, about the fact, if it happens at all,
that there’s evidence that illegal culling only adds to this
problem and that we then have to understand to a greater extent the
situation in specific areas, rather than the way that we have been
discussing this matter hitherto, which is on an all-Wales level
that doesn’t take into account the different areas and the
way that badgers behave in different areas and the way in which
cultivation methods differ too?
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[140]
Dr Fenwick: Rydym ni, wrth reswm, wedi gwneud hynny ers
blynyddoedd: gwneud yn sicr bod ein haelodau’n deall yr holl
ffeithiau ynglŷn â’r diciâu, ac yn aml iawn,
fe wnewch chi glywed ffermwyr yn siarad am y pwnc yma. Hynny yw,
‘Mae gen i foch daear ar y fferm, nid wyf wedi cael TB ers 20
mlynedd, er bod y cymdogion wedi, ac rwy’n poeni am y busnes
yma o perturbation, oherwydd y ffordd rwy’n ei weld
o’—neu’r ffordd mae’r unigolyn yn ei weld
o—‘mae’r moch yna yn cadw’r moch eraill
allan.’ So, maen nhw’n ymwybodol o hynny, ond yn
gyffredinol, beth wnaethom ni ffeindio yng ngogledd sir Benfro, pan
wnaethon nhw ystyried, neu roedden nhw ar fin difa yn yr ardal yna,
oedd bod 99.9 y cant o’n haelodau ni yn yr ardal yna yn hapus
i leihau'r niferoedd o foch daear yn yr ardal, hyd yn oed os nad
oedd ganddynt broblem TB, er mwyn gwella’r sefyllfa yn
gyffredinol, oherwydd roedden nhw’n gwybod bod y dystiolaeth
yn cefnogi’r fath yna o ddifa.
|
Dr
Fenwick: Naturally, we’ve done that for many years:
ensured that our members understand the facts on TB, and very often
you hear farmers talking about this subject. That is, ‘I have
badgers on the farm, I haven’t had TB for 20 years, even
though my neighbours have, and I’m concerned about this issue
of perturbation, because the way I see it’—or the
individual sees it—‘the badgers keep the other badgers
out.’ So, they are aware of that, but generally what we found
in north Pembrokeshire when they considered, or they were about to
cull in that area, was that 99.9 per cent of our members in that
area were content to reduce the numbers of badgers in the area,
even if they didn’t have a TB problem, in order to improve
the situation generally because they knew that the evidence did
support that kind of culling.
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[141]
Simon Thomas:
Nid wyf yn gwybod os cawsoch chi
gyfle i glywed y dystiolaeth o Seland Newydd. Pan roedden
nhw’n sôn am ddifa’r possums—mewn
dulliau na fyddai’n dderbyniol yng Nghymru, yn
sicr—roedden nhw’n sôn am ddifa possums
nid i gael gwared ohonyn nhw, ond i ddod â’r niferoedd
i lawr i ryw lefel lle’r oedd y clefyd yn mynd allan
o’r boblogaeth. Nawr, roedd y lefelau yn swnio i fi yn isel
iawn, iawn, ac wrth gwrs nid yw’r possum yn anifail
sy’n gynhenid i Seland Newydd; mae mochyn daear yn anifail
sy’n gynhenid i Gymru, felly ni fyddwn ni am golli’r
mochyn daear fel rhan o’r cynefin yn yr ystyr yna. Ond, a oes
gennych chi unrhyw dystiolaeth ynglŷn â lefel poblogaeth
gynaliadwy ar gyfer moch daear mewn ardaloedd ffermio sy’n
golygu bod y clefyd naill ai yn cael ei ddifa neu o leiaf yn cael
ei reoli ar lefel derbyniol?
|
Simon
Thomas: I don’t know if you had the opportunity to hear
the evidence from New Zealand. When they talked about culling the
possums—in ways that certainly wouldn’t be acceptable
in Wales—they were talking about culling the possums not to
get rid of them but to bring the numbers down to a level where the
infection did exit the population. Now, the levels sounded very low
to me there, and the possum, of course, isn’t an indigenous
animal to New Zealand, whereas badgers are an indigenous animal in
Wales, so we wouldn’t want to lose the badger as a part of
the habitat in that regard. But do you have any evidence on the
population level that’s a sustainable level for badgers in
rural areas and agricultural areas that would mean that the
infection or disease would be managed at least at an acceptable
level?
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[142] Mr James:
I said to you about this situation in Meidrim, and I guess, until
they disturbed the woodland, that disease was under control,
wasn’t it? They’d been clear for some years. The
evidence from the Republic of Ireland is that you keep the numbers
below a certain level. I’ve got to be honest, I’m not
absolutely certain what that level per square kilometre is, but
that’s the reality of it. And I think, as I understand it,
that’s what’s happening in the English cull areas as
well, going forward. You know, it’s keeping them—.
Because we have got—it’s when you see lots of dead
badgers on the road. When I was a child, you never saw a badger,
but now you see so many of them, and that shows that their numbers
have increased. There’s no doubt, because of the nature of
how badgers live together. They live underground and they live in
family groups, in the same sense, I suppose, as cattle. Maybe
that’s why dairy cattle are more prone to it than beef
cattle, because the population of beef cattle is wider. Dairy
cattle, by their nature, live closer together; at milking time
they’re gathered, and therefore it all makes sense, I guess.
And a lot of it is anecdotal as well, but the reality is that we,
in my part of the world—I’ve told you that 23 years ago
we had the first problem—lots of farmers keep their cows in
now. We’ve got pedigree farmers, particularly, who keep their
cows in. They’ve got their buildings absolutely sealed from
wildlife and they’ve got it under control, but that’s
being driven by the disease; it’s not because they
necessarily want to keep their cows housed, it’s because
it’s driven by the disease, and the exposure. Again, we need
to move away from that.
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[143] Mr
Howells: I’d add as well, when we talk about badger
culling—I emphasise to you all—we’re not talking
about a widespread cull of badgers throughout Wales. We need to
look at where there is a disease problem in both cattle and badger
populations, and dealing with the issue in all reservoirs of the
disease. It’s one of the basic tenets of disease control; you
tackle the disease where it’s present in all its sources, and
that’s something that we haven’t been doing in Wales
for a number of years now.
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[144] Dr
Wright: Can I just add—? The consultation itself
doesn’t actually suggest what evidence is required, per se,
to engage in any control of badgers on the farm. What it does
suggest is that the farmer should have done everything appropriate
and necessary. So, I would suggest, going back to Nick’s
comment, that actually we should have a more risk-based approach,
as opposed to proving 100 per cent—and actually, you
can’t with the current tests available, anyway—that
badgers are actually infected. We need to be looking at an approach
that suggests that, on a farm, if the badger has any impact on the
disease on that farm, no matter what the farmer does, no matter
what control measures he puts in place, there is a source of
reinfection that isn’t being dealt with. And I think
we’ve skewed our policy towards cattle controls at the
expense of badger control. I do find that the words that we use
when we talk about control, and the words that we use when we talk
about management, negate the fact that we’re talking about a
very small percentage. We’re not talking about even
eradicating badgers from the area—a radius around that farm
would still have badgers. So, I think we need to be proportionate
in our conversations, and also proportionate in what we ask farmers
to do, without then moving to the other source of infection on that
farm. Because you can only take cattle control so far, and once you
take them so far, the farmer’s in a position where’s
there’s nothing else that can be done, but there’s
still a source of reinfection. As Peter said, it’s basic
disease biology; you have two disease vectors that can
re-infect—actually in three directions—because within
each of the two species and between, you need to deal with the
source of both infections for badgers and for cattle.
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[145] Dr
Fenwick: Coming back to the original question in terms of
numbers, I think that you’ll be aware, as Stephen has
indicated, there’s been a huge explosion and the figures show
that in the numbers, with impacts in terms of TB, but also, of
course, in terms of wildlife. The evidence is there in terms of the
work done in England, for example, in terms of hedgehog numbers,
which we’ll have all heard about. It’s worth
remembering that Pat Morris, the leading expert on hedgehogs, has
warned that they will go extinct unless badger numbers are reduced.
There are plenty of farms where they had one badger sett for, it
could be, 100 years and they were quite happy with that sett, and
they certainly would never have interfered with those animals.
Those setts, since badger protection came in, have expanded
to—it could be five or could be 10 setts on the farm. It
could be more than that with satellite setts. And all those animals
need extra food; the less food that’s available, the more
susceptible they are to bovine TB and other diseases as well, and
the more competition and the more fighting there is, the more
scratches they have. It’s a very, very complex situation, but
when you have in some areas a tenfold increase in the population,
or a fivefold increase, then clearly there are implications. If you
want to set a baseline—it is almost like putting your finger
up in the air and seeing which way the wind is blowing—but
maybe finding out which setts have been there for 50 or 60 years
and saying, ‘Well, that’s our target’, and going
back to that number, when we didn’t—. The cattle
controls that we currently have—and even lesser cattle
controls—worked perfectly to eradicate TB. They absolutely
did, as they do in all other countries where they control wildlife.
The controls work. For some reason, they don’t work here, and
we know why that is: it’s because of the second vector. So,
we need to go back to a situation where we reduce the size of that
second vector, and that would probably be a good baseline.
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[146]
Simon
Thomas: A oes unrhyw ddiben o gwbl i frechu moch daear, yn eich barn
chi?
|
Simon Thomas: Is
there any reason for vaccinating badgers, in your
opinion?
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[147]
Mr
James: Ar y ffiniau.
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Mr James: On the
border.
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[148] To be fair,
that’s what we argued for at the time. We didn’t feel
north Pembrokeshire was the ideal place to test it, with the
boundaries, you know, where the badger is clean, but you know the
neighbouring area—. Because we saw that, and we’ve got
to congratulate Welsh Government in reducing the disease spread
over the whole of Wales, because it has done that. We know that.
But in my part of the world and certain other parts of the world,
it hasn’t. The cattle numbers have been—there’s
an increase in the number of animals slaughtered. Maybe
that’s partly due to gamma interferon testing as well.
It’s not all down to disease.
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[149]
Simon Thomas: No, it’s better testing.
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|
[150]
Mr James: Yes, but it keeps cycling. I know the wildlife trusts
or the Badger Trust will say that badgers are only responsible for
5 per cent of infection, but if it’s 1 per cent, that starts
the ball rolling. Once one animal on the farm is infected, it
passes it on. We see plenty of areas where they go clear for two or
three years and then it comes back, because it recycles. I’m
not sure about the science of that either, but that’s what
happens.
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Dr Fenwick: Mae’n werth nodi bod tystiolaeth yr ISG yn dangos bod 50
y cant o’r achosion TB yn yr ardaloedd lle roedden
nhw’n difa yn Lloegr tan 2006-07 wedi cael eu hachosi gan
foch, ar sail y data y gwnaethon nhw ei gasglu yn ystod y difa.
Felly, mae’r broblem yn enfawr. O ran ffiniau, wrth reswm, os
ydych chi’n difa er mwyn datrys problem TB, mae angen difa
dim ond yn yr ardaloedd lle mae’r moch yn broblem o ran TB.
Nid ydych chi eisiau difa mewn ardaloedd lle nad ydyn nhw’n
achosi’r broblem.
|
Dr
Fenwick: It’s worth noting that evidence from the ISG
shows that 50 per cent of TB cases in the areas where they were
culling in England until 2006-07 were caused by badgers, based on
the data they collected during the cull. So, the problem is huge.
In terms of borders, naturally, if you cull in order to solve a TB
problem, then you only need to cull in the areas where the badgers
are a problem in terms of TB. You don’t want to cull in areas
where they don’t cause a problem.
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[151] Mark
Reckless: Sian, did you want to come in quickly?
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[152]
Sian Gwenllian:
Anghofiwch yr ymgynghoriad am funud.
Rydym ni’n cael y neges eich bod yn teimlo, yn yr
ymgynghoriad, nad yw’r balans yn iawn a bod un elfen bwysig
ar goll o’r ymgynghoriad. Felly, o anghofio hwnnw, beth
fyddai’r cynllun mwyaf effeithiol, yn eich barn chi, ar gyfer
gwaredu TB? Hynny yw, pe bai gennych chi reolaeth lwyr dros beth
ddylai ddigwydd yng Nghymru, a fedrwch chi jest grynhoi ar gyfer y
record, mewn ffordd, beth fyddai eich cynllun chi a beth
fyddai’r peth gorau i ni fod yn ei wneud? Mi fyddai gen i
ddiddordeb i weld a ydy’r ddau undeb yn gytûn
ynglŷn â’r math o gynllun a ddylai fod yn cael ei
roi gerbron.
|
Sian
Gwenllian: Forget about the consultation for a moment.
We’re getting the message that you feel that, in the
consultation, the balance isn’t right and that one important
element is missing from the consultation. But, forgetting about
that, what would be the most effective plan, in your opinion, for
eradicating TB? That is, if you had complete control over what
happens in Wales, can you just summarise, for the record, in a way,
what your plan would be? What would be the best thing for us to do?
I'd be interested to see whether the two unions are in agreement on
the kind of plan that should be placed before us.
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[153]
Dr Fenwick: A wyt ti eisiau i fi fynd yn gyntaf?
|
Dr
Fenwick: Shall I go first?
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[154]
Mr James: Ie, fe gawn ni weld beth ddywedith e.
|
Mr
James: Yes, we’ll see what he says.
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[155]
Dr Fenwick: Rwy’n hapus i fynd yn gyntaf. Mae yna
ymgynghoriad ar hyn o bryd, yr un mwyaf diweddar ers blynyddoedd.
