Target TB: Living and coping with damage from bTB

BOVINE TB (bTB) inflicts more damage on a farming family’s business and soul than any other livestock disease - including foot-and-mouth (FMD), according to Lyndon Edwards.

“This disease, once it takes hold of an area is absolutely devastating,” he says. “I would rather have FMD on my farm than TB. It would be very painful and I would have all my cattle slaughtered, but in nine months’ time, I would know I have got a future.

“With TB you always have that uncertainty. We have had it on and off for five years and the effect it has on the family, the business and the people working in the business, is the ultimate depressing thing.

“Farmers farm because they love the way of life.

“But this is the one thing that makes people want to give up.”

That is the view from the middle of a Gloucestershire TB hotspot.

In Cheshire, Edward Dale’s family had been clear for many years until recently when a single animal from one of four dairy units they run in Cheshire tested positive. Their next test is in three weeks and Mr Dale, a young farmer with a passion for the industry, admits he does not know what to expect.

“It is very worrying,” he says. “We are sitting with one reactor but in a few years’ time, we could be in the same boat as Lyndon.”

The third farmer around the table, Andrew Mycock, has a dairy herd in the Peak District and is currently clear. Not long ago, he was on a four-year testing regime but now, as the disease has begun to take hold around him, he is on yearly testing. He is also a worried man.

“It is creeping up on us. Over the last five years more of my neighbours have lost cows and we are very worried we are going to get it,” he says.

How TB impacts on the business

Bovine TB affects different farmers in different ways. Mr Edwards highlights the difficulties he faces in finding like-for-like replacements for the high quality organic cattle he loses, given the general lack of availability and the under-valuation of his cattle (typically by 25 per cent under the tabular valuation system). He estimates that he loses £2,000 in milk sales for each cow slaughtered.

TB movement restrictions can be costly. Mr Mycock says his ‘biggest worry’ is he would no longer be able to sell fresh-calved heifers, currently an important income stream for him, if bTB strikes.

The restrictions also bring problems connected to over-stocking, such as extra feed costs and animal health and welfare problems. “We would have more cows than facilities to milk them and not enough ground to feed them,” said Mr Mycock.

Then there is pre-movement testing. Mr Mycock generally tries to combine it with a routine veterinary visit but says that is not always possible. “It can cost £60 straight off just to read the test for three or four cattle,” he says.

Cattle-to-cattle transmission

The farmers are under no illusion that cattle-to-cattle transmission is a factor in spreading the disease.

Mr Dale accepts it has probably played a role in the growing disease problem in his area. “Five years ago, cattle movements were a lot slacker. It is frustrating having to do all the pre-movement testing but my gut feeling is that it is probably a good thing. At least it is stopping cattle spread,” he says.

“It is better to pre-movement test than to be shut up with TB because it’s game over then.

“You can’t blame everything on the badger. We can’t sit here and say it’s all the Government’s fault. People have to take responsibility as well.”

Mr Mycock adds: “It is common sense that if you have cattle coming from hotspot areas you need to pre-movement test them. I bought some cattle in 2005 from North Yorkshire and pre-movement tested them, even though it was a clean area.

“I took precautions but a lot of farmers haven’t bothered with that,” he says.

Cattle controls

The farmers accept the principle of the cattle control regime and even the justification for additional controls, as proposed this week by England’s TB Eradication Group, although they question some of the details.

Mr Mycock and Mr Dale believe that requiring cattle as young as 42 days to be pre-movement tested is ‘excessive’, especially in herds with no TB history, as these animals are the least likely to be infected but among the most likely to be moved.

Mr Edwards says he is ‘a little critical’ of the TB skin test, which he claims is just over 60 per cent accurate. “It is fine on a herd basis but not where people are moving one and two,” he says.

But what they all find deeply frustrating is the futility of clamping down on cattle spread when nothing is done to address the problem in badgers and other species.

“There’s no end goal for the testing,” Mr Dale said. “If you thought in three year’s time you would be clear, you would be happier. But you can’t think that because the wildlife risk is always there.”

Mr Edwards picks up the theme. “I wouldn’t begrudge paying £15-£20/head for pre-movement testing if I knew everything else was being done. I wouldn’t even begrudge a harder testing regime using gamma interferon,” he says.

