TB Crisis: ISG report – where do we go from here?

Alistair Driver reports on how farmers and vets, boosted by comments from 'open-minded' Ministers, intend to keep the pressure on by exposing flaws in the ISG report and building their own case for a badger culling policy.

Flawed badger trials

THE first target for critics of the ISG report is the way the Randomised Badger Culling Trial (RBCT) was conducted and perceived flaws in its concept, design and implementation.

ISG chairman John Bourne acknowledges that Ministers imposed constraints ruling out elimination of badgers from large parts of the countryside and limiting badger culling to the trapping method on welfare grounds. Critics say this limited its effectiveness from the start.

Once the trials got underway, the culling rates in the proactive zones were ‘hopelessly inadequate', according to the Veterinary Association for Wildlife Management (VAWM) secretary Lewis Thomas.

VAWM, which claims to be supported by 570 vets across the UK and Ireland, said reasons included an inadequate number of days trapping per year; culling at the wrong time of year; non consent on some land; inconsistent farm participation and the trapping method, which allowed significant interference by saboteurs. It said this led to trapping rates of just 32 to 77 per cent.

The problems on the ground were articulated in a submission to the EFRA Committee inquiry in 2006 by Paul Caruana, a member of Defra Wildlife Unit, responsible for trapping.

“The whole basis of Krebs was to remove badgers off the ground. For the first four years, that effort was farcical due to the restrictions placed upon us. Repeated requests to change operating methods were ignored. With that in mind, how much weight do we give the latest ISG report, detailing their ‘robust' findings to the Minister? If it were down to me and my staff, very little,” he said.

Dr Thomas said this was crucial. “The trials were so badly carried out that the disappointing results were inevitable. It was no surprise the badgers that were missed migrated into surrounding areas to infect more badgers and more cattle.

“Ten years and £45million later, we've learnt nothing significant we didn't know already,” he said.

This criticism of the trials echoed across the farming and veterinary industries. The Farmers' Union of Wales said the trials made a ‘mockery of science', while NFU deputy president Meurig Raymond highlighted similar flaws during a presentation to the union's council on Tuesday.

He also questioned why the trials had not been set up with well-defined boundaries, to limit the disruption of badger social groups, as had been done effectively in the Irish badger culling trials.

“Given the ISG's remit and the totally inefficient method of culling, we were never going to avoid the perturbation that took place,” he said.

Prof Bourne launched a robust defence of the way the trials were operated, as he presented his report. He insisted the badger removal rate of 70 per cent – higher than figures released by Defra during the trial – was in line with expectations and that interference with traps had a minimal impact.

The ISG, he said, conducted the trials according to ‘good scientific practice'.