Hyd nes i ni gael ymatebion ein haelodaeth ar beth sy’n cael
ei awgrymu, yn cynnwys ar yr ochr moch daear, mae ein polisi ni yr
un fath ag yr oedd yn 2008, hynny yw: cefnogi barn y Llywodraeth a
barn pob un parti—ac mae hyn yn bwynt pwysig—pob un
parti yn fan hyn, yn y lle yma, ynglŷn â’r ffordd
ymlaen. Hynny yw, i ddifa mewn un ardal—a gogledd sir Benfro
oedd yr ardal—ac, ar sail hynny, ymestyn yr ardaloedd lle
rydych yn difa allan i lefydd eraill lle mae moch yn rhan fawr
o’r broblem.
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Dr
Fenwick: I'm happy to go first. There is a consultation
currently under way, the latest since many years. Until we receive
the responses from our membership on those suggestions, including
the badger element, our policy is the same as it was in 2008,
namely to support the Government's opinion and the opinion of all
parties—and this is important to note—all parties here,
in this place, with regard to the way forward. Namely, to cull in
one area—north Pembrokeshire was that area—and, on that
basis, to expand the areas where you’re culling out to
include other areas where badgers are a major part of the
problem.
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[156]
Dyna beth roedd pob un plaid wedi
cytuno i’w wneud ar y pryd. Dyna beth roedd yr undebau wedi
cytuno oedd y ffordd gywir ymlaen ar y pryd. Ein polisi swyddogol
ni ar hyn o bryd yw mynd yn ôl at hynny, achos mae’n
datrys problemau fel perturbation, er enghraifft, os ydych
chi’n coelio ynddyn nhw. Efallai y bydd y farn yna yn newid
wrth i ni gasglu ymatebion ein haelodaeth.
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That’s
what all parties agreed to do at that time. That’s what the
unions had agreed was the right way forward at the time. Our
official policy at present is to return to that, because it solves
problems such as perturbation, for example, if you do believe in
that phenomenon. Perhaps that opinion will change as we gather
further responses from our membership.
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[157]
Sian Gwenllian:
Diolch. Felly, mynd yn ôl
i’r cyfnod yna a chynnal yr arbrawf yn iawn, mewn
ffordd, yn yr ardal
yna.
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Sian Gwenllian:
Thank you. So, going back to
that period and conducting the experiment correctly, in a way, in
that area.
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10:30
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[158]
Dr Fenwick: Ac ardaloedd eraill, byddwn i’n dweud. Mae
yna ardaloedd eraill. Rydym ni’n deall yn iawn pam wnaethon
nhw ddewis yr ardal yna, oherwydd y môr, yr afon Teifi, a
mynyddoedd Preseli. Mae ardaloedd eraill tebyg iawn: mae’r
Gower yn un lle wnaethon nhw ystyried difa, a llefydd fel
cwm Tanat, efallai, lle mae TB yn broblem fawr, ond mae mynyddoedd
y Berwyn yn rhoi ffin caled iawn rhwng y gwartheg ar un ochr
a’r gwartheg ar yr ochr arall.
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Dr
Fenwick: And other areas, I would say. There are other areas.
We understand why they chose those that area, because of the sea,
the Teifi river, and the Preseli mountains and so on. There are
other very similar areas. The Gower is one where they did consider
culling, and areas such as the Tanat valley, for example, are areas
where TB is a problem, but the Berwyn mountains do offer that very
firm boundary between cattle on one side and the cattle on the
other.
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[159]
Mr Howells: A gaf i jest pwysleisio hefyd, o ran NFU Cymru,
nad yw ein polisi ni, neu’n safbwynt ni wedi newid? Rydym yn
credu mewn gwaredu TB, a gwneud hynny ar sail tystiolaeth, a
thystiolaeth gadarn, a thynnu’r gwleidyddiaeth allan
o’r peth. Mae hynny’n bwysig. Rydym yn agored i
dystiolaeth newydd ac unrhyw beth sydd yn cael ei ganfod mewn
unrhyw ran o’r byd sydd yn relevant i’n sefyllfa
ni yng Nghymru. Rydym yn agored ein meddwl i edrych ar hynny. Ond
rydym yn credu mewn polisi holistig a thaclo’r broblem ym
mhob ffynhonnell ohono.
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Mr
Howells: Could I just emphasise that, in terms of NFU Cymru,
our policy or view hasn’t changed? We believe in eradicating
TB on the basis of evidence, and robust evidence, and to take the
politics out of the issue. That’s important. We’re open
to new evidence and anything that is found in any part of the world
that is relevant to our situation in Wales. We’re very
open-minded in terms of looking at that. But we believe in a
holistic policy and tackling the problem at every source.
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[160]
Sian Gwenllian:
Felly, byddech chi’n cytuno
efo’r syniad o fynd yn ôl i ardal benodol, efallai ddim
yr un ardal yn union, neu un ardal—
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Sian
Gwenllian: So, you would agree with this idea of going back to
a specific area, perhaps not the exact same area, or one
area—
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[161]
Mr James: Na. Byddem ni eisiau mwy nag un ardal. Mae
pethau wedi symud ymlaen o’r un ardal bryd hynny. Mae
enghreifftiau yn Lloegr ar hyn o bryd, ac wrth gwrs, mae’r
ISG a’r achos llys hefyd. Ambell waith, mae’r llys yn
dod mewn, yn dibynnu beth sy’n mynd ymlaen. Rydym wedi dweud
am enghraifft Iwerddon hefyd. Dylem edrych ar bopeth. Ac mewn
ambell i fan yng Nghymru, efallai bod reactive yn gweithio,
ond mewn ambell i ardal, mae eisiau mwy na reactive achos
mae wedi bod yna am flynyddoedd, ac mae eisiau cael gwared arno
fe.
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Mr
James: No. We’d want more than one area. Things have
moved on from the one area at that time. The examples exist in
England at present, and there is the ISG and the court case. And,
sometimes, the courts are involved, depending on the issue. But
we’ve spoken about the example of Ireland as well. We should
look at everything. Maybe there are some areas in Wales where
reactive works, but in other areas, we need more than reactive,
because it’s been there for years and we need to get rid of
it.
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[162] Dr
Wright: Can I answer this on the cattle side, because,
obviously, those comments were about badgers? Obviously,
we’re still consulting with members, but this is a general
comment about cattle control. I would actually like to look at
back-to-basics evaluation of controls, and actually see which have
the evidentiary support to be included. The badger control side of
it is one side of it. At the moment, cattle keepers in Wales are
subject to a huge raft of controls, and I think we need to get back
to a policy that, with no disrespect, is not lazy policy that just
piles one control on top of another without evaluating a previous
control. There are additional controls within this consultation
that are add-ons to previous controls that the union has opposed in
the past. And those previous controls haven’t been evaluated
for their effectiveness before stricter versions of those controls
come into the next consultation.
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[163] So, for me,
it’s about prioritisation, impact assessment of the controls
that are currently in place, looking at the financial and
administrative burden and time burden on farmers, and having a look
to see if there’s actually some that are superfluous to
requirements, which impose a disproportionate burden on a farmer
compared to the disease impact. I think we need to just take a step
back. I’m not saying that all of the controls are invaluable,
of course they’re not, but we haven’t really evaluated
them in a very long time.
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[164] Dr
Fenwick: And in that context, it’s worth noting that,
while we support pre-movement testing, I’m certainly not
suggesting we should do away with it. In the Republic of Ireland,
they did that assessment on pre-movement testing many, many years
ago because it had been introduced, and they decided that the
statistics and the data did not support it as a policy, and they,
therefore, withdrew it as a policy. I emphasise that I’m not
suggesting that the same would be true in Wales, because we support
pre-movement testing, but it’s an example of that sort of
rigorous approach to individual policies, which may not be being
applied with regard to the raft of measures being proposed.
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[165] Simon
Thomas: Just to be clear, you can’t have informed
purchasing if you haven’t got this element of movement
controls, can you?
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[166] Dr
Wright: There are things within this consultation that are
add-ons, that are new, so I’m not suggesting that we
go—. As Nick said, it’s not about suggesting that any
one policy is wrong, it’s actually about an evaluation of
policy. The thing that frustrates farmers no end is not
understanding whether something that has a huge impact on their
business really has an impact on disease control. And that’s
everything from the wealth of biosecurity—. I would like to
see an analysis of biosecurity measures. Which really have an
impact on disease control, and which are there because we think it
might be a good idea, but we actually haven’t evaluated it?
Those are really important questions. They’re important for
the competitiveness of businesses, actually.
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[167] Mr
Howells: I’d agree with what Hazel said. We need to look
at the cost-benefit analysis, but not look at it just from
cost-benefit analysis for Government, but also for the industry.
It’s hugely important that that’s looked at and
evaluated properly.
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[168] Dr
Fenwick: Can I emphasise that we’re not suggesting that
that evaluation hasn’t been done by the office of the chief
veterinary officer and Welsh Government? It may well have been
done, but it doesn’t appear to be in the public domain. And
so, going back to Hazel’s example, if a farmer or the
industry as a whole were told, ‘Well, here’s a problem
that we can show has actually created 250 new outbreaks in the last
three years’, we can quantify it then: we can say,
‘Right, okay, it certainly needs sorting out’. But if
the evidence says that it’s thought to have caused one
outbreak, and yet it going to cause an extra £3 million of
costs for farmers, then we would argue, obviously, that that
isn’t proportionate.
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[169] Dr
Wright: I have one example, and I’m not suggesting for a
second that this doesn’t work, so please don’t think
that I am, but there is an increased reliance on gamma interferon
testing within the consultation. And we’ve been told that the
long-term trends, if there are rises in the numbers of cattle
slaughtered, is because of increased testing. But I had a look at
the DEFRA data, and if you look at the number of cattle slaughtered
as a percentage of the total number of tests, you still have a
rise. So, even when you account for increased testing, we’re
still killing more cattle. In fact, the 2016 data for the number of
cattle slaughtered are higher than every other year, except 2008
and 2009, since 1997. So, whilst I’m not saying that gamma
interferon doesn’t give us some reactors that maybe we
wouldn’t have had, what’s the proportionality of that?
I know Welsh Government have a report coming out later in the year:
I did ask for it, but it wasn’t in time for committee. But
it’s those kinds of questions that members will ask when they
respond to the consultation.
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[170] Simon
Thomas: Because it’s much more expensive.
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[171] Dr
Wright: Because it’s much more expensive.
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[172] Mark
Reckless: Thank you. Could I bring in Jayne Bryant, please?
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[173] Jayne
Bryant: Thank you very much. I think your answers to questions
have been very comprehensive so far, so I just wanted to expand on
something that Hazel has just mentioned about biodiversity
measures. And perhaps you could say a bit more about what examples
or what things you think we could be doing to—
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[174] Dr
Wright: Biodiversity, yes. So, we’ve had—. Members
in breakdown areas can be given veterinary improvement
notices—I think they’re now called veterinary
requirement notices, actually—and there are things like
cleansing and disinfecting, but there’s been—.
I’m not suggesting that members don’t appreciate those
measures—they do and they adhere to them when they have
them—but within the consultation there’s now—.
And it’s unclear—it doesn’t actually say what it
means—but it says ‘improved biosecurity’ and a
‘biosecurity tool’. So, at the moment, members already
have improvement notices where vets come on to the farm and they
say, ‘We think this might be a risk; perhaps lift the trough
so that a badger maybe can’t get into the trough or spread
disease indirectly’. So, there are measures undertaken on
farms already that, if they make sense, then obviously members are
very happy to do, but what I’m concerned about is that this
consultation talks about additional biosecurity measures, but it
doesn’t actually say what they are and it doesn’t
provide any evidence towards that. And I’m not sure at the
moment what else can be done on a farm. If a vet has already gone
in under Animal and Plant Health Agency guidelines to say, in a
breakdown area, ‘These are the issues that I think that are a
problem’, what are we not doing now that we should be doing?
And—
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[175] Jayne
Bryant: Are we doing that, though—? Is that just
independent farms, you know, one farm doing that? Are all farms
doing that?
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[176] Dr
Wright: All farms in breakdown. So, there are requirement
notices under a breakdown where farmers have to adhere to certain
requirements, if it’s deemed that those are risky practices
or elements at the farm.
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[177] Dr
Fenwick: And it must be emphasised that farmers who are not
subject to breakdowns are also making strenuous efforts to ensure
that biosecurity is maintained. There are always bad
examples—in life, there are always bad examples, but, as a
whole, because the last thing somebody wants is a breakdown on the
farm that closes them down and causes them thousands of
pounds-worth of losses.
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[178] Dr
Wright: Similarly, you don’t want to spend a lot of money
on something that is called biosecurity but actually has no impact.
I think one of the things that I’ve consistently said is that
we need to stop talking about biosecurity for TB, biosecurity for
Johne's, biosecurity for bovine viral diarrhoea, and just talk
about biosecurity—you know, what is good for disease
control—and actually have a set of tools for just biosecurity
on farm. But, in order to do that, you have to know what works and
what doesn’t, because the uptake, if it’s voluntary for
other diseases, would be low unless you know for certain that it
has an impact, which is why I keep re-emphasising evidentiary
support for anything you’re asking a farmer to do. Because,
if it’s a voluntary system, then, obviously, if it makes
sense, they’ll do it.
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[179] Jayne
Bryant: Okay. What assessment have you made of the risk posed
by slurry on pasture land and things that we can do to make sure
that that doesn’t exacerbate the problem?
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[180] Mr James:
Again, there isn’t any real evidence. Obviously, if
there’s a massive breakdown on a farm—you know, the
example I gave earlier—then slurry has to be a bigger risk
there, because there were substantial numbers of reactors on it. In
our case, we’ve had three cattle this year, in August, that
were reactors. They were slaughtered. There were no visible
lesions, so they were not in an advanced stage. So, my view would
be that those animals hadn’t contributed to that. But, again,
we’re talking about millions of gallons of slurry here, and
one or two animals contributing to that.