“But I do begrudge it when I know badger culling is not part of the jigsaw.”

Keeping badgers away from cattle

Mr Edwards’ was involved in a Defra-funded trial last year in which cameras were set up in his farmyard to monitor badger activity. He says the project showed healthy badgers tend to stay away from farms.

“The badgers found coming into farm buildings tended to be sick ones that had been ousted from their sett. They will look for farm food sources even though it is more dangerous to go into farm buildings and they will be incredibly ingenious about how they get through whatever defences you put up,” he says.

He adds that, even if he can prevent badgers coming into his farm buildings, stopping them mixing with his cattle in the fields has proved impossible - and incredibly costly.

The case for a badger cull

Mr Mycock sums up the views of many farmers when he complains that the Government is ‘only going halfway’.

“They are tackling the cattle problem but seem blind to the problem in the badgers. It is a pointless exercise taking infected cattle out if you leave infected badgers behind,” he says.

He accuses Defra Secretary, Hilary Benn, of being ‘afraid’ of public opinion. “There is a very vociferous badger lobby but I think it is a few people making a lot of noise and the Government has probably over-estimated how many people, they represent,” he says.

Mr Edwards insists there is sufficient evidence to justify a cull. He claims the Randomised Badger Culling Trials, which led scientists to conclude badger culling cannot ‘meaningfully contribute’ to controlling TB in Britain, was compromised from the start, as it stipulated ‘a widespread cull of badger was unacceptable.’

“If you take out 60-70 per cent of badgers on a random basis, the ones left will spread disease,” he says.

He points to previous culling projects at Thornbury, in Gloucestershire, Steeple Leaze, in Dorset, and in

Ireland, as examples of where effective removal of badgers, significantly reduced TB incidence in cattle, in some cases to virtually zero.

He is encouraged by recent Tory promises to instigate a badger cull but cautions that ‘politicians are notoriously in agreement with everything you want while in Opposition’.

Taking part in a cull

The farmers would all be prepared to participate in a cull at their own expense, as long as there was some Government co-ordination.

“I would be quite willing to take part if I thought they had set up a decent framework. It needs to be a co-ordinated response.

“It’s no good everyone going off and doing it on their own. I would be prepared to pay if the costs were proportionate,” Mr Mycock says.

Mr Dale agrees. “That’s the key part. Defra needs to police it. It does not want doing indiscriminately; it must be done in a measured way,” he says.

“If there’s an end goal that everybody believes in, people would be prepared to pay.”

The Irish and Welsh examples

Mr Dale has just returned from a trip to Ireland, where he witnessed at first hand a very different approach to the problem.

“Farmers can’t come out and start controlling badgers but the Ministry can send somebody out to assess what action needs to be taken.

“It is not indiscriminate massacre of the wildlife.

“It is very focused. To me that seemed such a logical way to do it,” he says.

“If that doesn’t happen the badgers just get a worse and worse name and then people may take it into their own hands.

“Nobody wants to see that happen because they will be doing it for all the wrong reasons. It won’t be done properly and nobody will know,” he says.

Mr Edwards adds that it is ‘completely frustrating’ for him to look a few hundred yards across the Welsh border and see the different approach taken there that from next year will include a badger cull.

Vaccination doubts

The farmers are deeply sceptical of Defra’ vaccinations plans for badgers and cattle.

“If they are going to trap to vaccinate in the same way they trap to cull, it is a waste of time because they never got more than 60 per cent of badgers,” Mr Mycock says.

Mr Edwards says: “There is some scientific evidence it could be beneficial but it is going to take eight years to get there and in the meantime we are going to see another 320,000 cattle culled.”

Food security

Mr Mycock says bTB is clearly a factor in Britain’s declining milk production and is having a ‘profound effect on our ability to produce food’.

Mr Dale adds: “If the level of the problem we have had over the past 10 years hit the Government today like FMD - bang - it would have been a disaster. But we have had such a long time to get used to it, we have come to live with it

“If everyone keeps chipping away, we will get there. But, at the moment, everyone is just treading water,” he says.

Mr Edwards says bTB should be central to the food security debate. “Defra is saying food security needs to be further up the agenda.

“Recent food riots have brought to mind an old saying: ‘You are only ever three square meals away from anarchy.’ It could come true one day.”

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