.........
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.
Dechreuodd y cyfarfod am 09:33.
The meeting began at 09:33.
|
Cyflwyniad, Ymddiheuriadau, Dirprwyon a Datgan
Buddiannau
Introductions, Apologies, Substitutions and Declarations of
Interest
|
[1]
Mark Reckless: Bore da, good morning, and welcome to the
Climate Change, Environment and Rural Affairs Committee. I’m
grateful to you both for coming in to give evidence. There is
translation available on channel 1, if needed, on your sets. And,
also, can I just note we’ve had apologies from Jayne Bryant,
Vikki Howells and David Melding? And I welcome Paul Davies to the committee as a substitute today
for David Melding.
|
Twbercwlosis mewn Gwartheg yng Nghymru
Bovine Tuberculosis in Wales
|
[2]
Mark Reckless: If I could begin, could you share with us
your views on the efficacy, or otherwise, of Welsh Government
policy to date on seeking the eradication of bovine TB, and
managing it in the meantime?
|
[3]
Professor Woodroffe: Certainly. Well, I think there was a
piece, a year or so ago, on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme,
in which there was an interview with the Chief Veterinary Officer
for Wales, followed by a head-to-head with the head of the British
Cattle Veterinary Association, and it was very striking that, when
asked to criticise something to do with badger vaccination, the
head of the British Cattle Veterinary Association cut across the
interviewer and said, ‘No, no, before I answer that question,
I just want to say Wales is the envy of Britain on this.’
Because the way in which the veterinary officers you have here have
got a handle on, and come to grips with, cattle TB has been
exemplary. It’s been falling, although, in recent times, the
number of cattle slaughtered has gone up. It’s really
hard—and Gareth can add his views on this, but in my view
it’s very hard—to judge the success of a policy by the
same method as you are using to pursue that policy. So, if
you’re, for example, taking a more aggressive approach,
you’re slaughtering more cattle in each herd and your number
of affected herds is going down, nevertheless you will see more
cattle slaughtered. So, I think it’s been successful. TB goes
up and down, and it does the same thing in other parts of Britain,
but I think a great deal has been achieved in Wales in heading
towards TB control.
|
[4]
Dr Enticott: I think I’d add two things. On the one
hand, TB has the same problems in Wales as it has in England and in
other countries, in that it’s a political disease, and so
what happens to it and how it’s managed reflect the politics
of the time. It’s no different in Wales than it is in
England. However, I think in Wales, certainly over the last 10
years, what we’ve done or what the Welsh Government have done
are more individual targeted approaches, whereas DEFRA have tended
to adopt more generalist approaches. Just a couple of examples of
that: the ITA—the intensive treatment area—out in west
Wales over 10 years ago now was the first attempt, really, to try
and give farmers specific advice on biosecurity. The approach in
England has really been just to send out leaflets and say,
‘This is what you can do’, which tends to make things
worse. Then again, a more recent approach, Cymorth TB, is, again, a
more specific, targeted approach. I think DEFRA have probably
learned from that, but Wales are ahead of the game in that
respect.
|
[5]
Mark Reckless: Huw, you had a point.
|
[6]
Huw Irranca-Davies: Thank you, Chairman. When we look at the
figures, looking back to 2009, over 13,000 cattle slaughtered and
nearly 1,300 new herd incidents. The herd new incidence has been on
a downward trend, with some little variation, but consistently down
to 722 new herd incidents. But it’s gone back up in terms of
cattle slaughtered—back to nearly 9,500. But your argument
would be that the number of cattle slaughtered is not evidence that
the policy is failing. The evidence should be in that number of
herds with new incidents, that that is declining.
|
[7]
Professor Woodroffe: Yes, I should preface what I say, that,
whilst I’m a disease ecologist, I am primarily a wildlife
ecologist, so, you know, I’m not the biggest and best expert
on cattle TB, except as it applies to badgers; badgers are
particularly my expertise. But, yes, with that caveat, I think that
what’s happened is that—and, you know, reading the
consultation document, there have been areas where the policy has
been very successful, and it’s increasingly homing down on
problematic, chronically problem herds where you may have more
reactors. I haven’t looked into it to see whether they
are—. It must be that they are slaughtering more cattle per
herd if you’re slaughtering more cattle, but there are fewer
affected herds.
|
[8]
Huw Irranca-Davies: Which was, interestingly, I think,
Professor John Bourne’s argument, that you needed to go deep
into the cattle herds where there was a high level of incidents in
order to hit it hard and knock it back.
|
[9]
Professor Woodroffe: Absolutely. A lot more use of gamma
interferon testing, for example, which is a more sensitive but also
less specific test, which is a good idea if you’re trying to
control disease.
|
[10]
Mark Reckless: Professor Woodroffe, given your background
with work that came out of Lord Krebs, could I just explore an
issue with you around the Krebs report, the King report and then
the 2011 DEFRA document? If you could perhaps start by saying
whether I’ve characterised it correctly in my understanding.
The King report would be suggesting that there was efficacy in
badger culling, but the Krebs report and the committee there were
saying that that wasn’t case because once you take into
account the negative effects on infection of, I assume, disturbing
the badgers through culling and making them go to a wider area, it
wasn’t positive. But then DEFRA came back in 2011, and said,
while that may be true in the near term, for a year or 18 months,
on a longer view, the positive impacts of badger culling on bovine
TB instance were greater, and those negative effects tended to be
complete within 18 months. So a) is that a fair characterisation,
and b) why didn’t that come out during the randomised badger
culling trial, given Lord Krebs got this under way in 1996 and it
didn’t report until 2007?
|
[11]
Professor Woodroffe: Well, let me first tell you, yes, Krebs
reported in 1996, so what you’re talking about isn’t
the Krebs report. You’re talking about the final report of
the independent scientific group on cattle TB, which was chaired by
Professor John Bourne and that was mentioned previously. So, the
views of Professor Sir David King, who was the Government’s
chief scientist at the time, was that he looked up what we had
done—I was a member of the independent scientific group on
cattle TB—and what we showed at that point was that, while
culling was under way, we saw a relative reduction in cattle TB in
the areas where widespread badger culling had occurred. But we also
saw an increase on adjoining land. I can give you an explanation of
the intimacies of badger ecology and why that happens, but the
point is that we saw less TB inside the culled areas but more TB on
adjoining land. Those roughly balanced each other out, to the point
where, at the end of the randomised badger culling trial, we had
essentially achieved nothing in terms of TB control. We achieved an
enormous amount in terms of understanding the outcomes of culling,
both of badgers and cattle.
|
[12]
Now, what happened after the end of that, was that monitoring of
those areas continued through the work of Professor Christl
Donnelly, who was also a member of the ISG. What that showed was,
after culling ended, there was an increase in the benefits of
culling inside these large culling areas, but the harmful effect on
adjoining land disappeared. What that means if you sort of mush
together all of the beneficial effects and the harmful effects, is
that the projection is, that for a perfectly circular culling area
of about 150 square kilometres, you would expect, on balance, after
nine years, about a 12 per cent relative reduction overall in
cattle TB, over nine years. So, if, in those nine years, you would
expect, with no culling, to have 100 incidents of cattle TB, you
would have 88 in that nine-year period. So, it’s not a very
big overall reduction, but it is a net reduction. But if you break
that apart, the benefit is all inside the area that’s culled.
The adjoining land never saw any benefit. Although we saw the
biggest detrimental effect was early on during culling, the harmful
effect disappeared after culling ended but it never turned into a
benefit. So for the farmers on adjoining land, it’s all cost;
they see no benefit from culling whatsoever.
|
[13]
Now, just to quickly deal with the King report, what Sir David King
did, was he looked at the evidence that there was a beneficial
effect inside. He said, ‘Yes, yes, we believe that’. He
looked at the evidence that there was a detrimental effect outside,
and his committee said, ‘We don’t believe this,’
and they came up with a variety of reasons why they didn’t
believe it, all of which have been addressed. We subsequently met
with Sir David and resolved a lot of those differences. I should
say that his report was censured by the top scientific journal
Nature because he basically cherry-picked. He said,
‘We like this result, but we don’t like that
result.’ The evidence is there, and it was published in top
journals. The evidence was there to show that there really was this
harmful effect, but it didn’t persist. It took several years
to disappear, and it never turned into a benefit.
|
[14]
Mark Reckless: Thank you. I find that a very helpful
explanation. I think we now want to address the Welsh
Government’s proposals. We had a statement from them three
weeks ago. So, Paul, did you just want to come in on that point
before I move to the—?
|
[15]
Paul Davies: Yes, Chair, if I may. Before I ask my
supplementary question, for the record, I just need to declare that
my parents-in-law’s farm has been affected by bovine TB over
the last 15 years.
|
[16]
Professor Woodroffe: Sorry to hear that.
|
[17]
Paul Davies: I just want to take you back to the figures and
the number of new incidents we’ve seen as far as bovine TB is
concerned. Do you accept, though, that there is a correlation
between the number of herds and, obviously, the number of new
incidents? Because if you look at the figures, in 1996, for
example, there were over 20,000 cattle herds, and now, in 2016,
there are only 11,500 cattle herds? So, do you accept that there is
a correlation as far as those figures are concerned?
|
09:45
|
[18]
Professor Woodroffe: So, you’re talking about just the
number of cattle herds, full stop.
|
[19]
Paul Davies: Absolutely, yes.
|
[20]
Professor Woodroffe: Again, I have to preface what I say,
and Gareth—[Inaudible.]—by saying, I’m a
TB badger ecologist, but one of the main risk factors for TB in
cattle is herd size. So, an individual cow in a large herd has a
higher risk of getting TB than an individual cow in a small herd.
It’s not just that there are more of them so the herd is more
likely to get TB; it’s that individual cattle have a higher
risk in large herds. Now, certainly, in my study areas in Cornwall,
over time, we can see, say, one goes out of business, the land is
bought up by a neighbour and we’re seeing a trend towards
fewer larger herds. So, that is going to increase the TB risk, and
so, in trying to combat this disease, it’s like swimming
upstream, because the trend within the industry is fewer larger
herds and yet the TB risk goes up with herd size. I don’t
know if that helps inform you in your question at all.
|
[21]
Paul Davies: I think the point I’m trying to make is
that, of course, you’re trying to argue that the incidence,
as the figures show, has come down—
|
[22]
Professor Woodroffe: I see. It’s gone down.
|
[23]
Paul Davies: —but the argument I’m putting
forward is, of course, that would be the case, because the number
of herds has come down.
|
[24]
Professor Woodroffe: Because there are fewer herds. No,
because the risk per herd goes up. So, it’s dropping, I
think, despite—. I don’t think it’s that there
are fewer—.
|
[25]
Paul Davies: So, your view is that the risk increases.
|
[26]
Professor Woodroffe: The risk per herd and the risk per
animal in each herd goes up with herd size. I don’t think
that the decline that’s been seen is due to there being fewer
herds. I don’t know, Gareth, if you want to add anything to
that.
|
[27]
Dr Enticott: I don’t know. I think the lesson is,
really, a lot of the statistics that are used in epidemiology can
be quite confusing when you use them in isolation.
|
[28]
Professor Woodroffe: And there has been a move, I should
say—there’s certainly been a lot of pressure on
DEFRA—to present these data as incidents per herd for that
sort of reason.
|
[29]
Paul Davies: Okay. Thank you, Chair.
|
[30]
Mark Reckless: Good. Simon.
|
[31]
Simon Thomas:
Byddaf yn gofyn yn Gymraeg. Cyn
gofyn beth roeddwn i eisiau gofyn, jest i adlewyrchu’r
drafodaeth rŷm ni newydd ei chael, fe fyddai yn sicr yn help,
efallai, i weld y ffigurau hyn wedi’u mapio yn ôl risg,
yn ogystal ag yn ôl nifer. So, mae hynny’n help. Nid
ydych chi’n cael y cyfieithiad?
|
Simon
Thomas: I’ll ask in Welsh. Before I ask what I wanted to
ask, just to reflect the discussion that we’ve had, it would
certainly help if we could see these figures mapped according to
risk, as well as according to the number. So, that would be a help.