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[181] From my point of
view, if you say to me I can’t spread slurry, that means I
don’t keep any livestock going forward. That comes to a
standstill, because that slurry has to be—. It’s also a
very valuable nutrient. It saves on fertiliser application, and you
just can’t keep storing it forever and a day. So, it’s
not a practical one. But common sense should be there. Obviously,
you spread slurry, and most of our slurry would go on ground that
eventually ends up as silage. This time of year it may be on land
that won’t be grazed until the spring of next year. So, that
has to reduce the risk. If it was a problem, then disease on farm
would be massive. The disease on farm is not massive. It’s
occasional, like the one I gave. Those are extremes, the one I told
you about earlier on. There aren’t many breakdowns. I’m
aware of farms that have lost nearly 100 animals because of gamma
interferon testing, but there are very few that have massive
breakdowns. But there are those occasional ones. Nine times out of
10 it’s because something has happened in the area
that’s caused it. But that evidence is out there as well.
That evidence is out there.
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[182] Dr
Fenwick: Again, it’s a layer of complexity with regard to
the issue in that I think there is work to show that it
couldn’t last for up to six months, for example. But it
depends on how sunny it is, for example. Because ultraviolet
radiation kills bacteria, so, if you’re spreading slurry, the
sun will kill the bacteria—or maybe it’s six weeks
rather than six months. And it depends on how it’s stored.
So, it is very complex. It’s not just, ‘It’s
infected, and therefore it’s a danger’. It’ll
only be infected for a certain amount of time, and the bacteria
will die over a period.
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[183] Jayne
Bryant: Just briefly, you’ve talked about evidence and
the importance of evidence and scientific evidence, and in that as
well there’s been some anecdotal evidence, and I think
it’s always really important to make sure that we’re
clear on which is which. What’s your view on the—? The
Krebs report was carried out over 10 years, its trial on badger
culling, which concluded that culling would not achieve a lasting
reduction in bovine TB. And the assessment that you mentioned in
the English trials, which has said, in the first year of that
pilot—which was conducted by an independent expert panel, and
they were highly critical of the UK Government’s policy,
saying that badger culling makes ‘no meaningful
contribution’ to cattle TB control in Britain. We’ve
also had Rosie Woodroffe here to speak to the committee, from
London University, and she’s also previously said that the
mismatch between killing badgers and the spread of bovine TB is
hugely disappointing for evidence-based policy making. What would
your response be to that?
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[184] Dr
Fenwick: I would say, firstly, that the independent scientific
group report is very unscientific in the way that it fails to
appreciate the alternatives, given the problems they found with the
data, which are: absolutely they reduced TB in the culling areas.
They absolutely did. The problem was that, around those culling
areas, there was a reduction in TB incidences.
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[185] Mark
Reckless: A reduction or an increase?
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[186] Mr James:
An increase.
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[187] Dr
Wright: An increase.
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[188] Dr
Fenwick: Sorry, there was an increase. Sorry. So, there was a
reduction in positive effects. However, if you read the actual
scientific paper that was published rather than the report itself,
that’s very illuminating in terms of the more careful way in
which they portray the evidence and the balance between perceived
perturbation and the positive effects within that area. Also, those
initial findings were published prior to the follow-up findings,
which found perturbation disappeared and the positive effects
actually grew significantly after they’d stopped culling, so
there was a longer-lasting effect that tipped the balance away from
this 50:50 ratio between positive and negative way into the
positive. The most obvious thing about it is, if you increase the
size of your area, then the ratio between the area of your
surrounding land and the area in which you’re culling changes
completely, so, of course—. Plus geographic boundaries, et
cetera; that changes it as well. So, the follow-up data have
completely changed the argument to the extent that, as some of you
will be aware, the EU taskforce for monitoring animal disease,
which came over here in 2011-12, made it clear that there is, and I
quote,
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10:45
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[189] ‘no
scientific evidence to demonstrate that badger vaccination will
reduce the incidence of TB in cattle. However, there is
considerable evidence to support the removal of badgers in order to
improve the TB status of both badgers and cattle.’
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[190] Now, Rosie
Woodroffe is a name we’re all very, very familiar with.
Certainly, throughout my career in the farming industry, I’ve
been familiar with her name and her vociferously expressed views.
But it’s well worth talking to, for example, the Irish
scientists who take the polar opposite view as regards the benefit
of badger culling.
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[191] Mark
Reckless: Thank you. Could I have, I think, one question from
Simon and then David will close the session?
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[192] Simon
Thomas: Yes. Sorry to keep on about slurry at this time in the
morning, but it’s a very specific question. Can we really be
as sanguine as you are about the spreading of slurry and also
slurry going from infected farms to other farms, which I understand
is allowed under present regulations? We have nitrate vulnerable
zones—I don’t want to open that particular can of
worms, but we have NVZs being proposed that could actually lead to
more slurry being taken off farm and spread on other farms, even
outside the particular regionalised TB areas. Isn’t that
something we should be concerned about?
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[193] Mr James:
Obviously, the practicalities of slurry spreading are important,
and I guess we can do some work. I understand polymerase chain
reaction testing can be used on setts, so maybe they should do some
work on slurry, particularly, maybe, slurry from an infected farm,
just to see what levels—. So, that work is well worth doing
and we’d encourage that. But I’ve got to be honest,
Simon, I can’t give an opinion on that, because I
haven’t got the scientific knowledge of it. But it’s
impractical to think that we can store slurry forever and a day.
There are techniques, going forward—obviously, anaerobic
digestion units, I would guess, would help. So, maybe the RDP could
help with us all putting AD units on farm to sterilise our slurry.
Of course, there are other things like Johne’s and other
diseases that can be spread by slurry, as well. So, it isn’t
just TB that’s the issue here. We are aware of that.
That’s something that I, as president of the NFU, want to do;
not to be spending our lives talking about TB, but all the other
diseases that impact on the economy of Welsh farms, as well, and
food production, going forward, because that’s a big one for
us.
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[194] Dr
Wright: I think I would ask the question: how many cattle are
infected purely because of slurry spreading with in-herd spread?
Again, it goes back to the proportionality of the question. If
you’re looking to find the top 10 measures, for example, that
have an impact on reducing incidence on farms, is that really one
of the things we should be looking at? Because, actually, if the
disproportionate effect on the farm business—. As Stephen
said, it’s impossible to do without it. Unless it was proven
to the industry 100 per cent that all breakdowns were due to
slurry, then I think I would suggest that we have more important
factors to look at. Again, it’s going to be the number of
animals in the herd that contribute to that as a volume of slurry
in total, and the likelihood then of an animal coming in contact
with that and infected, and at the right time, in the right field,
with the management practices of the farm and so on—. I would
suggest that there are probably other factors that are much more
important. But I do say that without a wealth of evidence behind
it. But I would suggest that, on balance, probably that’s the
case.
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[195] Mark
Reckless: Thank you. David.
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[196] David
Melding: Can I just ask two very focused questions? Changes are
being proposed to the compensation regime—I don’t want
to go into a long conversation about that—but the Cabinet
Secretary has given us the assurance that only about 1 per cent of
cattle valued would be affected by the changes. Do you agree with
that assessment?
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[197] Dr
Wright: We’re still out to consultation, so I don’t
have a mandate to answer it directly, at the moment, unless Nick
wants to say anything.
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[198] Dr
Fenwick: No. Other than to say, presumably, that’s one of
those analyses that may have been made in a statement, but
I’ll include it in an annex. If it is, I apologise, but
I’m not aware that that is included as a statistic in the
consultation document. That’s precisely the sort of
information that I think we need alongside—
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[199] David
Melding: It was, in fairness to the Cabinet Secretary, in the
oral statement she made.
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[200] Dr
Fenwick: In a statement. That’s right. That’s what
I said, the statement, but not the consultation, yes.
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[201] Mr James:
I’ve had people—this is not a union view—come to
me, particularly from the pedigree world. The reality is we do want
high levels of breeding cattle as well, otherwise we don’t
improve genetics, going forward. That’s one of the things
that we’re being encouraged to do, and particularly in the
really high value animal—it’s important because that
moves genetics that much quicker. So, we need a constructive way,
and I hope Welsh Government will work with us and that sector. Many
of those, at the moment, do protect their herds by simply keeping
them away from wildlife—I guarantee you that’s what
they do—because of that nature. Even, with some of them, the
ceiling of £15,000 was challenging because you can see that
in some—you know, you don’t market your best cows, so
therefore there isn’t a real value for them. So, I hope the
Cabinet Secretary will work particularly with the pedigree sector,
and that’s in beef, dairy and in all those sectors.
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[202] Mr
Howells: I think if I can add to comments Stephen has said as
well, that lowering that cap on the compensation that is paid is
sort of—like Stephen said—a discouragement for those
who have invested in the herd genetics and improving standards and
the quality of stock that they keep on their farms. It does also
run counter to Welsh Government encouraging us as farmers to
improve our productivity and be more efficient in our production,
so it runs counter to that argument as well. Reducing the cap on
compensation will not help farmers to be more productive, more
efficient, moving forward.
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[203] Dr
Wright: Whilst I don’t have a mandate to answer, I think,
from a personal point of view, what is the purpose of compensation?
It is to compensate. It is to provide what the animal is worth.
It’s one of the reasons the union fought against tabular
values in Wales, because, actually, if you look at average values,
some people are overpaid and some people are underpaid. So, the
point is: actually, what is the definition of compensation? Why is
it there? What is its purpose? I think that’s really
important when you look at that, and also the fact that the
consultation takes a huge reduction in the cap, from £15,000
to £5,000, but doesn’t offer anything in between and
doesn’t offer other measures on top of that. So, it’s
one of those statements within the consultation that, actually, the
industry has been given—a ‘This is the reduction’
without maybe other analyses, or maybe other tiered approaches, or
other types of approaches that maybe would have been preferred.
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[204] Mr
Howells: I think if I can just add as well on the issue of
compensation: compensation will compensate for the animal that is
lost, but in no way does it compensate for the loss of production
and the loss of income for farmers as a result of TB.
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[205] Mr James:
Insurance companies used to insure against TB, but they stopped
that many years ago, so that instrument isn’t there.
Therefore, if you’re going to have—and it’s
suggested in the consultation—an insurance scheme,
somebody’s got to underwrite it, and that’s
important.
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[206] Dr
Fenwick: I’ll quickly add, in terms of
compensation—given that it’s something that’s
discussed regularly and has been for many years—if I remember
rightly, there was some very useful work done by University of
Exeter a number of years ago now—probably more than a decade
ago—which shows that the percentage of compensation, or the
amount of compensation given to a farm is a small percentage of
their overall financial losses.
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[207] David
Melding: Okay. Well, I think, after you’ve more fully
thought about all these things, we’d appreciate any more
precise comments you want to make about the compensation proposals,
and perhaps that could come to us in writing.
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[208] Second point: we
heard evidence earlier from Dr Paul Livingstone who’s been
central to the TB eradication scheme in New Zealand. I did ask him
what their experience was about their red meat exports, and whether
the TB status had had any impact and, indeed, was there any fear
that they could lose trade if it wasn’t tackled. He said
there really hadn’t been any effect, and they’ve not
been under pressure, from that source anyway, for a more vigorous
scheme. I thought New Zealand was interesting because, obviously,
they don’t have, as we do currently, the protection of the EU
in terms of mitigating any potential response you get from
competitors or countries that have traditionally taken our red meat
products. So, I know this has been raised by the farmers’
unions—is there more evidence to suggest that we’re in
a more vulnerable position than it would seem that the New Zealand
farming industry has been in?
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[209] Mr James:
I would just say that, in trade negotiations going forward, we know
that you can make a trade negotiation with a country, but very
often it’s the phytosanitary, the vet certificates and
whatever that can then be the stumbling block to stop it happening.
Most certainly, that’s happened with North America—the
US—on beef. I know that the Irish had issues putting beef
in—you know, they had an acceptance. But the reality is, you
know, this could be an excuse, David, to say, ‘Well, this
area’s got—’. So, that’s a risk,
isn’t it? That’s a risk, and I think that needs
addressing.
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[210] Dr
Fenwick: I heard those comments made by Dr Livingstone. It was
unclear to me, given how long their TB eradication programme has
now been running, whether he was talking in the present tense, the
near past tense or the very much longer ago tense, given how long
their programme has been running, as we’ve been told
explicitly by people in New Zealand and Australia—people who
are very high up in terms of their eradication boards—that
that was absolutely a key concern for them when they embarked on
their very aggressive eradication programmes, and very successful
programmes. I also understand that the commission have raised this
concern very recently with farmers who’ve been out there
talking to their animal health department. In terms of trade
negotiations, why wouldn’t you? If you were negotiating on
behalf of a TB-free country, absolutely why wouldn’t you use
it as a tool? Even in our clean area, we’re over the TB-free
threshold—that’s Gwynedd and Anglesey and places like
that. We are, sadly, over the threshold there—only just. But
in cases like Pembrokeshire, we are way over that threshold. You
need to be below the threshold for six years, if I remember
rightly, before you’re actually officially TB free.
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[211] Mark
Reckless: Can I thank both farmers’ unions here today for
your evidence? I spoke yesterday to the Cabinet Secretary around
the consultation. I know she does want to see a good quantity of
responses coming in. The way these consultations sort of work,
clearly your organisations are well set up to reply to each of
those questions and make your overall points in terms of the way
the consultation’s been structured. However, I don’t
think that should preclude individual farmers from replying, and I
don’t think everyone is expected to answer all the questions.
If people believe something should happen in this area, or they
have particular reasons why, please encourage your members to share
those with the official consultation. Thank you very much.
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[212] Mr James:
I thank the committee for the opportunity but point out that
we’ve also got a nitrate vulnerable zones consultation as
well. So, we’re expecting a lot from our farmers at the
moment. They’re not the type that normally do that sort of
thing, but we are encouraged by them on the NVZ one, and hopefully
on the TB one as well.
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[213] Dr
Fenwick: Can I, Chairman, make one important point that was
touched upon earlier on in terms of biosecurity? One of the
proposals is to link cross-compliance penalties, financial
penalties, to failure to implement certain perceived control
measures. As Hazel has indicated, we’re unclear as to what
those measures would be. I would say we already have problems
because the testing window requirement—the requirement to
test farmers within a certain period of time, quite
rightly—is also linked to a cross-compliance measure. When
that was consulted upon a number of years ago, we did emphasise the
need for some consideration to be taken of exceptional
circumstances. We now have a number of cases where vets have
decided that an individual animal, for example, is not safe to read
on the third day of the test. And instead of there being a system
whereby the vet makes a note saying, ‘This is a danger to
human health and safety’—and we’ve already
tragically seen one death, and we have many members who have been
injured during TB testing—those people are automatically
being fined because the vet has made a very good decision to
protect human health and safety. The whole problem is then being
handed over to an appeals process rather than being nipped in the
bud. It is a concern, when you start talking about penalties being
applied for failure to implement things that may be ambiguous in
terms of their interpretation, or are subjective in terms of an
inspector’s interpretation—it does raise concerns
because there does seem to be a culture of simply handing a penalty
over to an appeals process rather than saying, ‘Hang about,
this was a rational decision and therefore we are not going to
penalise you.’
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[214] Mark
Reckless: Thank you for that. [Interruption.] Sorry, if
I can close it there. Thank you for that, Nick. That is a point
that you made to me personally, and you now have that on the
record. So, thank you all very, very much for coming in.
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[215] Dr
Fenwick: Thank you.
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[216] Mark
Reckless: We’ll now have a five-minute break.
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Gohiriwyd y cyfarfod rhwng 10:59 ac 11:08.
The meeting adjourned between 10:59 and 11:08.
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Twbercwlosis mewn Gwartheg yng Nghymru
Bovine Tuberculosis in Wales
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[217] Mark
Reckless: Thank you very much, both, for coming. Can I
apologise that we’re late beginning with your session? And
can I also say, for the record, that the relative time we’ve
given to the farmers does not imply relative weight to evidence? We
had two organisations and they both seemed to represent their
members. So, I trust, with both of you, we’ll work to get
your evidence as best we can. Thank you for the work you’ve
done with me previously as Chair.
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[218] Can I ask, are
there any circumstances in which you would support the culling of
badgers? Is this, for you, an evidential issue or an issue of
principle?
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[219] Ms
Wilberforce: It’s an evidential issue. I think we would
think about our wording as to whether we would describe it as
support or whether it would be an acceptance of measures, I think.
Do you think that’s a fair description? But it’s an
evidence-led issue for us, it’s not an issue of principle
that we object to the culling of badgers regardless. We’re
very much led by the evidence in our policy.
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[220] Mark
Reckless: Can you point to any circumstances previously where
you have supported or at least acquiesced in badger culling?
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[221] Ms
Wilberforce: I would point to the other work that we undertake
with culling. So, we are involved in the culling of deer and grey
squirrels. So, we have policies that describe our approach to the
culling of wild animals, depending on the circumstances and the
context. So, it’s not that, as a movement, we don’t get
involved in that kind of work, but it’s just that, thus far,
for us, with badgers, the evidence has not supported culls.
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11:10
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[222] Mr Byrne:
I think it’s also worth pointing out that, as a wildlife
trust, we’re not just ecologists, but we’re also
landowners as well. So, in Wales, we have 200 nature reserves,
88,000 hectares-worth of land, and many of them include farms and
farm tenants. Lizzie works a lot with graziers on the land as well,
and Lizzie’s been involved in the intensive action areas in
the badger vaccination trials and also with colleagues in Gwent
Wildlife Trust, who have been working with DEFRA on the other
systems of vaccination, oral vaccination trials, in the Gwent
Wildlife Trust as well. So we’ve been involved in this for
quite a while, looking to go down that evidentiary route and
working with Welsh Government and working with the
UK—DEFRA—Government on that, making sure we have that
evidentiary route. We’ve been working with Welsh Government
in their stakeholder panels, and we do a lot of liaison with the
UK’s leading scientists, in particular Professor Rosie
Woodroffe as well. So, I do think that we do take a really
evidentiary aspect, and, as a wildlife trust, we try to do that in
all aspects of our work.
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[223] Mark
Reckless: Looking at the evidence presented to us, and Rosie
Woodroffe’s analysis and assessment of the tests and previous
studies we’ve had, we noted that, if you had the perturbation
effect, at least around an area that wasn’t sufficiently
large, it might outweigh any reduction in TB within the area,
albeit that, after a number of years, that effect might no longer
be the case. Would you accept that, if you were to cull badgers
over a sufficiently large area and sufficiently intensively, then
you could expect a reduction in the TB incidence within the area
that would be greater than any perturbation effect outside that
would upset it?
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[224] Ms
Wilberforce: Our understanding was that that wasn’t one
of the things that was being proposed for Wales, at present.
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[225] Mark
Reckless: It’s not specifically about the consultation,
but just a general question from me as Chair of the committee.
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[226] Ms
Wilberforce: Okay, well, the evidence from—. Do you want
to—?
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[227] Mr Byrne:
Yes. Again, as I mentioned before, we take an evidence-based
approach and, as I said, we’ve read all the studies and
we’ve talked to the proponents of those studies as
well—Professor Rosie Woodroffe. And I know that she gave
evidence in your review, suggesting that there is a net benefit if
you take a sufficiently large area of culling, and there was a 12
per cent drop in TB. But that was over nine years, and that’s
net. So, in some places, in the edge effects, you’re going to
get an increase and actually, within it, you do get a decrease. But
that’s over nine years and, I think, as she pointed out, to
do it, you’d really, effectively, need to do a
coast-to-coast, highly expensive and complete eradication, and
you’re only going to get a relatively small drop. So, it is
that evidentiary point of view that we look to and, as I said, I
think Rosie and Gareth covered that quite well in the last
session.
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[228] Mark
Reckless: Thank you. I’ll bring in Vikki.
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[229] Vikki
Howells: Thank you. I’d like to ask you some questions
specifically around cattle control measures that are proposed in
the Welsh Government’s consultation document. Do you think
that those measures, as outlined there, could be sufficient to
address cattle-to-cattle transmission? Do you think they’re
going to be effective?
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[230] Ms
Wilberforce: I think our view is that they will improve the
situation and they will help address some of the current issues. We
particularly like the fact that Welsh Government have drilled down
to the fact that the drivers vary in space and they vary according
to industry-led differences. So, I think it’s really
important, and I think we support those because of that,
recognising that the picture’s very complex and that you need
to get that level of detail and target the cattle measures. I think
there are still outstanding problems with the ability to detect TB
100 per cent accurately, especially within big herds. I think
that’s going to be an ongoing challenge, because the test
isn’t perfect—obviously, that applies to both cattle
and badgers. But I think what’s been proposed is moving in
the right direction.
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11:15
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[231] I think the only
note of caution is about anything that risks reducing the scrutiny
in low-incidence areas, because places like Australia, where
they’ve eradicated TB—they’ve identified the big
problem was investment when it’s almost gone. We know from
our own historic TB picture in the UK that you’ve got to
maintain that scrutiny and investment, even when TB levels are very
low. But, yes, broadly, I think we’re supportive of the
cattle measures.
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[232] Vikki
Howells: Thank you. Just for my last question, how much of a
role do you feel that the farming community have to play to support
good practice?
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[233] Ms
Wilberforce: Critically important, and I think experience
probably shows it’s going to have to be a combination of
carrot and stick to address that. Clearly, it’s been very,
very difficult for the industry over a very long period, but the
successful delivery of biosecurity, particularly, is dependent on
farmers’ behaviour and buying into the evidence and the
proposals. So, I think, yes, they’ve got an incredibly
important role to play.
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[234] Mr Byrne:
I think I’d add to that that, as Rosie pointed out in her
evidence, there’s the evidence that TB stays in the
environment. Even if you remove all the badgers and you remove all
the cattle, TB will still be in the environment for, potentially,
up to months. So, they’ve been looking at trialling measures
to see how they can mitigate that in terms of biosecurity
measures—she’s suggesting slurry control measures, et
cetera. But she didn’t have a list that she could give you
now, because she wants to look at them and trial them. So, I think
it will be very important to have a look at that—the results
that are coming out about that.
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[235] But, we also
think there’s a communication issue in terms of biosecurity,
getting the farmers fully invested in that and giving them the
right information, because there’s a lot of disinformation
out there about badgers, cattle and TB and how big a percentage
that they play in it, when the evidence shows that 6 per cent of
cattle transmission is from badgers—only 6 per cent. So,
there’s a communication issue there, and, in our consultation
response, we’ve wanted to highlight that any measures going
forward, should be accompanied by a communication strategy, and
we’ve put that in our draft consultation response.
We’ll finalise that consultation response between ourselves
in the next week or so and we’ll submit that to the
committee, as well. So, I think, again, that will be evidentially
based.
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[236] Ms
Wilberforce: Can I just add to that, sorry, if you don’t
mind? I think there’s been a bit of a communication issue,
perhaps, not just with biosecurity as a whole, but with people
understanding what is a very complex process. In my day-to-day
dealings with the farm businesses that graze on our land—so,
for example, when the sole occupancy was removed and things, they
didn’t fully understand the process. I think people’s
understanding of the change in policy, and perhaps not fully
understanding the information that comes back from labs and things,
has led to more frustration and less buy-in when policy changes
again. People are getting a bit cynical, ‘Oh, they’re
changing the rules again,’ and they’re not really
always fully understanding what’s expected of them. I think
that erodes faith in the system and it erodes their ability to
actually behave in the way that’s best for their own
business, as well. So, I think there is an issue with how the rules
and the language are communicated.
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[237] Vikki
Howells: Thank you.
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[238] Mark
Reckless: Jenny, would you like to come in at this point?
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[239] Jenny
Rathbone: The particular thing I wanted to ask you was, really,
given what we heard on 10 November from the experts on the badger
species and perturbation, what are the potential risks to the area
adjacent to the south-west of England of perturbation of badgers
that are shifting across because of all the culling that’s
been going on there?
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[240] Ms
Wilberforce: Perturbation is probably the biggest challenge, I
would say, to tackling the disease altogether, because, although we
understand the mechanism by which it can make TB in both badgers
and cattle worse, it seems to be proving quite difficult to
establish when it happens and when it doesn’t. The stuff
that’s been published around this has said—well, one of
Rosie’s papers said, ‘We couldn’t rule out the
fact that you could take three badgers out of a social group and
not cause perturbation, but neither could we rule out that taking
one badger out would.’
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[241]
So, it makes it very difficult to look at any one scenario and say
what the consequences in terms of the scale of perturbation are
going to be. But, from all the work that’s been done around
not even necessarily very large programmes—so, road schemes
and forestry operations, for example—they have been shown to
cause perturbation. So, I would argue that it’s a very
significant risk of making the disease prevalent in both badgers
and cattle worse around even quite a small operation. You
can’t rule out the risk. We don’t have anything that
allows us to be sure that we can control that. Does that answer
your question?
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[242]
Jenny Rathbone:
To some extent, yes. So, just sticking
with this whole concept of perturbation, one of the expert
witnesses said that the only way you can avoid the problem of
perturbation is by having a significantly large area, if you were
going to conduct culling, that was boundaried by natural boundaries
like the sea and mountains to prevent the perturbation. I just
wondered what you think about that as a concept.
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[243]
Ms Wilberforce:
The only absolute about perturbation is
that you can only stop it happening if you can absolutely guarantee
that you can stop badgers moving, which means either getting rid of
all the badgers or doing something that doesn’t affect their
behaviour at all, which is why vaccination removes that, because it
doesn’t actually take any animals out of the system. So, I
think when you start looking at creating a system where
there’s no movement of badgers, you’re talking about a
scale of operation that’s—. Well, I think Rosie said
it—you’re looking at something that’s at such a
scale it would probably contravene the Bern convention, and the
fact that, actually, all the experience shows so far that you
can’t even trap a significant enough proportion of the badger
population to ensure that that doesn’t happen.
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[244]
Mr Byrne: And I think somebody mentioned before that it
didn’t work in England. It didn’t have the effect that
they wanted it to have, partly because they couldn’t trap all
the badgers. There’s the famous quote about shifting
goalposts et cetera. Again, Rosie’s covered most of that. We
as an evidence-based organisation will take the most recent
science, and that is that it just doesn’t work.
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[245]
Jenny Rathbone:
So, overall, do you think that the
Government’s proposed approach of dividing up areas into high
risk, intermediate risk and low risk is the right approach, and
having different control measures for each area?
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[246]
Mr Byrne: Yes, we do. It’s been proven to work elsewhere,
as was previously mentioned, in Australia and New Zealand. So, we
do think that the regionalisation approach has worked. Actually, we
should say—well, what I wanted to say at the start was that
we do commend the work that the Welsh Government have done over x
number of years. Again, it’s statistics and statistics, but
we do know that the number of herds with TB outbreaks have been
going down, so we do commend the Welsh Government on the work that
they’ve been doing over x amount of years.
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[247]
Ms Wilberforce:
And I think, in addition—I was just
thinking about this now—there’s evidence that when
you’ve got regional strategies, including specifically
biosecurity, and if you’ve got tailored solutions, people are
more likely to buy into it. It’s such a complex picture that
broad-brush solutions are likely to be ineffective anyway, but if
people feel that they have tailored solutions, they’re more
likely to engage in the process, because the chances of success
that come with that tie into the level of scrutiny that local
situations have been given. I think there’s some published
evidence that people comply with biosecurity solutions that are
tailored to high-risk areas more readily.
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[248]
Mark Reckless: Simon.
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[249]
Simon Thomas: I was just going to ask you, as wildlife trusts, what
your assessment of badgers as a species in Wales is at the moment.