Are you not getting the translation?
|
[32]
I don’t think they’re—
|
[33]
Professor Woodroffe: I’m not getting the translation,
sorry. I was told not to touch anything.
|
[34]
Mark Reckless: Simon, is that a request for our witnesses or
for our research staff?
|
[35]
Simon Thomas: It was a comment [Laughter.] It was a
request for research staff. Anyway, it’s by the by.
|
[36]
Rwyf i jest eisiau deall ar hyn o
bryd, gyda chynigion Llywodraeth Cymru—. A ydy hynny’n
dod trwyddo’n glir, nawr? Popeth yn iawn?
|
I just want to
understand, with the Welsh Government’s proposals—. Is
that coming through clearly? Everything okay?
|
[37]
Professor Woodroffe: Yes, thank you.
|
[38]
Simon Thomas:
Rwyf i jest eisiau deall y gwaith
rŷch chi wedi’i wneud, a chymharu, efallai, Seland
Newydd hefyd, a’r ffaith bod y Llywodraeth ar hyn o bryd yn
cynnig bod yna dair ardal statws TB, i bob pwrpas, yng
Nghymru—isel, canolradd
ac uchel—a bod yna
wahanol ddulliau’n cael eu defnyddio yn y gwahanol ardaloedd
hynny. A ydy hynny’n
rhywbeth rydych chi wedi’i weld yn cael ei arddel mewn
gwledydd eraill? Ac, a ydych chi’n gallu gweld bod
hynny’n ymateb rhesymol o ystyried mai’r amcan tymor
hir yw symud at statws rhydd o TB yn llwyr?
|
Simon Thomas: I just want to
understand the work that you’ve done, and comparing with,
perhaps, New Zealand as well, and the fact that the Government at
present is proposing that there are three different TB status areas
in Wales—low, intermediate and high—and that there are
different methods used in those areas. Is that something that
you’ve seen being espoused in other countries? And, do you
see that that is a reasonable response given that the long-term
objective is to get to an entirely tuberculosis-free status?
|
[39]
Dr Enticott: The story in New Zealand and Australia is that
you regionalise, you zone and you have different regulations in
each area. The story from Australia is that that was already in
place before they really started rolling forward with TB
eradication, and so farmers were used to that. It meant that they
could, in the Northern Territories, which was the last area, really
hit the problem really hard and that’s what really got rid of
the problem in the end. So, yes, by having these different
regulatory systems in different states, that really helped. Again,
in New Zealand, by dividing up the country into different kinds of
movement-restriction areas, infection areas—again, that kind
of helps farmers understand where those risks are. So, it’s
not just from a regulatory perspective, but it also helps
farmers’ mentalities.
|
[40]
There was some interesting research published quite recently from
New Zealand, which showed that the risk movements matched the
zones, if you like. So, it had had an effect on farmers’
practices—not a complete effect, so there was still a lot of
work to be done in terms of trying to encourage farmers to adopt
the least risky movement practices, or cattle-management practices,
but dividing countries up like that has an effect on people’s
working practices. So, for Wales, I guess part of the problem is
that Wales is a lot smaller than Australia and New
Zealand—
|
[41]
Simon Thomas: I had noticed.
|
[42]
Dr Enticott: —and it also has England butting up right
against it and cattle movements cross between those countries, and
policy is devolved as well. So, different things can be happening
in different countries. So, on the face of it, it’s a good
idea, and it can also mean that you can declare eradication sooner
in those low-risk areas and say, ‘Look, we’re making
progress.’ Again, going back to Australia, by the time they
had started their eradication programme seriously, it really
wasn’t a problem in a lot of the southern states, so they
were ahead of the game. They could also demonstrate that
they’d eradicated other diseases and they were successful in
what they were trying to do. We probably don’t really have
that to fall back on, either in Wales or in England. But, upon the
face of it, regionalisation is a good thing.
|
[43]
Professor Woodroffe: If I can add to that, I think in terms
of badger management, it’s a good thing. If you look at the
map that’s presented in the consultation document, it’s
pretty clear that what evidence there is suggests that the
involvement of badgers in north Wales, for example, is much, much
less than it is in south Wales. So, I think that you wouldn’t
necessarily want to be doing anything about badgers in north Wales
if a lot of the TB in those areas isn’t involving them,
except to do your hardest to make sure it doesn’t get into
them. The same is the case within the low-risk area in England,
where, broadly speaking, it seems to be that most of the infection
is coming in from outside and therefore you’ll manage it in
that way to try to stop the disease from spreading to new areas.
So, I’ve been quite impressed by that approach, yes.
|
[44]
Simon
Thomas: Beth, wedyn, am y dulliau gwahanol fydd yn cael eu defnyddio
yn y gwahanol ardaloedd yna? Rydych chi newydd grybwyll mai un
o’r pethau sy’n deillio’n syth o hyn yw y bydd
yna, efallai, modd lladd moch daear mewn un ardal ond ddim mewn
ardaloedd eraill—nid lladd ar raddfa eang, ond yn benodol
iawn. Felly, mae yna wahaniaeth yn mynd i fod rhwng gwahanol
ardaloedd. Eto, a ydy hwn yn rhywbeth sy’n taro tant
gyda’r hyn sy’n cael ei wneud mewn gwledydd eraill? Yn
benodol, efallai, fel yr oedd Mr Enticott wedi dweud ar y cychwyn,
mae DEFRA wedi bod yn llawer llai parod na Llywodraeth Cymru i
ddosbarthu gwybodaeth am fioddiogelwch a phethau felly. A ydy hyn
yn golygu bod y Llywodraeth yn gallu arfogi ei hunan i fod yn
llawer mwy pwerus a llawer mwy ymyrrus, mewn ffordd, mewn
ardaloedd, i sicrhau fod bioddiogelwch, yn yr ardaloedd uchel yn
arbennig, yn cael ei ddiogelu? Felly, rydym yn ehangu o’r
profiad y cawsom yng ngogledd sir Benfro, efallai.
|
Simon
Thomas: What, then, about the different approaches that will be
used in those different areas? You’ve just mentioned that one
of the things that stems straight from this is that it might be
possible to cull badgers in one area but not in another
area—not a broad-ranging cull, but very specific. So, there
will be a difference between the different areas. Again, is that
something that aligns with what’s happening in other
countries? Specifically, as Mr Enticott said at the start, DEFRA
has been far less willing than the Welsh Government to distribute
information about biosecurity and those issues. Does that mean that
the Government can arm itself to be much more powerful and much
more interventionist, in a way, in areas to ensure that biosecurity
in those high-risk areas in particular is secured? So, we’re
moving on from the experience we had in north Pembrokeshire,
perhaps.
|
[45]
Dr Enticott: So, if I understand your question correctly,
about biosecurity, it could encourage farmers elsewhere in
lower-risk areas, or Welsh Government could encourage those farmers
more to use—
|
[46]
Simon Thomas: It empowers Welsh Government to do that more
successfully, I think, is what I’m saying, rather than more.
Just more successfully, more targeted.
|
[47]
Dr Enticott: Okay. I think the problem with biosecurity is just
the word ‘biosecurity’, in that it means so many
different things to different people. There’s a general
problem about trying to encourage farmers to adopt that, because it
means so many different things, like I said. On the one hand, a lot
of people just refer to cattle movements as a form of biosecurity,
and it probably is the most important element of biosecurity, and
those regulations around cattle movements would probably
apply—you would probably want them to apply across the board.
In terms of trying to encourage farmers to adopt more biosecurity
in the lower-risk areas, the problem you’ve got there is a
perception of risk: ‘Why should I do this? There
doesn’t seem to be much point, nobody is really going down
with TB.’ The problem in high-risk areas is a general
sense of fatalism around biosecurity, in that farmers think,
‘Well, I’m going to get the disease. I’m going to
get it whatever I do. What is the point?’ Now, you can try
and work with those farmers on a one-to-one basis, and the
veterinary profession are really important in doing that, but
that’s expensive. It’s a lot more expensive than
general, generic advice. So, I don’t really think that
regionalisation necessarily assists with those problems. Those are
much broader social challenges for Government.
|
[48]
Mark Reckless: When you’re a farmer in a low-risk area
and you have this lower perception of risk, does that extend to not
bringing cattle in from high-risk areas, because you’re aware
they’re high risk and that’s not something you should
do?
|
[49]
Dr Enticott: That’s interesting, and the answer is,
‘Yes and no’. There’s plenty of evidence to show
high-risk movements of cattle coming into Anglesey and other areas
of north Wales. What’s interesting is, when you get a
breakdown in those low-risk areas, what happens to those farmers
around that, and there can be a lot of social pressure and a lot of
blame on that farmer for bringing that in and threatening other
farmers in the location.
|
[50]
Mark Reckless: Paul.
|
[51]
Paul Davies: Thank you, Chair. Just on the regionalised
approach, obviously, the Welsh Government now is moving towards a
much more regionalised approach. I just want to ask you about the
New Zealand experience, because it seems to me that they’re
moving away from a regionalised approach—they’re moving
away from the zone approach, as they call it. Are there any lessons
we can learn from that?
|
[52]
Dr Enticott: Part of the reason for that is the level of
disease in New Zealand is so low now, the disease really only
exists on the west coast, which is on the south island, in the kind
of hotspot areas around there. They only have 35 breakdowns a year
and they’re pretty much all there; if they’re not
there, it’s because somebody’s brought some cattle from
there and brought them up to the north island.
|
[53]
Paul Davies: Hence the change, then.
|
[54]
Dr Enticott: Yes.
|
[55]
Paul Davies: Thank you.
|
[56]
Mark Reckless: Huw, then Jenny.
|
[57]
Huw Irranca-Davies: Two very short supplementaries on this.
It’s interesting, the interplay between the regional approach
and risk-based trading. The proposals that have come forward are
for voluntary risk-based trading. My understanding is that, in
Australia and New Zealand, it was hardline, and in Australia, they
had large markets, even within a high-risk area. You could trade
within that high-risk area, and it was sufficiently large that
there was economic value within it, even though they were closed
within it. It probably suits Wales that it’s a voluntary one,
but it still leaves open that slight risk that suckler calves or
whatever suddenly find their way in. Do you think it’s
appropriate, within the proposals we currently have, to have a
regional approach balanced with a voluntary risk-based trading
approach?
|
[58]
Dr Enticott: Two things—Australia’s was a
regulatory approach, so, like I said before, the states had
different existing rules already on movements. In New Zealand, the
risk-based trading scheme is voluntary, and was created by farmers,
and this is the key and the most interesting difference, as well,
with New Zealand. So, the story is, in the Hawke’s Bay area,
in the early 1990s, a group of farmers got increasingly annoyed
with other farmers bringing in cattle that couldn’t be
identified. They didn’t know the history of those animals,
and it was those farmers and an auctioneer, in
particular—
|
[59]
Huw Irranca-Davies: It was self-enforced.
|
[60]
Dr Enticott: —who, in a market, would go around
labelling pens with cattle in saying, ‘These are from an
infected herd from two years ago’. Anyway, they had status
declaration cards—
|
[61]
Huw Irranca-Davies: So, it flags up the importance of farmer
buy-in to this.
|
[62]
Dr Enticott: Exactly.
|
[63]
Huw Irranca-Davies: The second short question I have is:
would it be your view that individual farms should be able to work
their way out of their classification in a region in the way that
it was done, as I understand, in Australia and elsewhere? So, even
if you’re in a high-risk area, if you’ve got a clean
farm and they have proven that they’re clean and the testing
is showing that they’re clean and they’re doing the
biosecurity, they should be able to be ring-fenced and for it to be
said, ‘Well, you’re now out of that, you can freely
engage in the wider area.’
|
[64]
Dr Enticott: People would argue about that, because they
would say if they’re in a high-risk area, they’re in a
high-risk area, and the history of the herd is one thing,
but—
|
[65]
Huw Irranca-Davies: But then what’s the incentive for
them to—?
|
[66]
Dr Enticott: Exactly.
|
[67]
Huw Irranca-Davies: What would your view be?
|
[68]
Dr Enticott: The whole point of a risk-based trading scheme
should be to incentivise good practice. If you penalise people in
those high-risk areas—if you lump them all together and say
that they’re all the same—then why should they do
anything? That’s the key point.
|
10:00
|
[69]
Mark Reckless: Jenny.
|
[70]
Jenny Rathbone:
Picking up on the point that even in New
Zealand, you can have occasional breakouts where somebody has
imported the cattle from the west of the south island, however much
you test animals, surely it’s always possible for a
TB-infected cow to get through because of the incubation period. Is
that correct, or is it always possible to identify whether
somebody’s TB free or not?
|
[71]
Dr Enticott: I’m not a disease epidemiologist, but
I—
|
[72]
Professor Woodroffe:
I can talk to that a little bit. TB is a
difficult disease to diagnose, so the statutory test—the
tuberculin test—misses a proportion of animals, and
that’s why one of the main problems is that you have herds
that test clear that are still infected. I know of herds like this
in Cornwall where you test clear, you’re all excited and then
in the next test there’s another infection, and it’s
probable that it was just never cleared out. There are other tests
that I mentioned earlier—the gamma interferon test, which is
a more sensitive test; it picks up more true positives that the
tuberculin test but it also picks up more false negatives, and
that’s the trade-off—you end up killing animals that
don’t have TB.
|
[73]
But I think, overall, the possibility for
clearing out the disease over time using these approaches has been
demonstrated repeatedly in this country and elsewhere. So, I think
when you get to a point where the infection is close to
eradication, you ought to be able to mostly pick up the—. It
ought to be possible eventually with these tools, if they’re
implemented aggressively, to get the disease to very, very low
levels.
|
[74]
Jenny Rathbone:
Okay, because that’s the anxiety in
north Wales—that they’re going to get somebody
importing the disease because of inadequate controls. So, in your
view, do you think the controls that we’re now planning to
impose on a regionalised basis are sufficient in terms of what you
can do in the testing of animals or the testing of
cattle?
|
[75]
Professor Woodroffe:
I wouldn’t like to comment on
that.
|
[76]
Jenny Rathbone:
Okay. And Gareth, are you able to comment
on that?
|
[77]
Dr Enticott: I think, in general, as Rosie just said, all tests
have their problems and their limitations, and you can go too far
with tests as well. Again, my research on New Zealand shows that,
back in the 1970s, they were interpreting the test incredibly
strictly. What that means is that you over-interpret the test, and
you penalise those farmers where maybe disease actually isn’t
on the farm, and their business starts to suffer as a result of it.