Is it an endangered species, are there too many or is it just
right?
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[250] Ms Wilberforce: No, it’s not an endangered species, and the
legal protection on it was never associated with its conservation
status or scarcity. As you know, the legal protection is to prevent
persecution. There are higher numbers. I don’t know whether
we’ve got a really good population estimate for Wales at the
moment, but numbers have gone up and a lot of people are saying
they’re appearing in upland areas where they weren’t
before. It might be a bit of a crude way to state it, but, if you
farm for cattle, you farm for badgers. The process of
creating cattle pasture provides such a good environment for
badgers that that will have encouraged that increase in population.
But I think the legal protection still has a very important role to
play, because they are so controversial, and there are such strong
views on badgers at the moment that they’re probably at more
risk of persecution than they have been, perhaps, for some years
before.
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[251]
Simon Thomas: And what about TB itself in badgers? Just thinking of
the disease in badgers at the moment, is that a problem in terms of
wildlife sustainability?
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[252]
Ms Wilberforce:
The badger found dead survey that’s
been ongoing, I think, normally only finds a percentage of
infection between about 5 and 10 per cent. So, it’s not a
high-level infection in the badger population, and people like
Rosie who work with handling badgers have never seen any sign of
visual ill health in the animals associated with it. So, I think it
needs to be considered as a spillover issue from agriculture and
not a wildlife welfare concern.
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[253]
Simon Thomas: Okay. So, to turn now to the relationship between
badgers and cattle, which you’ve already said you accept
exists, and I think everyone knows that—there’s a
symbiotic kind of thing going on—first of all, you said you
have an evidence-based approach. Accepting that, what’s the
evidence that the vaccination of badgers, in the way that
it’s been done in Wales, actually works to control the
disease in the wildlife?
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[254]
Ms Wilberforce:
There’s published evidence showing
the efficacy of the BCG vaccination of badgers, both in the lab and
in the field.
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[255] Simon Thomas: But we don’t have the
evidence yet from Pembrokeshire, do we?
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[256]
Ms Wilberforce:
We don’t have the evidence of the
follow-on impact in cattle, but what we have is evidence that it
works on controlling the disease in badgers. It reduces the
prevalence of the disease in badgers, whereas of course culling,
even localised culling, increases the prevalence, even if it
reduces the number of badgers. It has the opposite effect on the
disease in the badgers.
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[257]
But because the work in Pembrokeshire was
never set up as a trial—it was set up as a
treatment—it’s always going to be difficult to pull out
the impacts of the work on the cattle. All you can do is look and
say, ‘Well, we’ve got reducing incidence.’ Okay,
so the number of cattle slaughtered has gone up, but so has the
number of animals tested, so you’ve got an improving disease
picture. But it’s very difficult to pull out which of the
contributing measures, what proportion of those measures, have
contributed to that.
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[258]
Simon Thomas: So, your current position as regards any cull, you
said, is one based on evidence, not on principle, because
you’ve talked about other culls that have happened, like grey
squirrels, for example—there are other culls that have
happened in Wales for biodiversity purposes, and they’ve been
supported more widely. So, your current opposition to a cull in
that sense, or any culling, as I understand it, is based on
evidence, you say. So the evidence is which? Is it evidence that it
doesn’t work at all, or is it evidence that says, ‘It
does work, but it works in such a limited way that it’s
actually not valuable and not worth doing as a tool to deal with TB
in cattle’?
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[259]
Ms Wilberforce:
Broadly, it’s to do with risk
management. The risks of culling that can make TB in cattle worse
are not fully within the control—
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[260]
Simon Thomas: So, we’re back to perturbation here, are we, or
other issues as well?
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[261]
Ms Wilberforce:
Well, it manifests in perturbation, but
there are many contributing factors to that, including civil
disobedience, which has been seen in England, and all these risks
that are only partially controllable that affect what level of
impact badger culling has. So, the balance of risk is significant.
It’s risk based, particularly, I would argue.
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[262]
Simon Thomas: It’s not in the consultation, interestingly
enough, but the statement to introduce the consultation by the
Minister did talk about a risk-based approach that could
potentially include the culling of badgers in particular, quite
defined areas—so, not the Pembrokeshire kind of proposal, but
in particular defined areas where the disease has been shown to be
repeating itself in cycles, where cattle control measures are all
in place and haven’t eradicated the disease. Now, that looks
to me like the tailored solutions that you were talking about in
evidence earlier. So, in that context, do you have a view—and
I appreciate it’s not actually in the consultation, but it is
in what the Government said—do you have a view on whether
that could be a tool that, while I don’t suppose as Wildlife
Trusts Wales you’d ever want to support it, but it could be a
tool that you’d be prepared to see go ahead in a context
where other avenues had been exhausted?
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[263]
Mr Byrne: Again, we have to point you to the evidence that
Rosie gave. Small-scale culling, which is effectively what it is,
especially in the absence of a vaccination, so
it’s not—
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11:30
|
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[264] Simon
Thomas: Yes, but we won’t have a vaccine for at least a
year, and the Minister has said that.
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[265] Mr Byrne:
Yes, so instead of it being test, vaccinate or remove—a
TVR—it’s a test and remove. She said that it
won’t work because of the perturbation effect; it would
potentially make the neighbouring farms’ risk of having TB
greater. And you’d potentially be doing it in areas where you
don’t have that at least four-year vaccination programme
either. So, again, as I said, we take an evidentiary approach and
if Rosie, as the lead scientist who’s been doing this for
20-odd years, et cetera, says in published peer review papers that
it won’t work, then we’ve got to take that opinion.
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[266] Simon
Thomas: You’re obviously based in Wales, but you have
colleagues in Ireland and Northern Ireland. This test, vaccinate
and release policy or test—we’re not quite sure, still,
what it is in Northern Ireland—but do you have any feedback
from the experience there and from the Republic of Ireland where,
of course, they capture and kill? We’re told—and
we’ll certainly explore it as a committee—that the
scientific view there is different to Dr Woodroffe’s. So, do
you have colleagues there who take different views?
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[267] Mr Byrne:
I’ve only discussed this with colleagues in Northern Ireland.
There’s Ulster Wildlife trust and the view there—well,
not ‘view’. They’re doing TVR trials,
they’re blind trials, et cetera, and they’re not due to
report for another couple of years. We’ve talked this over
with the Welsh Government as well, saying, ‘Surely, you can
get some—. You know, you’re a Government, they’re
a Government, they can give you some early interim findings’,
and they said, ‘No, we’ve tried; we’ve asked and
they’re not.’ So, my colleagues in Northern Ireland are
as much in the dark as the Welsh Government in terms of the
information coming out from Northern Ireland.
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[268] The Republic of
Ireland, unfortunately, I genuinely have no—. I didn’t
read any of the studies. At one of the meetings, we did have one of
the Government officials come over from Ireland and she was giving
some of her findings of surveys in Ireland, et cetera, where it was
just about badger movement around farms, and how they concurred
with some of the research that’s been done over here that
badgers and cattle do not get within 5m of each other, and also it
is actually quite rare for a badger to go into a farmyard scenario.
So, unless Lizzie has more information about the Republic
trials—.
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[269] Ms
Wilberforce: No, not a great deal. I’m under the
impression that badger density is a bit lower in the Republic of
Ireland.
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[270] Simon
Thomas: Yes, I just wanted to ask, if I could, to conclude
then, just on that. From the point of view of wildlife trusts,
clearly the badger is an iconic mammal, and we share the British
isles, to use ‘British isles’ in the geographical and
not political sense. The British isles share that same post-ice-age
environment where the badger is an iconic and key species. There
might be a slightly lower density, but has there been a reaction to
the culling in the Republic of Ireland from either similar
organisations to yours or the public? It seems to me from outside
that there seems to be a different view taken of how the badger is
protected and how its place in the environment is looked after in
the Republic to that in Wales. I’m just trying to understand
whether there’s a scientific reason for that or whether
it’s a more political or cultural reason.
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[271] Ms
Wilberforce: I think Gareth Enticott has done some work on
that, hasn’t he?
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[272] Simon
Thomas: Yes.
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[273] Ms
Wilberforce: He’s looked at attitudes in rural Wales.
I’m not—
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[274] Simon
Thomas: But you haven’t got a feed into that, no?
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[275] Ms
Wilberforce: No, not really, no. I’m sorry.
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[276] Simon
Thomas: That’s okay. I just wondered if that was
something that helped us at all, but if we can’t get the
evidence then it doesn’t help in that sense. Okay, thank
you.
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[277] Mark
Reckless: Thank you. Jayne, do you want to pick one up?
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[278] Jayne
Bryant: Thank you, Chair. You’ve both mentioned
biosecurity in some of your answers, and Lizzie, you’ve
mentioned tailoring solutions in certain areas. Perhaps you could
expand on what role effective biosecurity and husbandry practices
can play in reducing the spread of infection, both between wildlife
to cattle, and cattle to cattle.
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[279] Ms
Wilberforce: I think it’s quite an evolving evidence base
at the moment. I’ve been talking to Christianne Glossop and
she’s clearly, and correctly, of the approach that you want
to do whatever you can to help. But the more recent evidence is
going much more down the line of showing that transmission is most
likely via the environment and, as James was mentioning, not
between badgers and cattle; clearly there will be cattle to cattle
and badger to badger. So, any biosecurity and husbandry practices
that are effective will be about breaking that transmission link.
So, there are some things that can play a role. If you have got
badgers going into farm buildings, they’ve shown that
interventions can 100 per cent stop that—the weak link on
that has been farmer behaviour. So, one of the studies that tested
badger exclusion from farm buildings showed that it was 100 per
cent effective, but wasn’t always delivered correctly in
terms of on-farm behaviour. But, you’ve got other things that
you can do, like preventing shared water troughs and measures like
that. I think it does come back to that tailoring, and it’s
really nice that Welsh Government has started to identify the
individual chronic herd breakdown level where, in some cases, they
know maybe wildlife isn’t an issue and in some cases it is.
But, the wider biosecurity issues around preventing transmission in
the field, for example, is still an emerging evidence base. Rosie
has looked at some of these issues, but hasn’t managed to
come up with anything conclusive. Is that fair?
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[280] Mr Byrne:
I believe that they’ve just relatively recently found out
about, or come to the conclusion that, it’s the environment
link, that bacterium stays in the environment for days to weeks to
months, depending on the situation. So, I don’t think that
she’s had a chance to fully go through all the potential new
measures that could potentially come out of biosecurity. But,
certainly, I know that they’ve talked about slurry
management. That is, if cattle do have TB then it is going to be
potentially in their manure as well, and then if that’s being
spread around an area, then potentially you’re spreading the
disease as well. So, potentially, that’s one biosecurity
measure that needs to be looked at. I’m currently also
working on the Welsh Government consultation on nitrate-vulnerable
zones, and one of the solutions there is talking about slurry
management as well. So, within our consultation response
we’ve kind of made the link between the two, and hopefully
there’ll be some discussion and cross-over between the
different departments working on these two issues.
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[281] Jayne
Bryant: So you’d say that there’s certainly a new
body of research and work to be done then on this area.
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[282] Mr Byrne:
Yes.
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[283] Ms
Wilberforce: But there are some easy hits that can still be
applied and I think some of the local private vets have been good
at working with farmers on that—things like double fencing
between holdings and cleaning out water troughs, and just good
practice. So, there are some easy hits as well.
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[284] Jayne
Bryant: Brilliant, thank you.
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[285] Mark
Reckless: Sian, would you like to ask any questions at this
point?
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[286] Sian
Gwenllian: Yes, just a general point. You talk a lot about the
evidence base and you talk a lot about one eminent leading
scientist. Are you aware of other, similar evidence on the same
level as you’ve talked about?
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[287] Mr Byrne:
Well, there’s one scientist, Rosie, who we have frequent
conversations with because she’s been invited onto the same
boards in Wales as we have. But she’s been working with
others, like Christl Donnelly, et cetera, who’ve written
various papers as well, and you’ve had Gareth in here as
well—. So, yes, we do—. Personally, I’m aware of
the other research, but my conversations have been mainly through
Rosie.
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[288] Ms
Wilberforce: I think we would recognise that the data from the
large trials are very complex; the randomised badger culling trial
is being re-analysed by lots of people, in lots of different ways,
and come up with slightly different conclusions. We’ve always
supported badger vaccination because it’s shown to have a
positive effect, but removed risk. I think if we can take no other
message away from the array of very complex data and
interpretations, it’s that it’s complex and
there’s risk associated with the culling. There’s such
a huge evidence base out there, and some of it’s quite
contradictory. That just gives me so much concern. That’s why
we’ve not been able to fully address all the risks associated
with it, because this is just such a complex picture, and
there’s clearly no simple answer. There is no simple
answer.
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[289] Mark
Reckless: You referred to an emerging evidence base, and there
were clearly different issues with various—I hesitate to call
them trials or pilots—and I was disappointed that what
happened in Gloucestershire and Somerset and more widely
doesn’t seem to have been properly quality controlled to give
any compelling evidence either way. I just wondered—clearly,
you don’t think the evidence shows that culling is effective
and should be rolled out on a broad basis. Would you nonetheless
accept further properly controlled pilots or research projects,
whether in Wales or elsewhere, that did seek to develop a better
understanding of whether culling in certain circumstances could
assist in reducing TB incidence?
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[290] Ms
Wilberforce: I suspect the issue is that people don’t
want to wait for further trial processes. Clearly, there’s a
need to take action now, but on a lot of these things, it would be
nice to have more evidence. Every time something is deployed, it
has changed slightly from the way in which it was trialled. It
makes it very difficult to tell what’s working from what
isn’t. So, say they started including the TVR approach within
an area where there’s been badger vaccination, or something
like that, you can’t really learn very much from it. If it
was making things worse, you might not be able to pull that out
because so many measures are happening in the same place at the
same time, and because they’re not being done in a trial
context. I understand that people don’t want to constantly
wait on new trials and new evidence, because this is a critical
issue now, but if there was the capacity to undertake trials, as
well, of some of these new measures, so that you’re learning
on the trails that have been done before, and learning from the
field experience, and then trialling a new approach so you can
actually test whether it works rather than throwing everything at
one area and never understanding how you could replicate it—.
It’s like George’s Marvellous Medicine. If you
get a positive or negative result, you can’t find out what it
was that created it.
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[291] Mark
Reckless: Thank you. Jenny.
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[292] Jenny
Rathbone: We heard from the NFU that there was a massive
outbreak of TB in cattle following the clearance of a nearby
woodland. That was obviously to do with perturbation. I just
wondered what—. Obviously, perturbation occurs when
someone’s building a road or laying a gas line or whatever.
What measures do you think would be best, based on the evidence
currently available, to mitigate the effects of what may be
unavoidable perturbation, just because there are other things that
need to be done?
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[293] Ms
Wilberforce: I think sometimes there’s not enough
preparatory work done ahead of some of these operations. The
planning system in Wales has got quite good systems in place for
ecological assessments and understanding and mitigating impacts.
Things like large forestry operations don’t always carry that
same level of scrutiny and mitigation. So, I think that’s an
area that could be improved. When vaccines are available, wider use
of vaccine would help. I think, normally, better assessment of the
badger populations in an area and where the risks are would be a
good start, especially for planned activities where you’ve
got a long lead-in time.
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[294] Mr Byrne:
I’ve dealt with planning applications for 10 or 15 years and
read a lot of environmental impact assessments. Never once have I
seen an environmental impact assessment relating to impact on
badgers from a major road or forestry operation that actually
brings this issue up. So, maybe that needs to be included in the
environmental impact assessment process.
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[295] Mark
Reckless: David, did you have any questions that you wanted to
ask?
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[296] David
Melding: I have some questions. Thank you, Chair. The
Government’s stated goal is to eradicate TB. Do you share
that?
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[297] Mr Byrne:
Yes.
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[298] Ms
Wilberforce: Yes.
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[299]
11:45
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[300] David
Melding: So, if that’s the end, then you obviously have
to actively consider the means. Now, Dr Livingstone, who led the
eradication programme in New Zealand, said that the general
policies or suite of policies around managing the cattle herds in
England and Wales is good. But he said the huge failure is the
policy with regard to the wildlife that can be vectors and that,
without both approaches being vigorous, then you’re not going
to get an effective eradication programme. Do you agree with
that?
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[301] Ms
Wilberforce: I think it’s fair that you’re going to
have to tackle the disease in badgers, but the context is very
different. So, in New Zealand, the wildlife reservoir was in a
non-native species and there were multiple benefits to controlling
that species. So, the context is very—. Because the context
and the legislative context is different surrounding how you manage
the wildlife reservoir, and issues around the density and the
social structure, all the things that are details to do with the
species and the distribution and the behaviour of the wildlife host
mean that one model doesn’t necessarily transfer to the
other. So, his point of principle that you’re not going to
eradicate TB in cattle while it’s endemic in badgers is fair,
but his solution won’t apply here.
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[302] David
Melding: I don’t think any of us would run out of here
saying, ‘We need the New Zealand policy’,
but—
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[303] Mr Byrne:
There are not many possums in Wales, for a start.
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[304] David
Melding: If I interpret this correctly, Lizzie, you said that
the genesis of the problem in badgers was probably a spill-over
effect from farming. That’s your position.
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[305] Ms
Wilberforce: Yes, that’s my understanding, that it
appears in badgers in response, historically—
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[306] David
Melding: So, badger TB is an epiphenomenon of TB in the cattle
population.
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[307] Ms
Wilberforce: Yes.
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[308] David
Melding: And I’d have to infer from this that you would
then advocate the most vigorous controls of the cattle population,
where there is, of course, extensive culling at the moment, and
presumably, though it’s not wildlife, I suppose, technically,
it must cause you an ethical unease. So, the current controls have
been there for a long time, and they have not reduced—well,
they’ve reduced somewhat the prevalence, but it’s still
a very general problem. So, presumably, we need to do much more
from your viewpoint with the cattle herds. So what is that? Would
we have exclusion areas, effectively, for farms? You know, I ask
this as it’s a fundamental question, but at the moment, we
want to manage farms that have had significant outbreaks back in to
be able to rear cattle again as soon as possible. Presumably, you
think that’s erroneous.
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[309] Ms
Wilberforce: I should just clarify, when I say it’s a
spill-over from cattle, I don’t mean that it doesn’t go
from—once it’s endemic in an area, that disease moves
between cattle and badgers. I’m not implying that badgers
only ever catch TB from cattle. I mean in terms of the source of
the problem in the first place. So, both do need to be
addressed.
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[310] I think one of
the difficulties is that cattle control measures have been in place
for a long time, but the industry has evolved a lot, so some of the
risk factors, like herd size, have changed a lot. Herd sizes have
got larger, and the larger the herds get, the harder it is to
eradicate the disease from the herd, as well. So, it’s quite
a difficult question to answer, because the risk factors are
changing all the time, but I think we recognise that a lot has been
done to address it in cattle. But, clearly it’s not 100 per
cent effective in managing it within the cattle
population—
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[311] David
Melding: Can I take you one step back, then? Your analysis that
TB in the badger population is an epiphenomenon of
farming—that’s a deeply historical observation, and it
has no active effect today, because when that link was made,
it’s so long ago that it’s not a critical factor today,
because we have TB in both populations.
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[312] Ms
Wilberforce: No, I think it’s relevant now if
you’ve got cattle movements, long distance, and undetected
TB, and you’ve got a new outbreak in Anglesey as a result of
cattle movements. It’s relevant in that context, but, no, I
meant historically.
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[313] David
Melding: So, in terms of eradication policy, you would have to
have approaches that were designed to tackle both wildlife and
cattle.
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[314] Ms
Wilberforce: Yes.
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[315] Mr Byrne:
Yes.
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[316] David
Melding: That’s helpful, and—
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[317] Mr Byrne:
From our point of view, because of that scientific evidence of
perturbation, the tackling of it—we believe that, still, the
long-term, best view is of vaccination.
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[318] David
Melding: That’s your long-standing position and I
acknowledge that. Can I just go back to badger numbers? I think you
said that they have increased, but would you say that’s just
a natural fluctuation and that inevitably there’s some
fluctuation that occurs in populations, or are badger numbers at
such a level that they’re causing an impact on other species
that are endangered at the moment?
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[319] Mr Byrne:
Are you referring to hedgehogs, for example?
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[320] David
Melding: They’ve been mentioned, but they predate on
other things, presumably.
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[321] Mr Byrne:
The vast majority of a badger’s diet is earthworms.
There’s been studies of badgers—not just in the UK but
in Europe on the Eurasian badger—of their diet, and a very,
very, very small proportion of a badger’s diet is hedgehogs.
It’s one of the myths that are being put around, that the
decline in hedgehogs is related to badgers, which is completely not
the case.
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[322] David
Melding: Let’s talk about the general principle. You see
no evidence that the current size of the badger population in
Wales, and presumably other parts of the UK, is of such a size that
it’s having deleterious effects on other wildlife
populations.
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[323] Mr Byrne:
No.
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[324] David
Melding: Okay, thanks.
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[325] Mark
Reckless: What are the badgers eating in greater numbers than
they were, and why isn’t that having an effect on the size of
that population?
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[326] Mr Byrne:
As far as I’m aware, over 50 per cent of a badger’s
diet is earthworms. After that, it’s berries, et cetera. But,
yes, they are omnivores and they will eat some other things.
Studies that have been done on the results of faecal analysis, et
cetera, show that there’s very small proportions of mammals,
birds, et cetera, within their diets—and frogs.
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[327] Ms
Wilberforce: The randomised badger culling trial did show that
removing badgers did increase hedgehog numbers a little bit, so
they do have an impact. But as James says, the massive decline in
hedgehogs is primarily driven by habitat, not by badgers. But
people are always very keen to look at one species in isolation,
and you do hear quite often about the impact on hedgehogs, but
people also don’t mention that, in some of the culling trials
where badgers had been removed, it causes a competitive release of
foxes, so fox numbers go up. So, changing numbers of any species
will have a balancing effects on all the other species in that
ecosystem. That’s inevitable. I just worry about people
cherry-picking when they’re trying to make the case around
this issue. They’re a bit selective in which species
they’re promoting the impacts on, shall we say.
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[328] Mark
Reckless: Simon.
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[329]
Simon Thomas: I just wanted to say one thing to you. You mentioned,
in reply to David Melding, herd sizes. Clearly, there are changing
practices in agriculture, including intensification of dairy as
well. As I understand it, we don’t have hard evidence yet
completely about this, but there’s certainly some practices,
including housing cattle completely, that indicate that that may be
a way of breaking this link between the two species, because of
course the cattle are not going out to pasture. It’s not
about barriers against the badgers coming into the cattle housing,
it’s the pasture element that I think is emerging
scientifically as the link here.
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[330]
You’re a wildlife organisation, I
appreciate that, but presumably you come in to wildlife
organisations with wider concerns about animal welfare and
husbandry and farming practices and so forth. If the response to TB
is an intensification of agriculture and more housing of one
species, which would be the cattle, are you content with that as an
approach, or would you prefer us to explore a wider range of
solutions to this that includes maintaining more traditional
farming practices?
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[331] Mr Byrne: I
would say that the wildlife trusts—we are a wildlife
organisation. We’re a conservation organisation as opposed
to an animal welfare organisation, in general. So,
it’s not something that we look at or is in our policies, et
cetera—[Inaudible.] Individuals will have their
own—
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[332] Simon
Thomas: That’s fair enough. I just wanted to understand
if, as an organisation, you had a particular attitude or approach
to farming practices in that wider sense, or whether you are, as
you just said, focusing just on the wildlife and conservation.
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[333] Ms
Wilberforce: I think we do insofar as we—. From a
restoration of biodiversity perspective, we do need there to be a
viable farming industry that’s able to graze cattle,
especially in our countryside. That’s one of the tools
that—. My trust in south-west Wales has got 90-odd nature
reserves, and many of them are cattle-grazed, and would be severely
impoverished over time if we weren’t able to cattle-graze
them. So—.
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[334] Simon
Thomas: We’ve been grazing cattle in this landscape for
several millennia, and that’s why we have the biodiversity we
have.
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[335] Ms
Wilberforce: Absolutely. And, for wildlife and cultural
reasons, we wouldn’t want to see that change. So, it’s
not about—. We’re very keen to see a solution that
allows the businesses to continue, for sure. It’s just
finding that solution, isn’t it, that’s the
difficulty.
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[336] Mr Byrne:
I was referring to the animal husbandry aspects of farming practice
per se, in terms of farmyards and housing, et cetera. But, yes,
certainly, a lot of conservation in the UK is driven by grazing
management of one sort or the other. And so there’s a lot of
very—. We work with—. As Lizzie pointed out, not just
in her wildlife trust, but across the UK, and across Wales, we work
with a lot of graziers, a lot of farmers, to graze upland areas to
make sure that they’re appropriate for greater biodiversity
numbers. As we mentioned in the introduction, we do have a stake in
wanting to get rid of TB as well within the countryside.
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[337] Ms
Wilberforce: We aim to buy a crush big enough to take water
buffalo.
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[338] Mark
Reckless: Thank you very much. And I think it is clear, at
least, in your acceptance of trials that get more information that
would be scientifically useful to decide the best approach with
respect to TB and badgers, that you’re not, in principle,
opposed to culling ever, and I think the committee has found your
contribution valuable. So, thank you very, very much for coming
in.
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[339] Mr Byrne:
It would be worth just saying, and I think Rosie mentioned this as
well, that, because there’s trials going on in Northern
Ireland around test and vaccinate or remove, if somebody else is
doing a trial, and there’s an option to learn from it, I
think, before implementing something to see whether it works or
makes the problem worse, then I think it’s worth waiting for
the results of that.
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[340] Mark
Reckless: We are engaged with what’s going on there,
although we have different perspectives as to the nature of the
activity and how that will report, but we are apprising ourselves
of it. Thank you very much.
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11:59
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Twbercwlosis mewn Gwartheg yng Nghymru
Bovine Tuberculosis in Wales
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[341] Mark
Reckless: Dr Hovi, welcome. Please can I apologise for your
being later before us than we advised? We’re very grateful
for you coming down to speak with us. Can I ask you for the record
to state what your role and position with DEFRA is?
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[342] Dr Hovi:
I’m veterinary head of TB policy, and I, in fact, am employed
by the Animal and Plant Health Agency but I work embedded in the
DEFRA TB policy group, and I co-ordinate the evidence team of
scientists and vets who advise DEFRA on TB policy.
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[343] Mark
Reckless: Excellent. How long have you undertaken that
role?
|
|
[344] Dr Hovi:
I’ve had that role now for five years.
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[345] Mark
Reckless: Could you tell us what your view is on the efficacy
or otherwise of the 2014—? I know it’s your
employer’s strategy, but, for achieving TB-free status in
England, how’s it going?
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12:00
|
|
[346] Dr Hovi:
I think it’s going well. We’ve made enormous headway in
the last five years in implementing the policy, which was announced
at the beginning of 2014, but we obviously made some—. Some
of the measures were implemented already before the 25-year
strategy was announced—for example, the zoning of the country
into different risk zones—and subsequently we have tailored
the control measures according to those different risk zones. So,
that was one of the fundamental principles of the strategy. We are
obviously heading now the words ‘official TB-free
status’ for the low-risk area, which is over half of the land
area of England, and about 43 per cent of the cattle herds in
England are in the low-risk area. Our intention is to bring forward
the application for the official TB-free status for the low-risk
area of England with the Commission this coming summer. We have the
data already for that, and the Commission has expressed interest in
receiving such an application. We’re basically following the
same evidence base as Scotland did when they applied for official
TB-free status in 2009. The cattle incidence and prevalence in the
low-risk area have remained very steady, very low, and below the
required standards for official TB-free status, and are very, very
similar to Scotland. And we’ve mirrored the Scottish policy
in terms of, for example, introducing post-movement testing
recently, which they did before they became official TB free.