So, you can take things too far or you can take things not far
enough, and there’s a balance there somewhere because of the
limitations of the test. Again, the story in New Zealand is trying
to find that balance and altering that balance as you go along to
meet the circumstances of particular regions, and particular
businesses as well.
|
[78]
Jenny Rathbone:
So, do you think we’ve got the
balance about right, based on your academic—?
|
[79]
Dr Enticott: The balance is always
adjusted—[Inaudible.]
|
[80]
Jenny Rathbone:
Okay, because it obviously leads us into
the other causes. And I’ve had one person contact me saying
that we’re looking in the wrong direction, and it’s all
about the rats who are infecting the cattle. When I asked the chief
veterinary officer about this, she said, ‘No, no, absolutely
not; rats don’t get TB’. But, clearly, rats are far
more common than badgers and they’re always present on farms;
it’s just like they go with it. So, have we been looking in
the wrong direction in this regard, or—?
|
[81]
Professor Woodroffe:
In terms of other hosts, evidence
suggests that the principle host, or the overwhelmingly most
important host of TB in this country, is cattle. The evidence
strongly suggests that badgers are involved. Badgers can and do
give TB to cattle in those places where that’s a serious
problem. The best estimate of badgers’ contribution is that
they’re responsible for about—in England, this is; in
the high TB risk areas of England—6 per cent of newly
affected herds. There’s a confidence interval around that
going from about 1 to 25 per cent. So, at least 75 per cent of the
newly affected herds are being re-infected by something other than
badgers. A lot of that is probably cattle-to-cattle
transmission.
|
[82]
In the course of the randomised badger culling trial, we
commissioned two major studies on the role of other wildlife
species in transmitting TB to cattle. The group of species that
came out most clearly from that are deer, which get the right sort
of pathology that allows them to transmit the disease on. Some
species can catch the disease, but the pathology suggests that they
actually can’t then transmit it; they’re a dead-end
host.
|
[83]
Jenny Rathbone: And this is through their faeces? Because
they don’t normally have physical contact with cattle.
|
[84]
Professor Woodroffe: Well, the mechanism of transmission is
a whole other issue, but just in terms of developing lesions that
the bacteria could potentially come out from. Rats didn’t
come up as particularly high risk. Yes, there are a lot of rats,
but it looks as though they’re probably not the most
important, or not a major source.
|
[85]
What I would say, and what I think is very important to bear in
mind in this, is that new evidence—. You know, you touched on
how the transmission happens. That’s been something that we
haven’t known for decades. We’ve known that badgers
can, indeed, give TB to cattle, but we’ve never known how.
Some research that has been going on in my group recently has
suggested that badgers and cattle very seldom come into direct
contact, suggesting that the transmission is most likely happening
through the environment. Now, that’s important because
it’s always been assumed that if you take away the
test-positive badger or the test-positive cow, the infection is
gone. But what this hints at—and we’re doing more
research to look at it—is that the bacteria may not be gone;
the bacteria may still be surviving in the environment and some of
these repeat breakdowns—they may be getting re-infected from
the environment, even though the hosts, the animals that have the
disease, may have been removed. That’s another thing that
makes it more challenging. We’re just beginning to get a
handle on understanding how that works and potentially how
important it is. But I think it’s potentially very important,
and it’s potentially important not just when we think about
badger-to-cattle transmission, but also potentially when we think
about cattle-to-cattle transmission too.
|
[86]
But I would say, in terms of wildlife, the evidence suggests that
we’re not really—. What I should’ve said about
deer is that deer can give TB to cattle. It’s been shown
experimentally and in the States, and it’s been shown they
can do it without direct contact through the shared environment.
So, we know, experimentally—. In that case, it was
white-tailed deer, which don’t live in this country.
What’s important about deer, though, is that their
distribution isn’t nearly as continuous as badgers. Most
cattle farms in Britain are going to have badgers on them, but not
all of them have deer. Certainly, where I live in west Cornwall, we
get really excited, because every six months, you see a roe deer.
The deer density is extremely low and yet it’s a chronic TB
area. So, I think that the role of deer is probably quite patchy,
whereas we’ve shown experimentally, through large-scale field
trials, that the role of badgers is quite widespread—not
necessarily the biggest threat, but a widespread threat.
|
[87]
Mark Reckless: Thank you. Simon.
|
[88]
Simon Thomas: I just wanted to explore a couple of these
things, particularly still bearing in mind what the Government is
suggesting in terms of regionalising the methods for this. The
first of them is to ask whether there are particular types of
management going on in Wales that are potentially exacerbating, or
at least having an effect on this problem, which might be different
to other countries, particularly the New Zealand experience. So,
we’re talking about slurry management and pastures in
particular. That’s the first question, because I’ve
looked at the recent evidence coming out about the bacterium in the
environment and how that has been prevailing. So, that’s my
first and I’ll follow up after, if I may.
|
[89]
Dr Enticott: I’m not really aware. I don’t think
there have been any kind of risk-factor studies in New Zealand
about things like slurry and other causes—farm management
practices—so I can’t give you an answer on that.
|
[90]
Professor Woodroffe: I’m not aware either. I’d
say, with the work that we’re suggesting about the role of
environmental transmission, I would say that’s at an early
stage and I wouldn’t be confident to say to farmers,
‘You should change your management practices’.
I’d say the one thing that may be going on in Wales that may
be making the problem worse is illegal badger culling.
There’s lots of evidence to show that small-scale culling of
badgers increases the TB risk to cattle. There was a study recently
from Northern Ireland linking illegal killing of badgers to a
higher risk of cattle TB, and that is something that may be going
on, and there were some social science studies suggesting it may
have been relatively widespread, and that will undermine efforts to
control the disease.
|
[91]
Simon Thomas: Okay. That takes us to the other aspect of the
policy that the Government’s proposing, because, as well as
the regionalisation, there’s a very localised aspect of this,
which is to deal with the breakdown on what the Minister has called
‘chronic farms’, and it’s the other way of
looking, I think, at Huw Irranca-Davies’s question, which is
there is a potential for particular tools to be used in particular,
very isolated, direct farm areas, and those tools can include the
killing of badgers on that particular area—not a widespread
cull, but on that area. Again, is there any evidence that that
approach can be part of a regionalisation approach, or is it
inconceivable that a farm-by-farm approach can build up to a
regional approach?
|
[92]
Professor Woodroffe: So, I think a farm-by-farm
approach—. Actually, I think it’s outstanding
what’s been done now. The impression I get from talking to
the vets here in Wales—that they’ve got a clear handle
on the areas where a lot of the TB seems to be in bought-in cattle
in the areas where there seems to be, you know, localised
transmission of the disease, and so I think that’s likely to
be very effective. What I would say is that the localised culling
of badgers is a crazy idea, I would say, because there’s such
strong evidence that this is not going to solve the problem. In the
randomised badger culling trial, we did an approach where we looked
at—. You know, localised badger culling had been Government
policy under Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food between
1986 and 1998, and that coincides with a period when you can see TB
escaping from control and rising almost exponentially. Now, we
can’t know whether that was cause and effect, but what we do
know from looking at when we started the randomised badger culling
trial is that in the areas where that localised culling had
happened, there was evidence that the badgers’ social systems
were disrupted, and there was more TB in those badgers. If we then
look at during the randomised badger culling trial, when we put in
place localised badger culling, in the 100 sq km areas where we
responded to outbreaks of TB in cattle by culling badgers on a
localised basis, those 100 sq km areas had 22 per cent more TB than
the areas that had no culling at all, and, you know, a strong,
significant effect. If we look within those 100 sq km areas that
were randomised to have localised badger culling, the farms that
were within a few kilometres of these culls had two and a half
times the risk of getting TB in the cattle, even after you account
for increased testing in those areas. So, I think that that is very
unlikely to be something that’s beneficial, because
it’s something that is likely to spread the disease.
You’ve done all this work to try to control the disease;
you’ve narrowed it down to these few high-risk areas, and
then, to go in and do localised badger culling is going to increase
your risk on the adjoining lands. It’s going to undermine the
good work you’ve done.
|
[93]
Simon Thomas: Why do you think Welsh Government’s
proposed it, then?
|
[94]
Professor Woodroffe: Well, you talked about
localised—
|
[95]
Simon Thomas: No, why do you think they’ve proposed
it, if that’s the evidence?
|
[96]
Professor Woodroffe: Well, I can see why—. I can see
that there is pressure to do this, and I can see that it’s a
difficult—. You know, it’s difficult to look at an
area, or look at a farm, where you’ve got TB in badgers, and
you think those badgers are giving TB to cattle, and it is, I can
understand, it’s difficult—
|
[97]
Simon Thomas: Well, there is a link, isn’t there?
|
[98]
Professor Woodroffe: Say again, sorry.
|
[99]
Simon Thomas: There is a link. You’ve said yourself
there is a link.
|
[100] Professor
Woodroffe: Absolutely. There’s definitely a link, and
there will be transmission from cattle to badgers; there’s
transmission from badgers to cattle. So, it’s difficult to
say—seeing that those badgers are there, you suspect that
they’ve got TB. I completely appreciate that it’s
difficult to not think you can make things better by removing them.
The problem is what happens when you remove them, because
it’s not that they’re just gone. What will happen is
that other badgers will move into the area that may or may not be
infected. The badgers that were in that area, but which may have TB
and which you didn’t catch will start to range more widely,
they’ll go on to adjoining farms, and you’ll increase
the TB risk. This isn’t something I’m just saying might
happen. We did it. In the randomised badger culling trial, we had
10 100 sq km areas where we did this. It was a candidate policy. We
did it. There were nine 100 sq km areas where we did this and nine
times out of nine, we saw the cattle TB go up. Then, in the tenth
area—that approach was halted in the tenth area—it
never actually had any culling because it was halted by Ministers.
That was the only area of those that didn’t see an increase
like this. It’s been shown consistently.
|
10:15
|
[101] The other thing
I would say about localised badger culling is: I’m actually
not sure what legal basis one would use—policy makers will
have thought of this—but the two legal instruments that have
been used are the Animal Health Act 1981, and the requirement there
is that this has to be considered to be necessary in order to
eliminate or substantially reduce the disease risk. The
other—. And where you’ve got strong scientific evidence
that localised culling is going to increase the disease risk, I
would be surprised if that stood up in court. Likewise, under the
Protection of Badgers Act 1992, the legal wording is that you can
issue a licence for the purposes of preventing the spread of
disease, and DEFRA won a legal action against—
|
[102]
Simon Thomas: That’s the basis in England.
|
[103] Professor Woodroffe: In England.
That’s the basis in England. They won a legal action against
that on the basis that it did prevent the spread of disease. But
where all the scientific evidence shows consistently that localised
badger culling causes the spread of disease, if there were to be a
legal challenge to it, and I don’t know whether there would
be or not, but if there were a legal challenge, I’d be
surprised if it stood up. So, I don’t know what the
legal—. Not only have you got scientific evidence against it,
I’m not clear what legal—. There may be another legal
basis I’m not aware of.
|
[104]
Mark Reckless: Sian.
|
[105]
Sian Gwenllian:
Rwy’n mynd i siarad yn Gymraeg.
A gaf i jest pigo i fyny ar y pwynt roeddech chi’n ei wneud
ynglŷn â bod lladd moch daear mewn ffordd anghyfreithlon
ar ffermydd yn gwneud y broblem yn waeth? Sut mae hynny’n
digwydd? Os mai dyna yw’r sefyllfa, onid ydy’n well
iddo fo fod yn digwydd o dan drwydded ac mewn ffordd wyddonol,
a’n cael ei reoli yn y ffordd yna, felly?
|
Sian
Gwenllian: I am going to speak in Welsh. Can I just pick up on
the point you made that killing badgers illegally on farms makes
the problem worse? How is that happening? If that is the case,
isn't it better that it happens under licence and in a scientific
way, and is therefore managed in the way?
|
[106] Professor
Woodroffe: Certainly, it would be better for it to be done
properly and under licence. The problem with localised badger
culling is that, when you cull badgers, broadly you have two
outcomes, and unfortunately they oppose each other. So, the first
is, you have fewer badgers, which, if you are trying to control a
disease that badgers have, ought to be a good thing. Unfortunately,
each surviving badger is more infectious to cattle. There’s
two reasons for that. One is that we saw consistently, both where
we did localised culling and where we did large-scale culling, the
proportion of infected badgers go up, and that is due to this
disruption of their social behaviour.
|
[107] In an
undisturbed badger population, you’ll have a group of badgers
living in a territory and, you know, if this is my territory and
that’s your territory over there, you and I will hardly ever
meet. I might have TB but I can’t give it to you because you
and I—especially if there’s a territory between
us—won’t meet and I won’t give you the disease.