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[347] Elsewhere, our
edge area policy has been steadily tightened up—the cattle
measures in the edge area, which is the barrier between the
high-risk area of England and a low-risk area of England, and
contains about 7 per cent of the herds in England. We
have—
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[348] Mark
Reckless: Which area is this in terms of counties? Can you just
confirm for the record?
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|
[349] Dr Hovi:
The edge area has included whole counties and part counties up
until now, since 2014. We have consulted this autumn to widen the
edge area towards the high-risk area by making all counties whole
counties, partly because it just makes better administrative sense.
We introduced successfully at the beginning of 2015 six-monthly
testing in some of the high-risk parts of the edge, and we’ve
seen very beneficial impacts of that six-monthly testing, and
it’s been tolerated relatively well by the industry in
Cheshire.
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[350] Simon
Thomas: Can I just clarify—[Inaudible.] So, within
the intermediate areas you have different testing regimes. Is that
correct?
|
|
[351] Dr Hovi:
Absolutely, yes.
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|
[352] Simon
Thomas: So, that’s based on risk assessment of the herds
or risk assessment of areas?
|
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[353] Dr Hovi:
Primarily, risk assessment of areas. So, in low-risk areas,
we’re only doing four-yearly routine surveillance testing,
exactly like Scotland did before they went official TB free. We
assessed that in 2013-14. Two independent universities—the
University of Glasgow and the University of Warwick—modelled
the testing regime or the surveillance regime, and they came to a
conclusion, both independently, that there was no disease control
benefit from extending the annual testing across the low-risk
areas. And, because it would have cost us quite a lot of money that
we could then spend, for example, on tightening the cattle controls
in the edge area, we decided not to do that. In hindsight, it has
worked for us.
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[354] Mark
Reckless: And when determining policy in the high-risk counties
bordering Wales—Gloucestershire, where the cull started, but
then into Herefordshire and Shropshire—what consideration do
you give to the Welsh context and the impact of policy pursued in
those counties across the border?
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[355] Dr Hovi:
We haven’t yet come to a situation where licence applications
have been issued in those areas that border Wales exactly. As you
may know, the culling policy in England is industry-led, and the
industry carries out the culling, and Natural England issues
licences to cull companies that are set up, and they are set up
under very clear guidance from Natural England in terms of what
they have to put in place before they start the cull or can be
given the licence. And one of the issues that has been considered,
and has been considered very important, is having relatively hard
boundaries for the cull areas so that the perturbation effect can
be mitigated.
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[356] Mark
Reckless: Jenny.
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[357]
Jenny Rathbone:
Mitigated, but obviously not eliminated,
so I think that’s one of the concerns for us in Wales, that
the activity that England may carry out in the areas bordering
particularly south Wales could have a significant impact on the
prevalence of TB in Wales.
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[358] Dr Hovi:
Absolutely. I appreciate that fully, and that’s why it is
important that those hard boundaries are there and the mitigation
is there. There are certain types of hard boundaries that can
virtually eliminate the risk. So, for example, a fast-flowing
river, which badgers won’t cross.
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[359] Jenny
Rathbone: But they can still go across a bridge at night.
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[360] Dr Hovi:
Yes; that’s a possibility, yes. So, we will need to come to
that bridge, if you like—cross that bridge when we get there.
We haven’t had any applications for cull areas, culling
licences, in areas that border directly Wales, and we would have to
then consider that jointly with the Welsh Government.
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[361] Jenny
Rathbone: So, if you did, you would definitely consult the
Welsh Government on the potential—
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[362] Dr Hovi:
Absolutely, yes. We work very closely with the Welsh Government
colleagues on TB control. We have joint meetings regularly.
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[363] Jenny
Rathbone: Okay. The other question I had was really: in the
high-risk areas, is there any correlation between the type of
cattle-rearing that’s going on in the high-risk areas and the
prevalence, obviously, of TB, because it’s been said to us
that there’s a much higher risk of TB infection in large
herds, which tend to be dairy herds?
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[364] Dr Hovi:
There has been a huge amount of risk analysis carried out about TB
and various different aspects, and it must be said that the herd
size always comes out on the top. So, it usually wipes out all the
other potential risk factors and there are constant arguments about
whether being a beef herd or a dairy herd is a risk factor, but
when you start carrying out the analysis and you put in the herd
size, it tends to trump all the other risk factors. So, large herds
are more at risk of TB. It’s a combination of factors as to
why that is: (a) we find it more difficult—with the imperfect
tests that we have for TB in cattle, we find it more difficult to
clear herds of TB when they are larger. So, you have just
mathematically a larger chance of having a false negative animal in
that herd. We know from herd-level modelling—and this has
been carried out in other countries as well, not just
here—that in large herds the reproductive rate of TB, of the
disease, in large herds is much higher. It’s somewhere
between 4 per cent and 5 per cent, when in small herds it’s
very, very low; it’s around 1 per cent. There’s
obviously more contact between more animals in a larger herd. There
is more mixing. Larger herds also probably have more contact
surface with the environment, whether it’s other cattle herds
or badgers, in the case of TB, and they tend to have more
fragmented—they tend to be on fragmented holdings. So, cattle
move around between higher risk areas and lower risk areas, often.
So, those are probably the most common explanations as to why large
herds are more at risk, but it’s a fact that nobody will
dispute.
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[365] David
Melding: How do you define ‘large herds’ when you
do your analysis?
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[366] Dr Hovi:
You can define them in different ways when you do your analysis,
and it’s a continuum, so you can’t say that, well, you
can have a herd of 200 cattle and the risk is not there, and when
you jump over that then the risk comes, because the risk itself is
a mixture of all these things. It’s a mixture of how
fragmented the holding, for example, is. So, a large herd
that’s held in a well-fenced farm with double fencing, no
contact with other cattle, and good husbandry, no incoming animals,
no purchased animals, et cetera, might have as low a risk as a much
smaller herd that has those other risk factors. So, I’m
afraid I can’t give you a number or the herd size that would
be safe.
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[367] David
Melding: I wasn’t after that, but it’s useful to
know where you have to add more vigilance, then, I suppose.
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[368] Mark
Reckless: Jenny.
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[369]
Jenny Rathbone:
Just given the consistency of this
message that large herds are more at risk, has any consideration
been given by the UK Government to either recommending or requiring
a limit on herd size, or density more importantly?
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[370]
Dr Hovi: No, not for TB control. This same effect can be seen
in other endemic diseases as well, like BVD and IBR, et cetera. So,
I suppose that would be interfering with the industry too much, and
we of course know that, for example, on average, herd size in
Scotland is the greatest of all the devolved authorities in GB, and
they are disease free. So, large herd size does not prevent you
from eradicating TB. We don’t see it as an impediment to
that. We just need to do the right things. It’s slightly
harder with large herds.
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[371]
Mark Reckless: Vikki, did you want to ask about the online mapping
tool for TB?
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[372]
Vikki Howells: Yes, thank you, Chair. I was interested to read about
DEFRA’s online mapping tool, which is being used to show the
location of TB incidence and how that underpins all the work you do
around risk-based trading. Could you give us some information about
the costs and the uptake of the online mapping tool,
please?
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[373]
Dr Hovi: The cost of the mapping tool wasn’t enormous.
In fact, the tool was built on an existing tool that the Animal and
Plant Health Agency had, and this tool has been used as long as I
remember. I joined APHA in 2006, and we already had that tool in
place for internal use. So, our staff have had access to that tool
for years, and it was just an expansion of that work. What we
particularly did before we released the tool was that we made sure
that we could update it as frequently as possible so that people
wouldn’t feel taken aback when they wouldn’t see
something that had happened in the previous month on the map yet,
even though we had caveats about that. So, now we are updating
every two months. It hasn’t been a major cost to do
that.
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[374]
I suppose the biggest consideration
before that map was put out was the consideration of how
individuals whose farms could potentially be identified, even
though we don’t give any farm names or county parish holding
numbers on the map—how they would react to that. But the
industry on the whole, when we consulted them on it, were very
positive about it, and we do demonstrate that kind of information
during exotic disease outbreaks. So, we just felt that it was
something—there was no reason why we wouldn’t apply
that for TB.
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[375]
We have seen peaks in the use of that
mapping tool at various times. Initially it was used, obviously, a
lot. I think it gets about 600 to 700 hits a week, which is
reasonable. We’re not promoting it. We’re not expecting
people to be looking at that map constantly, but we would
certainly—. The feedback we’ve had on the map—and
Gareth Enticott has been embedded in the team in APHA in Weybridge
who run the tool, and has been doing some work—he
hasn’t published that work yet—on how people use that
tool and what improvements we could make to it. So, it’s been
well received, and we are very keen that it’s used by farmers
to perhaps decide where, area wise, they want to buy cattle, or, if
they want to rent grazing land in an area, it might be a good idea
to check whether there’s a lot of TB around that area,
because it might be an indication of a wildlife reservoir in that
area, and, particularly if you’re in an area where you
don’t have TB, you wouldn’t want to then send your
heifer to graze in an area where there’s a lot of
TB.
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[376]
Mark Reckless: Good. I was about to go to Simon Thomas. I’m
not sure if he will, but if he does put questions in Welsh, the
translation is available on channel 1.
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12:15
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[377] Simon Thomas: No, I shall spare my bilingualism today. You
started your evidence by saying that, in your view, the strategy in
England, which is officially for TB-free status, is successful. It
started in 2014 and has been a success so far. First of all,
I’d like to understand—I know what the range of
evidence is—what persuaded DEFRA that a cull of badgers in
particular areas would be a successful tool for dealing with the
wildlife reservoir when there was the evidence around perturbation
that we’ve certainly heard, as a committee?
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[378] Dr Hovi:
The RBCT evidence, that’s our key evidence base—the
randomised badger culling trials.
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[379] Simon
Thomas: So, to be clear, then, as I understand it, that
evidence came in two parts. There was the initial report, but then
there was also the ongoing monitoring in those
areas—perturbation died down and then there was an effect
that was more long lasting, so it was that overall, long
period—
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[380] Dr Hovi:
That overall evidence base showing that, in the long term, the
negative impacts of perturbation are overcome by the positive
impacts of the long-term effect on the cattle disease. I think
it’s very important—I’ve looked at some of the
evidence that has been given to the committee previously, and
people do talk about perturbation all the time. I don’t think
anybody would dispute that perturbation happens in badger
populations when badgers are removed or die naturally, or whatever.
It is the perturbation effect on cattle TB that we are all
concerned about. We are not concerned about badgers moving about,
because if it doesn’t cause any harm to cattle in terms of
TB, we are not bothered about it. So, I’m always keen to
point out that it’s the perturbation effect on cattle that we
are interested in.
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[381] In the RBCT, it
was shown very clearly that that did happen and it happened early
on after the first or second year of the culling. It was a concern,
but it’s quite clear from the overall evidence, that, even
with relatively small cull areas that were used in the
RBCT—and they didn’t make any allowances for hard
boundaries—they chose the areas and matched them and
that’s it, so there was no mitigation for perturbation at
all. And I suppose it was something that they didn’t
anticipate either, when they started the trial, so it was a finding
that shocked everybody a little bit. As you know, the reactive
culling approach in the RBCT was terminated early because of the
harmful effect of perturbation in the surrounding areas. So,
we’ve taken that into consideration.
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[382] Nevertheless,
the positive effect of culling in a large area where proactive
culling is carried out is still a 16 per cent reduction in diseased
cattle overall. We figure that that’s adequate for us. We are
hoping that, with a different way of doing the culling, we are
allowing much larger areas and, in fact, we said that the areas
have to be greater than 100 sq km, but most of the cull areas that
we have ongoing at the moment—the 10 cull areas—are
much, much larger than that and we’re hoping that that,
together with the hard boundaries that are a requirement for the
licence, will mitigate the perturbation effect.
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[383] We only have
results from the cull areas, and we’re carrying out a similar
matching exercise as was done during the RBCT, and Professor
Christl Donnelly is doing that for us, where we follow the impact
of the culling in these areas. In the first two years in
Gloucestershire—. The only data that we have so far are for
the first two years, because you have to follow the cattle impact
for 12 months after the cull has finished, so even third-year data
we don’t have yet. But, for the first two years in two cull
areas in Gloucestershire and Somerset, the published analysis so
far hasn’t shown any perturbation effect in the surrounding 2
km area. So, we’re hopeful that we won’t see it, at
least to the extent that it was seen in the RBCT.
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[384] Simon
Thomas: So, just looking at Gloucestershire then, because
that’s where you’ve got the most data, have you been
able to measure at all, yet, the reduction in the prevalence of TB
in cattle?
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[385] Dr Hovi:
Yes. We have published the data for the Gloucestershire and
Somerset culls for the first two years—the impact of the
first two years of culling. So, that data has been published. It
was published in August. We publish the data on a rolling basis as
we go ahead. So, next year we will be able to publish the data from
Dorset, and then going forward for the additional seven areas and
the new areas. At the moment, APHA and Professor Donnelly’s
team are still able to find comparison areas across the high-risk
area that are not culled. But, eventually, we hope to get to the
point where it’s difficult to find matched comparison areas
that have the same cattle densities and same land class type et
cetera. So, eventually, the analytical work will start suffering
from that, but, for the time being, we’re doing that and
we’re publishing the results.