If the people between us are culled and we both go,
‘That’s a nice territory, let’s go into
it’, and you and I meet, then you and I might have a fight or
interact in some way that causes TB to spread. So, what we saw
consistently, in all the areas we culled, whether that was
large-scale or small-scale culling, was TB in the badger
populations was rising.
|
[108] Also, because
the badgers are ranging more widely, those badgers are coming into
contact with more herds of cattle. So, you’ve got fewer
badgers, and that’s good, but you’ve also got each
individual badger more infectious to cattle, both because
it’s more likely to have TB and because it’s
encountering more cattle herds because it’s ranging more
widely.
|
[109] The balance
between those two varies according to how many badgers you kill.
So, if you can force badgers down to extremely low levels, even
though each one is more infectious, nevertheless, you can have a
positive impact on cattle TB. You might, nevertheless, see a
harmful effect on adjoining land where you’ve got this
disruption still happening. If you have small-scale culling of
badgers, you’re only killing a few badgers, then you get all
the harm or disruption of social behaviour and making them range
more widely, increasing the TB rate in them, and none of the
benefit from forcing their numbers low. And that’s why this
localised, patchy, small-scale culling, which often illegal culling
is, that’s why it’s been associated with TB increases
in cattle. Now, that is—. And that’s the argument that
led the Government in England to look at these very, very
large-scale culls and that’s—there’s a whole
other problem associated with large-scale culling, but that’s
the reason for small-scale culling being so problematic.
|
[110] Sian
Gwenllian: Okay, thank you.
|
[111] Mark
Reckless: You said that, small-scale, localised culling, the
evidence is clear that that increases risk for adjoining land. Is
the evidence also clear that it increases continuing risk for the
land of the particular farmer where that is happening? Can we say
to the farmer, ‘As well as affecting your neighbours in a
negative way, it may actually be in your own individual
interest’ even if it’s not in their
neighbour’s?
|
[112] Professor
Woodroffe: I’m not sure about illegal killing. With the
reactive culls that we did in the randomised badger culling trial,
which were quite big—they were covering 5 sq km, 8 sq km, so
they were multiple farms—we didn’t see an increase on
the farms that were culled. The increase was on the adjoining land.
But the problem is, of course, that there’s always adjoining
land. So, it’s like a miniature—. With the proactive,
these large-scale, culls we saw a beneficial effect inside and a
detrimental effect outside. In the reactive, the small-scale, culls
we saw actually no effect inside and this harmful effect outside.
Of course, just simple geometry tells you that the outside of a
small area is relatively bigger than the outside of a large area
and that’s why England has pursued these very large
culls.
|
[113] Simon
Thomas: Can I just be clear about one thing, though, because
it’s been mentioned several times? The illegal culling of
badgers—we’ve all heard the stories but by definition
we can’t draw any conclusions from that. It’s not
scientific, we don’t trace it, we don’t do anything
around it—unless you’re telling me there’s been a
proper study done of illegal culling.
|
[114] Professor
Woodroffe: There was a study done in Northern Ireland.
|
[115] Simon
Thomas: In Northern Ireland, right.
|
[116] Dr
Enticott: There’s been various work done on it. There is
a study using the randomised response method, which is a way of
determining whether people are lying or not, which was done at the
Royal Welsh Show, which showed about 10 per cent or 12 per cent of
people saying that they had killed badgers in the past.
|
[117] Simon
Thomas: That was a social trial, as it were. That’s a
social—
|
[118] Dr
Enticott: It was a survey of people at the Royal Welsh Show,
yes. Certainly, the work I’ve done talking to farmers about
how they’ve managed TB on their farm—. I think
what’s really important is to try and understand, not
necessarily how much that goes on, but why it goes on, and the
reason it goes on is a sense of frustration that nobody is looking
out for these people—‘What else can I do?’ You
talk to farmers about their badgers and they understand these ideas
of perturbation and the ideas of perturbation come from farmers
themselves recognising that—. They talk about safe badgers
and clean badgers and wanting to protect those, but, when
you’re in a high risk area, you’re constantly going
down with TB, you’ve got other pressures as well, going out
with your shotgun or whatever for some people will be a completely
natural reaction, and partly because they feel let down. Whether,
because of the systems of Government in England and Wales,
that’s different nobody knows. You can’t monitor it. I
suppose the other side to it is enforcement. Enforcement of it is
nearly non-existent. There aren’t high-profile cases, or
there are very few high-profile cases, of farmers being taken to
court for it and fined and even the fines for those farmers who
have been prosecuted are not punitive or anywhere near the costs of
the breakdown themselves. So, it’s incredibly difficult to
manage and, as Rosie says, could have negative consequences for TB
in the area.
|
[119]
Simon Thomas: So, the strongest counter-effect to that would be
social pressure: for farmers to understand that this is having a
bad effect on their neighbours.
|
[120]
Dr Enticott: Yes, yes, and I suppose—
|
[121]
Simon Thomas: That’s the strongest tool you’ve got,
isn’t it?
|
[122]
Dr Enticott: Yes, a bit like compensation as well. So, in the past
there were always cases—. People talked about farming TB for
the compensation and, gradually, over time—people used to
tolerate that—that’s now seen to be a bad thing and a
sign of bad farming, if you like.
|
[123]
Huw Irranca-Davies:
Professor Woodroffe, would I be right in
recalling that I’ve heard you say before that you don’t
rule out culls if the evidence can show that a cull of some design
would be effective?
|
[124] Professor
Woodroffe: Yes.
|
[125] Huw
Irranca-Davies: Thank you, that’s fine.
|
[126] Professor
Woodroffe: Yes. I mean, I can tell you—
|
[127] Huw
Irranca-Davies: Okay, in which case—
|
[128] Professor
Woodroffe: We killed 11,000 badgers, by the way.
|
[129] Huw
Irranca-Davies: In which case, as you know, in the Cabinet
Secretary’s statement, she held out that wide-ranging
statement around all possible measures, and she alluded to—.
She explicitly said that it’d be worth looking at the
Northern Ireland trials—humane capture, test, kill.
|
[130] Professor
Woodroffe: That’s right.
|
[131] Huw
Irranca-Davies: What’s your view on Northern Ireland? I
will ask you as well, Gareth, in a moment, but what’s your
view on the Northern Ireland approach?
|
[132] Professor
Woodroffe: So, this approach, called TVR, test and vaccinate or
remove, was conceived in Wales—it was a Welsh idea—in
2009. The Government of the time commissioned some modelling on it,
and they explicitly rejected it on the basis of that model. The
reason was this, that—. So, the idea is that you catch your
badgers, instead of killing them, you blood-test them, you see
which ones test positive, you kill those, and you vaccinate the
rest and let them go. It sounds great, because you’ve got the
best of both worlds—you’re doing a little bit of
culling, you’re taking out the ones that are infected and
you’re protecting the remainder through vaccination. So, it
sounded really good.
|
[133] When they
modelled what the outcomes would be, there were two alternatives.
One was that it looked really good, and it was better than either
culling or vaccination on their own. The alternative scenario was,
if it caused social disruption of the kind that I’ve been
describing, it was projected to make things much, much worse. The
reason for that is that you can’t catch every badger. The
tests only detect about half of the truly infected badgers, and the
vaccine doesn’t protect—you can’t catch every
badger, so you can’t vaccinate every badger, and the vaccine
isn’t 100 per cent either. So, you will inevitably leave
behind, after you do TVR, some infected badgers and some
susceptible badgers.
|
[134] Now, if that
removal of small numbers of—. You’re killing a lot
fewer badgers. If that’s enough to cause perturbation, to
cause the social disruption, then this was projected to spread the
disease and make things much, much worse. I wasn’t involved,
but I gather that the committee looked at it and went, ‘Oh,
my goodness, it’s too risky’. And that’s why it
was explicitly—
|
[135] Huw
Irranca-Davies: Has something now moved on so that we should
look at this again?
|
[136] Professor
Woodroffe: I think that two things have happened since. My
research team was commissioned by the Department for Environment,
Food and Rural Affairs to look at what the evidence was that
small-scale culling of badgers would cause this social disruption,
this perturbation. The evidence that we were able to collate
suggested that it would—it looks as though perturbation
starts with the first badger you take out. When small-scale culls
happened as part of the Government policy in England between 1986
and 1998, that was associated with wider badger ranging, more TB in
the badgers, and all the things that we saw when we did small-scale
culling and large-scale culling of badgers.
|
[137] So, it looks
like small-scale culling probably does cause perturbation, and
therefore you are more likely to be in that scary scenario of
making it worse. I would say that the Government in Northern
Ireland decided to go ahead with it. They commissioned some other
modelling from the same people that showed a different, a
qualitatively different, outcome, and I would want to look really,
really hard at that model, because I’m not convinced that
that is—. To see such a big difference in the model suggests
to me that there’s a difference in the model structure, and
that maybe the assumptions of the model were a bit more generous
than is appropriate. So, I’m really quite suspicious about
the model that was commissioned in Northern Ireland—for
Northern Ireland—from the same people who did the model for
Wales.
|
[138] The other big
thing, of course, that’s changed is that Northern Ireland are
doing it. If it were my decision, I would say—. This is,
potentially, a really promising approach, someone else is doing it;
I would be inclined—. If it were up to me, I’d see how
they got on.
|
[139] Huw
Irranca-Davies: Are they doing the proper scientific—?
It’s been one of my big criticisms of the England approach:
there’s damn-all scientific monitoring going on that we can
benefit from any evidence that flows from it, frankly. In Northern
Ireland, are they doing that monitoring that we could actually
learn something?
|
[140] Professor
Woodroffe: It’s incredibly expensive—that’s
the other thing to add. So, they’ve only got one
area—they’ve got one, I think, 100 sq km area. They
are, for example—I know, because they came to me and talked
to me about it—tracking the badgers to see what disruption it
causes. I haven’t seen any results, but I know that they were
talking to Christl Donnelly about some of their work. So, I think
they’re doing something—I don’t know the details
of what they’re doing.
|
[141] Huw
Irranca-Davies: Chair, it might be that we want to also do some
sort of review of that piece of work that’s been done out
there and the different conclusions that the other modelling came
to. That would be quite—. Can I just ask, quickly: do you
have anything to add, or would you agree with what’s been
said, that, at the moment—
|
10:30
|
[142] Dr
Enticott: Well, what I would say is, this idea of finding the
infected badgers and removing them has been seen as the kind of
holy grail since the 1980s. And it’s the holy grail because
it addresses the problem of social acceptability. When you run
workshops with the public, they ask two questions. One is: why
can’t you vaccinate the cow? The other is: why can’t
you identify and remove infected badgers? So, if you have an
approach like that, you start to deal with that broader social
question.
|
[143] Huw
Irranca-Davies: My only other question linked to this is: what
would you say to the argument, and it’s a quite
understandable argument—we’re being told that the
vaccine, which is currently not available for use in Wales, and may
not be available until 2017, maybe 2018, who knows—that, in
the absence of a vaccine, you should cull? I guess the logic of
your argument, on the evidence that you’ve proposed, is, no,
that’s an understandable gut reaction, but you
shouldn’t. Is there any reason why you should simply say,
‘We haven’t got the vaccine, let’s go ahead,
let’s do a bit of culling’?
|
[144] Professor
Woodroffe: So, I think in the absence of the vaccine—.
Well, first is, in the absence of a vaccine, the last thing that we
want is TVR. You’d be TR—you’d be doing
small-scale culling of badgers—
|
[145] Simon
Thomas: Sorry, how does Northern Ireland have the vaccine?
|
[146] Professor
Woodroffe: I gather they were allowed to continue to use
expired vaccine because they considered it to be a research
project—for this year. I wasn’t; my research project
got mothballed.
|
[147] Mark
Reckless: We’ve been struggling
to—[Inaudible.]—policy, and that has to be the
reason for it being expressed this way.
|
[148] Professor
Woodroffe: That’s right; that’s what I was told. I
don’t know what their situation will be for 2017.
There’s talk about importing from Canada, I think; I
don’t know what Northern Ireland are going to do. So, you
certainly would not want to do TVR in the absence of a vaccine,
because then you’re just doing small-scale culling. I think,
in terms of, if there’s no vaccine—. I completely
understand the gut reaction; I would still say wait for the
vaccine, if it were me, because, especially if you’re looking
at a small-scale culling, it’s all cost and no benefit. Maybe
it’ll allow me to briefly touch on large-scale culling. I saw
that that was not on the table in the consultation, but let me just
add that. Wales is on track—. The idea is to control and then
eradicate the disease. Now, if you want to eradicate a disease,
you’ve got to do one or both of two things. You’ve got
to reduce the proportion of animals that are infected, and/or
reduce the area that’s infected. Now, if you look at what
badger culling does, it increases the proportion of badgers that
are infected and it spreads the disease to new areas, so it’s
doing the opposite of the two things you would want to do to
eradicate the disease. So, I can’t really see how badger
culling on a large scale can constructively contribute to TB
eradication.
|
[149] Mark
Reckless: Sorry, can you just clarify how you reconcile what
you just said with what you said earlier, I think at the previous
RBCT, that you could see, I think, a 12 per cent reduction over
nine years?
|
[150] Professor
Woodroffe: We saw a 12 per cent net reduction. So that means we
see a bit less in the area that’s culled and more on the
adjoining land. So, if all you’re interested in is pushing
things down a bit, then there would be an argument, and
that’s been the argument that’s been made, that,
‘Well, it’s worth it. Even though we see this harmful
effect on adjoining land, it’s still worth it.’
|
[151] Mark
Reckless: But if the cull were carried out everywhere, there
wouldn’t be any—.
|
[152] Professor
Woodroffe: Well, if the cull were carried out absolutely
everywhere, right up to all the coasts, then there would be no
edge. But you would then—well, firstly, it would be
eye-wateringly expensive, and, secondly, it would probably
be—. You would start to contravene the Bern convention, which
we’re a signatory to. If you waved a magic wand and
eradicated badgers from the British Isles, the TB problem in cattle
would be easier to solve. But there is no such magic wand, and, if
you had one, it would be illegal. The much less effective tools
that we have mean, both in terms of testing and in terms of badger
capture—. You will have seen the difficulties that have been
faced in the English licensed culls in being able to kill enough
badgers. They were set up with the aim of reducing badger density
by at least 70 per cent, and they really, really struggled to
achieve that and had to keep on—I hesitate to say
‘moving the goalposts’; they’ve had to
repeatedly—.
|
[153]
Simon Thomas: Who moved the goalposts again?
[Laughter.]
|
[154] Professor
Woodroffe: They’ve repeatedly struggled. They’ve
altered their targets in ways that made those targets easier to
reach, but tacitly abandoned the aim of reducing badger numbers by
at least 70 per cent.
|
[155]
Mark Reckless: Paul.
|
[156] Paul Davies: Following on from Huw’s
question, in the absence of a vaccine, and without culling, how
would you then go about tackling bovine TB in our wildlife
population?
|
[157]
Professor Woodroffe:
In the wildlife population?
|
[158]
Paul Davies: Yes.
|
[159]
Professor Woodroffe:
Well, I’m hoping it wouldn’t
be in the absence of a vaccine.
|
[160] Paul Davies: That’s quite realistic,
though, isn’t it? Because perhaps we won’t have a
vaccine for at least two years.
|
[161]
Professor Woodroffe:
There may be a vaccine. There may be some
vaccine next year. I think there are people looking into
that—into whether it’s possible to source other sources
of vaccine. So, I wouldn’t completely give up on a
vaccine.
|
[162]
Setting that aside, we talked earlier on
about biosecurity, and I think this is one of the big challenges:
farmers are told, ‘Improve your biosecurity’, and yet
it’s very unclear what that actually means, especially with
regard to wildlife. So, I could write you a list as long as your
arm of all the things that farmers have been told to do to reduce
their TB risk from badgers: raise your mineral licks, fence off
natural water, barricade your barns, and yet we don’t know
whether any of it works, really. The big challenge, and one of the
reasons that we don’t know, is that we haven’t even
been able to do experiments on it because there are so many
different things you would vary. You would have to do such a
massive trial that you would really struggle and it would be very
time consuming.
|
[163]
Ultimately, the reason why we
haven’t been able to provide that very, very specific advice
on what you’re almost guaranteed will work is that we
haven’t known how transmission happens. So, you can’t
say to farmers, ‘Well, transmission happens when badgers come
into your buildings, so, an electric fence for buildings and that
will solve the problem.’ The evidence: there are places like
Ireland where badgers are avoiding farm buildings. So, we
can’t say that that’s where the transmission happens,
and that’s how the transmission happens, but we are working
on it and we’re getting closer. So, I’m involved in a
project at the moment where we’re sampling the environment
everywhere, just trying to see whether we’re finding the TB
more in water troughs, or should we be fencing off latrines. So, I
think we’re on track to have some more evidence-based
suggestions for wildlife-related biosecurity.
|
[164]
But I also want to step back and say that
at least 70 per cent of TB in cattle is caused by something
that’s not badgers, and the best estimate is that 94 per cent
of TB—new-found incidence in cattle—is caused by things
that are not badgers. A lot of that is going to be cattle-to-cattle
transmission. But I think that, referring to the dangers of
fatalism, I’m not saying you shouldn’t do anything.
John Bourne and I have argued about this. John Bourne’s
view—Professor John Bourne, who chaired the independent
scientific group—is that you should just forget about badgers
and focus on cattle, because that’s where it’ll work. I
think that it’s important to do something about the wildlife,
both because they are a part of the problem, but also because it
motivates people to feel this sort of sense of fatalism,
‘Well, the badgers are going to re-infect them anyway.’
I think the more that we can do to do something about the
transmission from badgers, the more it will motivate farmers to
implement the cattle-based biosecurity that’s important. But,
I appreciate that that is a challenge.
|
[165] Paul Davies: So your view really, then, is
that we need more information as far as transmission is concerned
and then find a solution from that. That’s your view,
effectively.
|
[166]
Professor Woodroffe:
Yes, I would say that and vaccination. I
think that the badger culling is problematic.
|
[167] Paul Davies: Yes, okay. Can I just,
sorry—?
|
[168] Mark Reckless: Do you want to come in
before we get to the compensation issue?
|
[169] Jenny Rathbone: I wanted to come back in
on slurry management, which was raised, really just to ask: what
are the controls on slurry management in an area where the cattle
had been infected, and therefore their faeces—?
|
[170]
Professor Woodroffe:
I know that there’s guidance. I
don’t know—
|
[171] Dr Enticott: There’s guidance,
certainly in DEFRA’s biosecurity action plan. There’s
something in there on slurry—guidance. I don’t think
there are any restrictions on what they can and can’t do.
|
[172]
Professor Woodroffe:
I should add to that, because being a
biologist that tracks things, we put trackers on badgers to find
out where they go and we track where the cattle go, but we’ve
also put trackers on muck-spreaders, and it’s amazing how far
they go. They go off spreading slurry on other people’s
land.
|
[173] Jenny Rathbone: Yes, because these are
machines that are hired for the day.
|
[174]
Professor Woodroffe:
No, these are machines that belong to
that farm. But if you’ve got 100 cattle and you’ve got
to do something with all the slurry, they’re struggling to
find places to put it, and sometimes it’s going on other
properties.
|
[175]
Jenny Rathbone:
And, potentially, it remains in place.
Does anybody test—
|
[176]
Professor Woodroffe:
That’s one of the things
we’re looking at. Certainly, there is evidence to
suggest—. I think that there’s enormous—.
You’ll be able to ask others about this, but what role
indirect transmission—that’s transmission without
direct contact—plays in cattle-to-cattle transmission is
controversial. There are people who say it’s just completely
unimportant, but if you go back to the 1930s, it was possible to
take months-old cow dung and inject it into guinea pigs and give
them TB. So, it can happen. What its importance is today is
unclear, but I think it’s an important thing to make clear
and technologically possible to better understand what role that
might be playing.
|
[177]
Jenny Rathbone:
The general assumption is that
transmission in humans is through inadequate hygiene and people not
washing their hands and then preparing food for somebody else. So,
why would that not be the case in animals?
|
[178] Professor
Woodroffe: Well, my understanding of TB transmission among
humans is a lot of it’s to do with close contact in confined
spaces.
|
[179]
Simon Thomas: Absolutely. Overcrowding.
|
[180]
Mark Reckless: Simon.
|
[181]
Simon Thomas: I just wanted to—and we could be here all day,
I know, going through this—understand this, because you said
very clearly that there’s a social reason for dealing with
wildlife TB, in effect; there’s a social reason that it has
the effect of driving good behaviour elsewhere, so that would be
positive. But, you’ve also said—several times
now—that vaccination is your preferred tool, but what is the
scientific basis that vaccination works?
|
[182] Professor
Woodroffe: Absolutely. And I think that’s a really good
question, because although we know a lot about what impact badger
culling has, because we did a massive, massive study looking at it,
that has not been done for badger vaccination, and I wouldn’t
look a farmer in the eye—and I say this to the farmers that I
recruit for my vaccine trial—I can’t look them in the
eye and say, ‘This will help’, and I wouldn’t say
to a policy maker, ‘This should be the be-all and end-all of
your policy’, until we have the evidence. You’d expect
me to say that; I’m a scientist.
|
[183] I think that
some of the vaccination that’s been done up to now has been
great, in that there have been places, including in south Wales,
where there was a vaccination of badgers on a large scale. What
hasn’t gone hand in hand with that is an assessment of
whether it’s working. So, we know that in terms of badger
vaccination, from studies in Gloucestershire, we know that badger
vaccination reduces the risk. So, if I’m a badger and I
don’t have TB, I test negative for TB, I’m vaccinated,
I’m then less likely to subsequently test positive. So,
it’s got some protective effect. We also have evidence to
show that, if you vaccinate at least 30 per cent of the badgers
within a social group, you reduce the risk of the cubs in that
group that have not been vaccinated testing positive. So,
it’s something where it ought to be possible, therefore, and
this has happened in human populations, it ought to be possible,
over time, to vaccinate a badger, to take a population of badgers
that have TB, bearing in mind that, even in a highly infected
population, most of the badgers are still not going to be infected,
there are going to be still lots of uninfected—.
|
[184]
Simon Thomas: But the rate of vaccination for human populations is
something like 90 per cent, isn’t it, to have an overall
effect?
|
[185] Professor
Woodroffe: Yes.
|
[186]
Simon Thomas: I don’t know if that’s the same for
wildlife.
|
[187] Professor
Woodroffe: No. Well, I think one of—. The same element of
badger behaviour that makes culling so problematic actually really
benefits vaccination because, with human populations, the number of
people I’ve met today is much more than the number of badgers
that a badger would meet in its lifetime, because they’re
mostly only interacting within their own social group, and a little
bit with their neighbours. So, they have these very localised
movements, this very limited pool, so if you can vaccinate even
quite a small area, all the things that we say about small-scale
culling of badgers don’t apply. The small-scale vaccination
of badgers, vaccinating on one farm, if you can get all the badgers
that use that farm, that has the potential to be beneficial.
|
[188] The approach
that they’ve taken in England is to say that there’s no
point in vaccinating badgers in high-risk areas, because the
badgers are already infected, and badger vaccination doesn’t
do anything about the badgers that are already infected. Now,
it’s true that it doesn’t remove the badgers that are
infected, but it does greatly restrict their ability to give the
disease to other badgers.
|
10:45
|
[189] Over time,
badgers die off at a rate of 25 to 30 per cent a year. Highly
infected ones die more rapidly than that, so over a few years those
infected ones should die off. It ought to be possible to take a
highly infected population of badgers over time, undertake repeated
vaccination, year on year, and over the years you should see a
decline. But we don’t know, because no-one has ever done
that.
|
[190] Simon
Thomas: You haven’t done it, no.
|
[191] Professor
Woodroffe: That’s the trial we were trying to do in
Cornwall that’s currently on hold because we can’t get
the vaccine.
|
[192] Mark
Reckless: Okay, and we have two more questions on changes to
compensation, first from Paul, and then on prospects for targets
from Sian.
|
[193] Paul
Davies: Just very briefly, as you know, the Welsh Government
proposes to reduce the compensation payments—to actually
reduce the cap from £15,000 to £5,000 per animal
slaughtered because of bovine TB. I just want your views on that.
Do you think that is the right approach, because some farmers, of
course, will argue that that’s no incentive in order to
improve the quality of their herd, for example? So, what are your
views on that?
|
[194] Dr
Enticott: I think going back to the point made earlier, once
you introduce interventions like that or change parts of the
system, there’s always a negative or a subsequent knock-on
effect. When England reduced their levels of compensation back in
2007—some time around then—the talk amongst farmers
was, ‘What is the incentive for me? I’m not receiving
the value for my animals, I don’t trust the Government, so
what do I do about this problem? What is the only thing I can do
about this problem? The only thing I can do is do what I think is
right, which is look after my badgers.’ And that’s the
euphemism for illegal culling, which they would use. So, once you
make dramatic reductions in compensation like that, those are the
kinds of consequences you need to look out for and be aware of. As
you said earlier, what is better to do, to kill badgers in a legal
way or to allow that to happen?
|
[195] The other thing
I would say about compensation is to look at models of compensation
in other countries. So, in New Zealand, the level of the
compensation is set by farmers—not the specific level, but
the overall level of compensation. So, farmers have said that, in
certain cases, compensation shouldn’t be paid at all. In
certain circumstances, 70 per cent of the value is paid. And
that’s a decision made by farmers, and farmers make that
decision themselves as part of the governance arrangements. They
all know what the score is, and what that means is that what
they’re trying to do is to say to farmers, ‘Look, this
is the situation we need to look after; we’re paying for
this; we need to do the right thing here’, and to create some
kind of social momentum and social movement around trying to do
their best to eliminate bovine TB on their farms and in their
country.
|
[196] Mark
Reckless: Sian.
|
[197] Sian
Gwenllian: Diolch. Rwy am jest
ofyn cwestiwn ynglŷn â’r targedau. Hynny yw, mae
yna darged yn Lloegr i gael statws dim TB, ond eto nid oes dim
targedau o fewn polisi Llywodraeth Cymru ar hyn o bryd. A ydych
chi’n meddwl bod angen gosod targed, ac hefyd a oes angen
gosod targed gwahanol ar gyfer y dair rhanbarth maen nhw’n
bwriadu eu cyflwyno?
|
Sian
Gwenllian: Thank you. I just want to ask a question on targets.