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[386] We have not seen
any difference between the comparison areas and the cull areas so
far, neither in the surrounding area nor in the cull area. So, a
statistical difference. The power of that calculation is very poor
at the moment because we have so few areas yet, but that’s
all published. We wouldn’t expect any drop in cattle disease
yet. The RBCT data suggest that you wouldn’t see a decline in
cattle disease until three to four years after the first one.
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[387] Simon
Thomas: No, that’s what I wanted to try and understand,
really, because the proposal that we had in Pembrokeshire at one
stage in Wales was a four-year programme, as I understand it. There
was no preparation to understand what would happen then until the
end of the four years.
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[388] So, you’re
publishing the figures where you haven’t got the analysis, if
you like.
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[389] Dr Hovi:
Well, the analysis—
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[390]
Simon Thomas: Well, the analysis is there, but the conclusions, I
should say.
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[391] Dr Hovi:
The conclusions are that we haven’t seen any change. We
haven’t seen the perturbation effect in the surrounding area,
and we haven’t seen yet any statistically significant change
in the cattle disease in those areas.
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[392] Simon Thomas: I’d just like to
understand a little more about how this is done because it strikes
me that, on the face of it, there’s a bit of a conflict here
between having a large-scale approach, which you just
outlined—hard borders and taking it through a high-risk
area—and an industry-led approach, which, by its nature,
depends on presumably a group of farmers coming together in a
particular area deciding they’d like to do something about a
wildlife reservoir, agreeing how to do it, contracting with
somebody to do the shooting and so forth. So, in that sense,
you’ve got a clear strategy but you don’t have control
over the execution of that strategy because you’re dependent
on the industry to respond to the strategy by coming forward with
plans. As you’ve just said, the new areas haven’t yet
come forward with plans in those areas. Is there a conflict here,
in reality? How do you manage that conflict?
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[393] Dr Hovi:
Ideally, if you had the resource and Government-led culling would
be considered as an effective way of doing this, then you could
potentially choose your cull areas better. You could perhaps cull
from outside in, or you could cull the highest prevalence areas. We
have looked at that. We do analyse the areas and the level of
cattle disease in those areas very carefully, and look at even the
land class type in terms of budget, density et cetera in those
areas. So, we have not yet come to a point where we would have to
say, ‘You can’t go ahead because you just don’t
have enough TB in cattle in this area’. The value-for-money
analysis would very rapidly then become negative if we allowed
that. The high-risk area in England has relatively evenly high
incidence and prevalence rates of TB. We haven’t come to that
yet. That’s again another bridge that we have to cross. The
licensing process will give the Secretary of State powers, or she
can give guidance to Natural England on licensing and we can
advise.
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[394] Simon
Thomas: Does Natural England take into account cost-benefit
analysis, or is it just the conservation or—?
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[395] Dr Hovi:
They have licensing. Basically, on the principle for licensing,
they know what can and what can’t be licensed. That can
obviously be tweaked over time. At the moment, the policy is that
anywhere where there is badger-related TB, if we have evidence of
badger-related TB and where prevalence of TB is very high in
cattle, and anywhere in the high-risk area, badger culling will be
licensed as long as the other licensing conditions—hard
borders, biosecurity levels, no overdue testing amongst herds,
access to adequate amount of land in that cull area et cetera, and
all the other good guidance that they have about the numbers of
contractors, equipment, training, et cetera—as long as those
licensing conditions are met, then, at the moment, we’re not
in a position where we have to worry about asking whether these
areas are eligible for culling because of the level of disease we
have in those areas.
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[396] Simon
Thomas: We have been told, though, that in the areas where the
cull is taking place that the level of cull did not reach the
guidelines or what DEFRA was expecting—I can’t remember
off the top of my head; it might have been 70 per cent, or it might
have been different.
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[397] Dr Hovi:
The aim of the culling is to cull 70 per cent of the badger
population as quickly as possible, preferably in the first year,
and then, for the following four years, to maintain that badger
population at that low level. I suppose, and all—
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[398] Simon
Thomas: And the areas didn’t reach that level, did
they?
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[399] Dr Hovi:
Well, we have published all the evidence and all the data on how
many badgers have been culled and all the evidence on how the
badger numbers in those areas were calculated. So, that’s all
available publicly, and we will publish this year’s results
as well. Our interpretation of those data is that we have achieved
adequate levels. I think we had a problem in Gloucestershire in the
first year, and that was the only area, so far, where we’ve
had serious issues about having to go back and extend the cull
period, for example.
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[400] Simon
Thomas: Just finally on this, you’re probably aware that
the Welsh Government, in launching its present consultation, which
has got a regionalisation approach that is similar to yours, said
very clearly that they were ruling out an England-style cull, but
did say, in launching the consultation, though it’s not in
the detail of the consultation, that they could take action in
particular localised areas where there’d been continuous
reinfection to cull badgers in a very local area.
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[401] Your evidence
today and your experience would suggest that, actually,
that’s the wrong approach, that, in fact, it’s more
effective to take the wider area approach, hard boundaries, 70 per
cent effective, and maintain it for four years to get rid of the
disease from the wildlife population. It’s a different
Government—indeed, you don’t work for that
Government—but I just wondered how you responded to the
proposals that the Welsh Government have now, which say that your
way isn’t working and that they’ve got this other way,
but your evidence today suggests that that won’t work
either.
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[402] Dr Hovi:
I haven’t looked at the evidence base for that kind of
approach. I suppose we would support any—. We certainly would
agree with the Welsh Government that the disease in the badger
population needs to be addressed, as well as in cattle, or,
otherwise, you will get to a certain level of disease and then you
have that transmission—one transmission route is not
controlled, and you will have a problem. So, I would agree with
Paul Livingstone on that.
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[403] I suppose that
kind of small-scale, reactive approach to culling really hinges on
this perturbation effect. So, if the perturbation effect remains
similar to what we saw in the RBCT, then there are risks with that
approach. But then, on the other hand, the Republic of Ireland has
been carrying out that type of reactive culling, if you like, for
years now, and have actually turned their epidemic into a declining
epidemic, and they are themselves adamant, based on their evidence,
that the culling has contributed to that. Ireland has a very
different badger population. The current estimate of the England
badger population suggests that the Irish badger population density
was about 10 times lower than in England at the moment, when they
started—
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[404] Simon
Thomas: So, perturbation isn’t such a problem then.
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[405] Dr Hovi:
Yes. So, perturbation probably happens all the time anyway, because
the badgers—. The studies that the Irish have carried out on
the ranging distances for their badgers suggest that badgers range
much more widely in Ireland anyway. There’s a natural
explanation for that: badgers are very territorial animals, so the
further you go, the more chances there are that you meet another
badger and, usually, it’s a hostile encounter. If the badger
densities are low, you can roam further without encountering a
hostile other badger. So, that’s really the explanation of
that.
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12:30
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[406] So, the
perturbation effect is there already, or sort of underlying in
Ireland, probably. So, when you introduce culling, it just carries
on. You don’t notice the perturbation effect in cattle in the
same way as you would in England, where the badger setts are
probably much more constrained in their ranging behaviour.
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[407] Mark
Reckless: Can I bring in Sian for her question?
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[408] Sian
Gwenllian: I’m just interested in the risk analysis that
took place back in 2014, when you were putting a plan in place, and
now it seems that there is more evidence backing the fact that what
you did in 2014 was the correct kind of approach. It looks like,
doesn’t it, from the data that’s coming through? But
what actually pushed you in that direction? How was the risk
analysis carried out, and how did you formulate the plan, if you
like? What was the main driving force to make you have the
particular plan that you came up with?
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[409] Dr Hovi:
And this is about the whole strategy, not just the badger
culling?
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[410] Sian
Gwenllian: Yes, the whole strategy.
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[411] Dr Hovi:
I suppose exactly the same way as the Welsh Government has
formulated their disease control strategy for TB. You have
fundamental principles of disease control. You want to protect
areas that are clean, or herds that are clean of TB. You want to
put in as good protection as possible. You want to find the disease
as early as possible, and then you want to hit it hard when you
find it. They are very fundamental principles for us. But, also,
perhaps something that Wales is now considering, we felt very early
on that we needed to identify those areas where the disease was not
endemic, and set in the protection for those areas very early on,
and that has paid dividends certainly, because we can now
officially be free in those areas.
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[412] From my point of
view, or my advisory point of view, veterinary advice, you just use
the channel or principles of disease control, and then, obviously
there is a lot of other advice as well—social scientists
advise the Ministers, economists advise the Ministers, and we could
obviously do a lot more on the cattle control front, if there was
unlimited resource, and if the industry could tolerate stricter
cattle controls. So, even farmers sometimes ask me why we allow any
movements at all from the high-risk area into the low-risk area,
because 90 per cent, virtually all TB that we find in low-risk
areas of England, we can directly associate it with cattle movement
from the edge of the high-risk area, or from Wales indeed. So, we
could do that, and that would be a very draconian risk-based
trading measure, but you have to take into consideration the
industry. Australia did that, and they virtually killed off the
cattle industry in the north of the country, because it was
dependent on finishing the animals in the south, and they just
stopped—
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[413] Simon
Thomas: Wales is certainly very dependent on—
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[414] Sian
Gwenllian: Thank you.
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[415] Mark
Reckless: Do any Members have any further questions to Dr Hovi?
Jayne.
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[416] Jayne
Bryant: Just quickly, Chair, the policy that you’ve had
in England, I don’t think it’s been without its
problems, has it? I just wonder if there’s anything that you
would like to say about that.
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[417] Dr Hovi:
Created problems?
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[418] Jayne
Bryant: Just general problems in terms of—. I think with
the accreditation scheme, there was a 30 per cent drop-out from
vets, I believe, because of people carrying out these TB tests, and
I was just wondering what other problems that you might have faced
with implementing this policy.
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[419] Dr Hovi:
From the badger control policy point of view, I’m sure
you’re all well aware of the problems that has caused. The
badger is an iconic species, and it’s much loved by the
British, and there is a very strong lobby against culling badgers.
And we’ve obviously had massive problems, and the opposition
to culling. There is no denying that that has increased the cost of
the culling hugely because of the need for policing around that
policy. So, I wouldn’t want to pretend that we haven’t
had our problems on that front. We can see that that opposition is
declining, and the problems caused by—. For example, you will
see from the value for money analysis that DEFRA has published now
twice on the culls, that the cost of the culling has plummeted per
cull area and we anticipate that the value-for-money benefit, which
is about £0.5 million per cull area, will grow as time goes
by and culling becomes easier. So, on the cull front, I think we
all know where the problems are.
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[420] In terms of
zoning the country, there was enormous opposition initially from
the cattle industry, and there was a very strong feeling that
everybody wanted a level playing field. We just had to go back and
say, ‘In disease control, you can’t have a level
playing field, and if we don’t do that for other diseases,
why would we do that for TB?’ When we had blue tongue in
England in 2007 or 2008, the whole of the south-east of England was
in a protection zone for months and months. I was working there as
a regional veterinary lead at the time and I know that several
sheep enterprises went belly up during that period, because they
couldn’t move the sheep the way that they needed to. And the
south-east farmers protected the rest of the country by voluntarily
vaccinating against blue tongue and paying for it themselves. So,
there is no level playing field in disease control. High risk is
high risk and you have to contain and mitigate against that and low
risk, you want to protect those farmers.
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[421] For example, I
remember going to the farmers’ meetings in the low-risk area,
initially, and they said, ‘No, no, we want to be with the
rest of the country; we want to have annual testing, et
cetera.’ And, now, you go to the same meetings and
everybody’s really happy that we are where we are and
everybody’s very keen on it and people are starting to
suggest, ‘Why can’t we stop the movements from the
high-risk area altogether?’ So, people do change their
attitudes and you just have to—. I think, to some extent, we,
as the veterinary advisers, need to give advice that is sound from
a disease control point of view and then try and sell it to all and
sundry.
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[422] Mark
Reckless: Good. Dr Hovi, we’re very grateful to you for
coming in and for the co-operation of your department in supporting
our work here. Thank you very much.
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[423] Dr Hovi:
Pleasure.
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[424] Mark
Reckless: Members, we haven’t completed the agenda
we’d intended for today. I know a number of Members had to
leave.
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12:37
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Papurau
i’w Nodi
Papers to Note
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[425]
Mark Reckless:
I’d just like to flag item 7
and the paper to note on air quality. Jenny, I think you
particularly wanted to see that that is there.
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[426] Item 8 on TB and
our consideration of evidence, we will hold that until after
we’ve spoken to the Cabinet Secretary next week. On items 9
and 10, there are two possible approaches: either I can just
organise what we now have to do with the clerks, or I’m very
happy to move into private session so that those Members who do
want to give their views on how we develop those will be able to do
so. For those Members who need to go, no decisions will be made
until the session next week. Would those Members who have a small
amount of time be willing to stay for 10 minutes?
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12:38
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Cynnig o dan
Reol Sefydlog 17.42(vi) a (ix) i Benderfynu Gwahardd y Cyhoedd o
Weddill y Cyfarfod
Motion under Standing Order 17.42 (vi) and (ix) to Resolve to
Exclude the Public from the Meeting for the Remainder of the
Meeting
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Cynnig:
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Motion:
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bod y pwyllgor yn penderfynu gwahardd y cyhoedd o weddill y
cyfarfod yn unol â Rheol Sefydlog 17.42(vi) a
(ix).
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that the committee resolves
to exclude the public from the remainder of the meeting in
accordance with Standing Order 17.42(vi) and (ix).
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Cynigiwyd y cynnig.
Motion moved.
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[427] Mark
Reckless: Okay, so I move the motion to move into private
session. I totally understand anyone who has to go, but anyone who
is able to stay.
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Derbyniwyd y cynnig.
Motion agreed.
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Daeth rhan gyhoeddus y cyfarfod i ben am
12:38.
The public part of the meeting ended at 12:38.
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