There are targets in England to have no TB, but yet there are no
targets in the Welsh Government’s policy at the moment. Do
you think there is a need to set a target, and also is there a need
to set a different target for the three regions that they intend to
introduce?
|
[198] Professor
Woodroffe: So, I think there are maybe not numerical targets,
but the consultation states that we would like the high-risk area
to become intermediate risk, and the intermediate to become low,
and the low to become TB free. I think the Welsh Government was the
first to talk seriously with a straight face about TB eradication,
and I don’t think they’ve stepped back—to my
knowledge, they haven’t really stepped back from that. They
haven’t set out a 25-year strategy like the Government has in
England, but—
|
[199] Sian
Gwenllian: Do they need to?
|
[200] Professor
Woodroffe: I don’t really know whether that’s
helpful or not.
|
[201] Dr
Enticott: I think, again, going back to New Zealand—and
there are dangers of keeping going back to New Zealand—one of
the key elements they did was to set targets and to be driven by
targets right from the very offset. If you got people from OSPRI or
the animal health board over to Wales right now, that would be the
first thing they would say. That’s what drove their
improvement all along. You could see what was happening.
|
[202] In response to
your question about having different targets for different areas,
yes, I think that’s quite important, partly because the
target set in England, if you are living in a high-risk area, you
would just look at that target and think, ‘This is completely
ridiculous; we’re never going to get that’. But that
target is more specifically relating to the low-risk areas, which
they can get declared TB free in a relatively short space of time.
So, people need to know where they stand. Having a target can help
that.
|
[203] Sian
Gwenllian: What would your targets be?
|
[204] Dr
Enticott: I don’t know. Don’t ask me.
[Laughter.]
|
[205] Sian
Gwenllian: Okay.
|
[206] Mark
Reckless: Good. And the final question from Huw
Irranca-Davies.
|
[207] Huw
Irranca-Davies: It’s a very small question, and it
relates to what Dr Enticott has been saying about the New Zealand
and Australia models. What importance, do you think, in any
strategy going forward, should there be on finding a way to have
firm buy-in from the farming community? You’ve touched on it
a couple of times—the ownership of this, by farmers as well
as Government.
|
[208] Dr
Enticott: That is the key lesson from both New Zealand and
Australia’s successful eradication programmes, or almost
eradication programme in New Zealand. It is that, unless farmers
drive those programmes themselves, or are part of the governance,
they don’t work. They didn’t work up until the point at
which New Zealand, in the 1980s, basically asked farmers to take
control of their TB policy. Now, there are arguments for and
against that. You might argue that, in New Zealand, the system is
actually quite similar to a fairly bureaucratic, regulatory
approach now. Back in the 1990s, less so. And so, these things
change and evolve as they go along.
|
[209] The challenge
here is like you said, and the question is: how do you get that? It
depends on what is on the agenda, essentially. In New Zealand,
there was never any question about are we or are we not going to go
off and drop 1080 poison and kill a load of possums. That was
always on the agenda. In the UK, in England and Wales, the question
of the badger is always what dominates these discussions, and until
there is clarity over what is possible and what isn’t
possible, what’s on the table and what isn’t on the
table, it’s quite natural for the farming industry to say,
‘Well, I’m not going to get involved in this, because I
can’t see what’s going to happen; there’s too
much uncertainty’. So, that’s the challenge.
|
[210] Mark
Reckless: Dr Enticott, Professor Woodroffe, thank you very much
for your enlightening evidence. We are grateful to you both.
|
[211] We will have a
five-minute break.
|
Gohiriwyd y cyfarfod rhwng 10:52 a 11:02.
The meeting adjourned between 10:52 and 11:02.
|
Twbercwlosis mewn Gwartheg yng Nghymru
Bovine Tuberculosis in Wales
|
[212] Mark
Reckless: Thank you for coming in, Mr Paton. It’s much
appreciated, and we look forward to getting the veterinary
perspective. I think we have one declaration of interest.
|
[213] Huw
Irranca-Davies: Yes. I’m an associate member of the
British Veterinary Association, so it’s in my declarations of
interest.
|
[214] Mark
Reckless: Okay. Mr Paton, can I kick off by asking you
initially what’s your assessment of how effective, or
otherwise, Welsh Government policy has been towards the
eradication, and, in the meantime, management of TB to date?
|
[215] Dr Paton:
We have been going in the right direction, so the change to yearly
testing has been very impressive, and I’ve been very pleased
to see the progress in that direction. I suspect that we are at a
point where we have gone as far as we can with that particular
policy of the Welsh Government as it is, in terms of cow controls.
They need to be tightened up, we need to alter things in terms of
risk-based trading, so we’re very pleased to see that
informed purchasing in the new consultation. But there is an arm of
the entire control of disease that is left uncontrolled at the
moment, and that’s the wildlife sector. We as the BVA would
be very adamant that TB control is only going to work if we use all
the tools in the toolbox, and badger control and control of the
wildlife sector has to be one of those.
|
[216] Mark
Reckless: You’ll have heard the Cabinet Secretary’s
statement a couple of weeks ago on the strategy. Do you interpret
that as a steady-as-she-goes development of the policy, or as a big
change in approach for the future?
|
[217] Dr Paton:
Somewhere in between those two. It’s got sensible changes
where they are. It’s using what is working within the actual
current policy, and making the right steps in the areas where that
policy has not been addressed. So, it’s at least putting on
the table the option of wildlife control, and moving forward to
regionalising and rewarding those areas and those farmers that have
reduced TB or have reduced TB to near-free levels, I think, is a
sensible policy, to allow them to protect the gains that
they’ve made at this point. So, I wouldn’t characterise
it as either steady as she goes or a radical change, but a sensible
evolution at this point.
|
[218] Mark
Reckless: Thank you. We’ve just had a session with two
academics, so Members questions will be, I think to a degree, in
light of what we’ve had from that, and I think I’ll
start, if I may, with Huw Irranca-Davies.
|
[219] Huw
Irranca-Davies: Thank you, Chair. Could I just ask you, when
you compare at the moment—. Ignore for the moment the
wildlife reservoir issue, but when you look at the cattle measures,
cattle control, risk-based movement restrictions et
cetera—all of that—is your assessment that, in Wales,
it is a more stringent environment at the moment in terms of the
impact on farmers than in the areas of England where there is
bovine tuberculosis infection?
|
[220] Dr Paton:
My assessment is that they’re probably roughly the same. I
think the level of cattle controls and the impact it has on farmers
are broadly the same in the areas of high incidence of TB and what
we have in Wales.
|
[221] Huw
Irranca-Davies: Are there aspects in Wales where it is more
onerous, in terms of the demands on farmers, particularly under the
new proposals being considered?
|
[222] Dr Paton: Under
the new proposals, in high-incidence TB areas, the increased
frequency of testing is going to have an impact on farmers. It is
quite an amount of effort for farmers to do testing every six
months, even when they are on paper TB free. So, we are asking them
to do an awful lot more work than we might do in other areas.
I’m not aware of an area in England that has six-monthly
testing as a routine for each farmer.
|
[223] Huw
Irranca-Davies: Just on that, as one final follow-up, on that
particular issue, there is a school of thought that says, within
the highly infected areas, you should actually be testing less
because once you’re at that high level of infection, you
should be going back there, you should be putting the measures in
place and going back there less often. You should be doing the high
testing in the intermediate areas and so on to make sure that they
don’t have the infection coming to them. Does the BVA have a
view on that?
|
[224] Dr Paton:
Our view really is that we need to have as much frequent testing as
is required, but not too much testing to put farmers off the entire
programme. I think, from my point of view, or from our point of
view, in high areas we need to be testing as frequently as possible
to remove as many infected cattle as rapidly as possible. In the
lower infected areas, I would be reducing that, assuming that there
are other appropriate controls in place, because we can’t
burden the farmers with too much testing otherwise there is a risk
that they will not co-operate with the rest of the programme and
then we may well push them into a place that’s out of
business.
|
[225] Huw
Irranca-Davies: Well, okay, that’s very helpful. Sorry,
one further follow up—you think the six-monthly is
appropriate in the areas of high infection.
|
[226] Dr Paton:
I think there’s justification for that to be appropriate,
because we can get these animals out as quickly as possible.
|
[227] Huw
Irranca-Davies: Great.
|
[228] Mark
Reckless: Simon.
|
[229]
Simon Thomas:
Os caf i ofyn yn Gymraeg, jest
ynglŷn â’r math o brofi sy’n cael ei wneud.
A fedrwch chi jest ddweud wrth y pwyllgor faint o’r profi
bellach sydd yn gamma yng Nghymru? Pa ganran yw’r prawf yna,
a, gan ein bod wedi clywed tystiolaeth bod y gwahanol fathau o
brofi—
|
Simon
Thomas: If I could ask in Welsh, just with regard to the
kind of testing that’s being done. Could you just tell the
committee how much of the testing is gamma in Wales? What
percentage is there of that test, and, as we’ve heard
evidence that different types of testing—
|
[230] Dr Paton:
Apologies, this is not being translated for me at this point. My
apologies.
|
[231] Simon
Thomas: No, it’s our fault.
|
[232] Mark
Reckless: It’s not your fault. Our apologies to you.
|
[233]
Simon Thomas:
Fe drïa i eto. Ynglŷn
â’r profi, a fedrwch chi ddweud yn gyntaf faint
o’r profi bellach yng Nghymru sy’n cael ei wneud ar
sail y prawf gama, sy’n fwy sensitif yn ôl y
dystiolaeth y mae’r pwyllgor wedi ei derbyn? A beth
yw’r cydbwysedd rhwng defnyddio’r dull yma, lle rydym
yn cael y false negatives, ac efallai yn lladd anifeiliaid
sydd heb y diciâu arnyn nhw, a’r pwysau ar yr ochr
arall o golli anifeiliaid sydd â’r diciâu arnyn
nhw? A ydych chi’n credu ein bod ni wedi cyrraedd y
cydbwysedd iawn?
|
Simon
Thomas: I’ll try again. With regard to the testing, can
you tell us first how much of the testing in Wales is now done on
the basis of the gamma test, which is more sensitive according to
the evidence the committee has received? And what is the balance
between using this approach, where we have the false negatives and
then perhaps cull creatures that don’t have TB, and the
pressure on the other side of losing animals that do have TB? Do
you think we’ve reached the right balance?
|
[234] Dr Paton:
Okay. Gamma interferon, in terms of how much testing is done, is
done only on those farms where we have a huge problem. So,
it’s the minority of farms in Wales. I wouldn’t want to
put a number on it. I’m probably not the appropriate person,
but 90 per cent plus, as a working figure, is done by the skin
interferon test.
|
[235] Simon
Thomas: So, just on that, would you expect that to be reflected
now in the high area that the Government’s
proposing—the regionalisation—and that you’d
expect basically all farms in high areas to be gamma interferon
tested?
|
[236] Dr Paton:
I would expect much more gamma interferon in that sort of area,
because these are the problem farms or these are the areas that are
most likely to have the problem farms that we need to target. In
terms of the sensitivity, yes, it is more likely to find the
infected animals in there and, more importantly, is less likely to
leave infected animals behind. But, the balance with that is we
take more cattle than we should—more healthy cattle—out
of the herd. I think it is, where appropriate on appropriate farms
to get to the bottom of a problem, a perfectly acceptable strategy
and it is something that we have to accept—that we’re
going to take more cattle than we really need to.
|
[237]
Simon
Thomas: Ac yn fras iawn, a ydych chi’n gysurus yn y BVA am y
dull o ranbartholi sydd yn digwydd nawr, o dan y cynllun newydd, ac
felly y bydd yna wahanol—fel rydych chi newydd ei
awgrymu—ddulliau profi, efallai, yn y gwahanol ardaloedd, ac
y bydd, o bosibl, wahanol reolau symudedd? Fe gawn ni weld sut mae
masnachu yn digwydd yn y pen draw. A ydych chi’n gweld hynny
fel cam—rydych chi’n sôn am esblygiad
naturiol—a ydych chi’n gweld hwn fel rhywbeth y dylai
Cymru fod yn ymgeisio amdano, ac a ydy e’n agor y drws i
ranbarth o Gymru, o leiaf, gael ei datgan yn rhydd o TB, rywbryd yn
y dyfodol agos?
|
Simon Thomas: And very briefly, are you comfortable in the BVA
about this approach of regionalisation under the new scheme, and
therefore that there will be different—as you’ve just
suggested—different methods of testing, possibly, in
different areas, possibly different rules regarding mobility?
We’ll see what happens with trading, eventually. Do you see
that as a step—you’re talking about natural
evolution—do you think this is something that Wales should be
seeking, and does it open the door to a region of Wales being
declared free of TB in the near future?
|
[238]
Dr Paton: Yes, we are very comfortable with the regionalisation
issue. We think it rewards farmers in areas, and protects the gains
that the Welsh Government has made in getting rid of TB in the
areas. We think it’s a natural thing that should be done, to
allow us to protect the gains in areas, particularly in north
Wales, where we are close to TB free. And it opens the window for
us to be able to say parts of Wales are, in fact, TB free, and
protect the trade with the rest of the UK and Europe from at least
those areas as a starting position, and then we can build and go on
from there.
|
[239]
Simon Thomas: Thank you.
|
[240]
Mark Reckless: Following up on the point about the gamma test, I
note that we’ve seen this fall in the number of herds with
new incidences from 1,286 in 2009 to 722 for this
year—I’m not sure whether that’s just this year
to date. It was 893 last year. At the same time, we’ve seen
an increase in the number of cattle slaughtered from just under
6,000 two years ago to 9,500 already this year. Is that gamma test
one of the reasons why we’re seeing that?
|
[241]
Dr Paton: I would think so. There’s always the danger
of—we’re looking at a very long-term disease, so taking
one year’s figures is a very dangerous thing to do. So,
I’d be looking at five or 10-year trends on any particular
parameter that we’re interested in. But, definitely, if we
are using gamma interferon testing on a much wider basis—and
I think we are; we have an increased number on these problem
farms—we are going to see more animals being slaughtered,
because, by definition, as you’ve probably already been told,
the sensitivity and the specificity will mean that we take more
cattle with this test.
|
[242]
Mark Reckless: We have a helpful graph from our research staff; it
goes back to 2006. And the two data series seem to be quite closely
correlated from 2006 through to 2014, going up to a peak in 2009,
and then generally turning down, and sort of moving around, largely
in parallel, to 2014. It’s really this year—and I take
the caution you have given about one-year figures—where
there’s been a very stark divergence, in that we’ve
seen a sharp increase in the number of cattle slaughtered, from
6,872 to 9,492. At the same time, the reduction in herds has gone
from 893 to 722. I just wonder, has that, at least—I’m
not talking about the causation—but has that taken place at
the same time that there’s been a significant increase in the
use of the gamma test, or is that not something that has changed
over the past year?
|
[243]
Dr Paton: I think there has been a change in the policy in
terms of the use of the gamma interferon tests. They’re much
more likely to use it with animal health. The deployment of gamma
interferon is a decision by animal health and the Welsh Government,
rather than my vets and my members in general, although we might be
actually the ones taking the sample. But my understanding is, yes,
there has been some change; it probably isn’t all the answer,
but it’s certainly a component of that.
|
[244]
Mark Reckless: And the other test—I understand there’s
the statutory basis for that. Should we be looking at a review of
the law as regards these two tests?
|
[245]
Dr Paton: The test that we standardly do—the single
comparative intradermal test—is one that has been deployed
across the world, and it has been used successfully in the format
that we have got to eradicate TB in a load of countries. New
Zealand is one of them; Scotland is using that same test. So, the
test works. We would never want to say that if we had a better one
we could refine it. We would not reject that. But, at the moment,
the test, as it stands, and if it’s done appropriately and
well, is an appropriate test to deploy in the
environment.
|
[246]
Mark Reckless: On the availability of vaccine, we’ve had, I
think, slightly contrasting evidence as to the prospects of having
reliable access to a vaccine, and on what timescale. Do you have a
perspective from the BVA as to what the position is?
|
[247]
Dr Paton: We have nothing—we’ve no information
further than that. Our information is that it’s not
available, and we’ve been given no indication of when it
might become available at this point.
|
11:15
|
[248] Mark
Reckless: Thank you. Are there other Members who’d like
to come in? Simon.
|
[249]
Simon Thomas: I’d like to move on to the wildlife sector, if
that’s possible, because the BVA has consistently said
publicly and to Assembly Members that you do support, if necessary,
a cull—which is of badgers, in effect—provided it is
targeted, effective and humane. Is the proposal in the regional
approach now being taken by Welsh Government, it would allow a cull
to potentially happen on farms with chronic breakdowns.
That’s my understanding, at least—that that would be a
potential tool that could be used. Obviously, it’s targeted,
but is it effective? Do you think that that’s actually an
effective measure?
|
[250]
Dr Paton: We have certain reservations with the targeting on
individual farms. The evidence, as far as we are concerned,
supports that what makes a cull effective is a sufficient number of
badgers killed in a sufficient time, over a sufficiently large
area. From the Krebs trial, that, I believe, is 150 sq km. Anything
outside that currently does not have evidence for it, so that would
be what we’d define as effective, at the moment. We’re
watching what’s happening in Ireland. That would be a very
promising approach, but we don’t feel that there’s
sufficient evidence to say you can just
transplant—
|
[251]
Mark Reckless: The Republic of Ireland, or Northern
Ireland?
|
[252]
Dr Paton: The Republic of Ireland.
|
[253]
Simon Thomas: What about the Northern Ireland approach, which has
been this capture, vaccinate and eliminate—?
|
[254]
Dr Paton: It’s a similar sort of concept and there are
similar concerns about the small area that these animals are taken
out of.
|
[255]
Simon Thomas: Because in the evidence from Rosie Woodroffe that we
had earlier, she was, I think it’s fair to say, particularly
scathing about the idea that a very localised cull could work and
that, in effect, with badgers’ social movements and the way
they live, the perturbation that we’ve seen in the
large-scale trials would be exacerbated because you would have lots
of individual perturbations, then, that would all impact. Is that
the basis of your scepticism about it as well?
|
[256]
Dr Paton: Yes, that’s my scepticism, broadly, as well. If
we take out one badger sett or one farm’s sett—a
farm’s population of badgers—then there’s a whole
surrounding population of badgers to move in and contaminate, or be
re-picked up in the infection. I read Rosie Woodroffe’s paper
that she published in the last few weeks and months, and yes, the
badgers contaminate the pasture, so we need to keep these animals
off the pasture to prevent and break that infection cycle. And
cattle as well—so, there have to be cattle controls there,
too, but it’s very difficult to just put in management steps
to keep cattle off pasture. So, to make that significant, to make
that improvement, we need to make it over a significant area of the
150 sq km—and the hard borders and sufficiently reduce the
number of badgers within that area.
|
[257]
Simon Thomas: So, it would be fair to say that your view as the
BVA, then, is that you’ve consistently, as I’ve said,
supported a targeted cull in the past, and you really are still
wedded to the earlier proposals, which was of a larger scale, as
you said, with hard edges and boundaries. You feel that the
perturbation on that kind of trial can be dealt with, but the
proposal on this current regionalised basis could be
more—
|
[258]
Dr Paton: Yes, it could be more—
|
[259]
Simon Thomas: —destructive—well, destructive is not the
right word there.
|
[260] Dr Paton: I
suspect there would be more movement of badgers within that
and, therefore, the likelihood of spread of TB within that
area is higher. That’s what, as far as I can tell, the
evidence supports. Anything beyond that, we need to wait for the
evidence to see. The problem with waiting for the evidence is our
farmers are dealing with it tomorrow and today, and my vets are
trying to work with these farmers today, so there is a limit to how
much we can wait before doing things.
|
[261]
Simon Thomas: What about vaccination, in particular, in
badgers—wildlife vaccination? Obviously, you don’t
really deal with badgers as a vet—well, you may occasionally,
I don’t know—but is there evidence that vaccination in
badgers can work?
|
[262]
Dr Paton: It depends on what you mean by ‘work’. I
think there is limited evidence that—
|
[263]
Simon Thomas: Reducing incidence, I suppose, of TB in the badger
population.
|
[264] Dr Paton: I
think there’s limited evidence for that; not a great deal.
I’ve not seen a huge amount of evidence and work in that
direction. It’s work in progress. My bigger concern, I think,
is that there’s definitely no evidence that that translates
into reduction of TB in cattle. We haven’t seen any evidence
of that whatsoever. Even in the intensive action pilot area
in Pembrokeshire and those areas, I think we’re still too
early to see the impact. It would be very attractive and it would
be very useful if it could be shown to demonstrate that it works,
but we’re not there yet.
|
[265] Mark
Reckless: Before I move to Huw and Jenny, can I just ask you to
clarify something for the record that I didn’t understand?
The reference that Simon made to a regional basis and perhaps that
not working compared to a large-scale trial, what’s the
understanding of ‘regional’? Are these localised trials
or—?
|
[266] Simon
Thomas: Very localised culling as opposed to the regional
umbrella.
|
[267] Dr Paton:
I understood farm level.
|
[268] Simon
Thomas: Yes, farm level.
|
[269] Mark
Reckless: Good, thank you. Huw.
|
[270] Huw
Irranca-Davies: If my understanding is correct from that
exchange with Simon now, you are ruling out, as the BVA, the
Northern Ireland model.
|
[271] Dr Paton:
As far as we understand, the modelling does not support it and we
haven’t seen the evidence to suggest that it’ll have
the impact.
|
[272] Huw
Irranca-Davies: But it’s certainly neither the scale nor
the intensity of the type of trial, the type of culling—call
it a ‘trial’ or whatever—that you’ve just
described, which is actually the type of culling that was
originally proposed in England and then, frankly, they ripped the
guidelines up.
|
[273] Dr Paton:
Yes. We wouldn’t be supporting what’s happening in
Gloucester now with free shooting and that type of approach.
|
[274] Huw
Irranca-Davies: And Hereford and Somerset and everywhere
else.
|
[275] Dr Paton:
Yes.
|
[276] Huw
Irranca-Davies: Okay, well, that’s fascinating, because
as you know, in the Cabinet Secretary’s statement, she said
all these measures are now under consideration and she signalled
that we should look at Northern Ireland, but you’re saying,
‘Well, actually, that’s not the model to look
at’.
|
[277] Dr Paton:
We don’t believe it is the model to look at at this stage.
We’re always open to new evidence, but we don’t believe
the evidence is there to support it yet.
|
[278] Huw
Irranca-Davies: Do you believe that there’s any
alternative? I know individual members of the BVA have individual
opinions, but the BVA has come to a collective opinion that a form
of culling should be used. Is there any feeling within the BVA,
from the scientific advice that you have internally, that there is
any other way to control TB within the wildlife reservoir, within
badgers?
|
[279] Dr Paton:
Frankly, I think, no. The scientific evidence is—we’re
fairly comfortable that it has to be the wide-scale trial as it
stands at the moment. I have not heard anyone produce a second way
of controlling wildlife that is evidence based at the moment in any
BVA meeting.
|
[280] Huw
Irranca-Davies: Do you give any salience whatsoever to the
arguments of people like Professor John Bourne who would say that,
whilst of course the science would say maybe 5 or 6 per cent is
transmission from badgers to cattle, the majority is cattle to
cattle, and as such, you could eradicate this by dealing with the
cattle-to-cattle transmission?
|
[281] Dr Paton:
I don’t think so, because we would always have that internal,
that re-infection pressure from the wildlife reservoir. So, there
is 50 per cent cattle-to-cattle transmission—I’m not
going to argue with that number—but where that originates
from is typically from introduction from another source, and some
of that source is wildlife. So, once one cow is infected within
that, then it spreads potentially rapidly within that, so unless
you’ve dealt with the wildlife as part of your overall
control strategy, then you’re not going to get to an
eradication stage.
|
[282] Huw
Irranca-Davies: One final question. If you take your approach,
which would be the originally conceived England approach to
culling, how do you overlay that on the map of zones—the
high, intermediate and low zones? Does that work at all? Where are
the hard edges? Where are the boundaries?
|
[283] Dr Paton:
We’d have to go on to the maps and have a look. That would be
a piece of work that would need to be completed in there to try and
identify those edges and areas and try and overlap them with areas
in the high incidence area, where you have real problems with lots
of cattle with TB. It’s not something I could answer
immediately right now, but it’s a piece of work that needs to
be done.
|
[284] Huw
Irranca-Davies: If you can’t do that, my suggestion would
be that you go into the high areas and you do this, and the
acknowledged perturbation that has been proven will be spilling
over into the intermediate areas. So, unless it can be done with
hard borders, you can’t do it within the wider proposals that
have been put forward.
|
[285] Dr Paton:
I believe there are probably hard borders there that can be
identified—so, rivers, coasts, main roads and arterial roads
would provide the sufficient borders there. So, I think there will
be identifiable areas. I wouldn’t want to quote you a
specific road that would be appropriate right now.
|
[286] Mark
Reckless: A quick intervention from Simon on this point, and
then Jenny.
|
[287]
Simon Thomas: If I may, just on this—. Obviously the regional
map that the Government has produced still includes the
Pembrokeshire intensive action area as it was originally conceived;
that’s still within the high action area. Just one particular
question—you’ve touched on it, but I just want to be
absolutely clear, because we had evidence from Rosie Woodworth that
said very clearly, with the large scale culling, yes, there’s
a 12 per cent reduction in that area, but the perturbation—.
Basically, what she said was that it cancels it out. Are you saying
that you don’t accept that evidence, or are you saying,
though that happens, if you’ve got hard borders, you feel
that that’s a potential tool that we can use?
|
[288] Dr Paton:
I think it’s the hard borders that will allow us to allow
that. If we have the appropriate culling area to minimise badgers
moving in and out of that area, that will balance that risk
out.
|
[289] Simon
Thomas: Okay.
|
[290] Mark
Reckless: Jenny.
|
[291]
Jenny Rathbone:
When one of your members identifies TB in
cattle, you obviously then slaughter the affected cattle. Is it
your view that all the cattle in that herd should be
slaughtered?
|
[292] Dr Paton:
There are circumstances when that would be appropriate. I
wouldn’t want to say that that is automatically what should
happen, but I certainly think, in some of these higher risk areas,
taking out whole groups would be a very useful method to go
forward.
|
[293]
Jenny Rathbone:
Well, because otherwise aren’t you
simply just—you know, the incubation period is—.
Obviously, I don’t know what that is, but the cattle that
have not tested positive on that occasion will then pass it on to
any new cattle.
|
[294] Dr Paton:
We will be coming back within 60 days, or about 60 days, to
re-test, and that will be kept up until we have removed all the
infected animals. That has been demonstrated and regularly shown to
work and get rid of disease in a number of farms and get us back
under control. So, it would be a very much case-management based
decision, and we welcome that ability for our farmers and vets to
work out what’s specifically going to happen on their farms.
But I wouldn’t put it as categorical that that’s what
should happen.
|
[295]
Jenny Rathbone:
And having identified on farm A that
you’ve got a problem, do you then test the adjacent farms as
well?
|
[296] Dr Paton:
We do indeed. That would be contiguous testing. So, we would be
looking for nose-to-nose contact and reactors through that
particular means of transition.
|
[297]
Jenny Rathbone:
And what then happens to the slurry of
the farm?
|
[298] Dr Paton:
So, the slurry can’t leave the farm. It can be spread on the
land, but then you are not permitted to put livestock on that land
that you’ve spread that slurry on for two months after that
point. We believe that—Defra have given us
indication—that’s sufficient to kill off any bacteria
in the slurry.
|
[299]
Jenny Rathbone:
Regardless of what season it
is.
|
[300] Dr Paton:
Well, we in Wales have restricted seasons that we can spread
slurry, so we’re talking mostly in the summer anyway.
We’re not permitted to spread slurry in the winter at all, so
it’s almost a moot point, but you’re right.
|
[301]
Jenny Rathbone:
Although isn’t—doesn’t
the frost—?
|
[302] Dr Paton:
Well, the slurry would still be in the tank at that point, and
then, as soon as we come out into the spring, that’s the
point when we’re permitted to start spreading slurry. So, the
sun and the environment temperature would rise at that point.
|
[303]
Jenny Rathbone:
So, is there any evidence that the slurry
is a contributory factor, given that Professor Woodroffe’s
latest research tells us that the badgers are infecting the cattle
on the pasture? That would also mean that the cattle are infecting
the badgers on the pasture.
|
[304] Dr Paton:
I’m not aware of any direct evidence that can link slurry and
badger infection and cattle infection in one link. But it’s a
very attractive link to establish, and we think we should probably
be controlling the slurry from that point of view anyway.
|
[305]
Jenny Rathbone:
Probably controlling, but we aren’t
sufficiently at the moment.
|
[306] Dr Paton:
I don’t think we have sufficient evidence to be categorical
about that statement.
|
[307]
Jenny Rathbone:
And what about the other potential
contributory factors? Because it’s not just badgers, there is
other wildlife in the area, and, indeed, other animals in the area,
that may be carriers: so, for example, rats, cats, obviously there
are dogs as well. What role do they play in re-infecting,
or—?
|
[308] Dr Paton:
Of the species you’ve named, they are spill-over hosts. They
are indicators of a huge infection pressure, rather than something
that will maintain the infection on the farm of itself. So, cats,
for example: if you see a cat with TB, it’s probably from a
farm that has been having a lot of TB on that farm, and it’s
an indicator that there’s a severe problem that you need to
deal with. But it’s unlikely to spread it back into the
cattle.
|
[309]
Jenny Rathbone:
So, as far as you’re concerned,
cats don’t spread the disease back to the cattle.
|
11:30
|
[310]
Dr Paton: As far as I’m concerned, they don’t, but
they are an indicator that there is a problem on the farm. They get
infected by the cattle and show me that it’s there. But,
hopefully, on the vast majority of farms, we’re keeping it
under control before we get to that stage.
|
[311]
Jenny Rathbone:
And rats? Given that they live in the
dirtiest places, they probably are immune to TB—I don’t
know, but, as carriers, they obviously go everywhere and are
impossible to—
|
[312] Dr Paton: They do, but we’re not,
again, aware of them being a direct link for TB. From all the work
that’s been done, badgers in the UK and cattle are the two
major animals that spread TB between each other. For rats,
there’s no evidence that they do. They should be controlled
for other purposes, but I’m probably not going to blame them
for TB today.
|
[313]
Jenny Rathbone:
Okay. And one of the other interesting
points made by Rosie Woodroffe was that larger herds are much more
susceptible to TB infection, just by being all together in one
herd, than smaller herds, but that the tendency in agriculture is
to go for larger herds, particularly dairy herds. So, I just
wondered if that was a concern of yours.
|
[314]
Dr Paton: Large herds are a risk, a problem, for all
infections, not just TB—for every infection, every disease
that we’re dealing with, large herds are a risk.
|
[315]
Jenny Rathbone:
Regardless of how intensively
they’re being herded together.
|
[316]
Dr Paton: It really does depend on the management of those
animals. You can manage large herds effectively to control TB,
it’s just a little bit more difficult to do and needs a bit
more thinking about. So, it’s not their size per se
that’s the problem, but it’s the way the animals are
managed within that herd.
|
[317]
Jenny Rathbone:
So, on these very large milk farms,
obviously, they’re all coming together to be milked—is
that the most difficult place to manage TB?
|
[318]
Dr Paton: No, I would be putting it in the sheds, because they
need to be there for a significant amount of time, so it’s in
the sheds where they are housed, it’s having appropriate
air-flow management within those sheds, it’s having enough
space for them, it’s having enough water troughs for them so
that these animals are not all crowding around one trough, and
things like that. I don’t think that the milking parlour
itself is the particular risk; it’s the sheds and the
buildings around that.
|
[319]
Jenny Rathbone:
So, it’s because they’re in
sheds, rather than on the fields.
|
[320]
Dr Paton: That would be the implication, yes.
|
[321]
Jenny Rathbone:
Okay, thank you.
|
[322]
Mark Reckless: Huw.
|
[323]
Huw Irranca-Davies:
Just a supplementary to the earlier
discussion: in light of the consultation on the proposals that the
Cabinet Secretary has brought forward, and your
clarity—it’s a helpful clarity—on the BVA’s
position, not only on a cull, but the type of cull, are you
intending, during this period over the next few months, to bring
forward proposals on not just the approach, but actually where a
pilot area should be?
|
[324]
Dr Paton: No. We are not—I’m not aware that we have
done. We are looking at the consultation, and we will respond to
the consultation. We would be more than happy to sit with the Welsh
Government and discuss that very question, but we’d wait to
be invited.
|
[325]
Simon Thomas: I think Welsh Government is going to have to take
that responsibility upon itself. [Laughter.]
|
[326] Mark Reckless: Paul Davies.
|
[327]
Paul Davies: Just to come back to the Northern Ireland model, just
for me to be clear, obviously you’re ruling out that
badger-culling model full stop, but obviously the Welsh Government
is looking at that, from what the Cabinet Secretary has been
saying. Don’t you think that that model—? You think
that that model has obviously been running long enough, then, to
prove itself. You believe that the evidence is there so that you
can obviously make these decisions and come to these
conclusions.
|
[328]
Dr Paton: So, the Northern Ireland model, what I was saying
here—I apologised if I confused, but, I think, in Northern
Ireland, the evidence is not there yet to do that sort
of—
|
[329]
Paul Davies: So, you could still consider that.
|
[330]
Dr Paton: We’d still consider it. We’re always open
to new evidence, but we have to work on the evidence we
have.
|
[331]
Paul Davies: So, you’re not ruling it out, then.
|
[332]
Dr Paton: Not ruling it out, without—. But not at the
moment; we wouldn’t accept it at the moment without further
evidence.
|
[333] Mark Reckless: Just to follow up on a
couple of points you said earlier: in terms of saying we
shouldn’t look at the Northern Ireland model, actually,
we’re happy to look at it and see how it’s going, but
we shouldn’t at this point—
|
[334]
Dr Paton: At this point in the game, in the whole process,
it’s too early to take that on board.
|
[335]
Mark Reckless: Can I go back to what you were saying about hard
borders for potential culling areas? I’m not sure, but are
you distinguishing that from the previous randomised culling trial?
Is the suggestion that that didn’t have hard borders and, by
having hard borders, we could improve on it?
|
[336] Dr Paton: My
understanding of the evidence is that hard borders are part of
those criteria for making an effective trial. So, if we have those
in place, the badgers can’t cross that, and we will
reduce the perturbation effect from that.
|
[337]
Mark Reckless: Okay. So, a hard border the badger can’t cross:
rivers, large roads—.
|
[338]
Dr Paton: Rivers, large roads—those would be the type of
structure that we’d be looking to have in place, exactly as
the intensive action pilot area was designed on. So, it had a river
on one side, a major road on another, mountains that the badgers
were unlikely to cross at one end, and the coast on the other,
which—
|
[339]
Mark Reckless: And what’s the role of the English border in
this? Clearly, there’s the potential of a different approach
on the Welsh and English side of that border, and there’ve
been these English—what I had thought were pilot trials but
don’t seem to have been operated as such, in Somerset,
Gloucestershire and now Herefordshire.
|
[340]
Dr Paton: We are going to have to work with the English
Government to try and get an aligned response. We then have to
worry that these badgers from these culls are going to cross the
border and infect our farms. We need to—. It may be that some
of these pilot areas for culls are targeted up there to try and
manage that particular issue. It is going to be a headache, and
cross-border co-operation is going to vital to doing it, so talking
to our English counterparts is going to be necessary as we work
forward. But we need to talk, I think.
|
[341]
Mark Reckless: And with reference again to the hard borders of the
trial area, can the Wye act as that in some areas?
|
[342]
Dr Paton: It certainly could do, yes. I would think that river
might well be a useful landmark to use as one edge.
|
[343] Mark Reckless: Huw.
|
[344]
Huw Irranca-Davies:
I’m just wondering—. It might
be helpful if we had the BVA’s position not simply on hard
borders, but, if you are advocating the original, as conceived by
Natural England, guidelines—the model in England—it
wasn’t only hard borders. Other significant criteria were the
time of the year that that would take place. So, not inhumanely in
cubbing times of the year, but also in the narrowest possible
window, which was then defined as six weeks only, not 13 weeks or
forever and a day, and 70 per cent guaranteed taken out.
|
[345]
Dr Paton: That’s correct.
|
[346]
Huw Irranca-Davies:
These are high, high hurdles that the
original trials even—not the RBCT, but the recent English
culls—failed to hit. Could we just have your thoughts on
that? Because I wouldn’t want to get fixated only on hard
borders; there are a lot of other criteria. Then, also, what are
your thoughts on whether you’ve seen any value from this from
England at all?
|
[347]
Dr Paton: So, it is a big ask. I have no problems with that.
This is a big disease and an important disease, so big asks are
what we need to have. It’s going to be very difficult. We do
need, as you quite rightly point out, other targets, so, a 70 per
cent reduction in badgers, to make it effective. To make it humane
it has to be at the right place—so, what we don’t want
is cubs starving in the setts.
|
[348]
From there, what I’m worried about,
in terms of looking at what’s happening in England, is that,
if we go down that route, we will do a lot of shooting and a lot of
culling in an inhumane manner that will, in fact, be ineffective.
That’s why we, as the BVA, have really pulled back and
withdrawn our support from those particular trials, because we
don’t believe it’s possible, or has been demonstrated
to be possible, to do those things. It’s been too prolonged,
and we haven’t reached the targets, and the evidence is that
free shooting has been inhumane.
|
[349]
Sian Gwenllian:
Gwnaf ofyn yn Gymraeg. Petai fodd,
felly, diffinio ardal efo’r ffiniau caled o’ch cwmpas
chi, faint o boblogaeth moch daear mewn canran sydd angen lladd er
mwyn bod yn effeithiol? A ydy hi’n bosibl cyrraedd at y
ganran ddigon uchel?
|
Sian
Gwenllian: I’ll be asking my question in Welsh. If it was
possible, therefore, to define an area with these hard borders
around it, how much of the badger population in percentage terms
needs to be culled in order for that to be effective? Is it
possible to reach a high enough percentage?
|
[350]
Yr ail beth, mwy cyffredinol: a ydyw
i’n synhwyro bod y BVA yn teimlo yn gryfach erbyn hyn nad ydy
difa a brechu ddim wir mor effeithiol ag oeddech chi’n tybio
ei fod o? Hynny yw, a oes yna fwy o dystiolaeth yn dod drwodd
rŵan i wneud i chi gymryd safbwynt ychydig bach yn wahanol i
beth oeddech chi’n ei gymryd ychydig yn ôl?
|
The second
thing, in more general terms: do I sense that the BVA feels more
strongly now that culling and vaccination aren’t really as
effective as you thought they might be? That is, is there more
evidence coming through now to make you take a slightly different
position to the position you took some time ago?
|
[351] Dr Paton:
So, in terms of badger numbers in the cull, as we said, 70 per cent
is the target that we need to get below. It is possible. It is very
difficult. I won’t pretend that it is not very difficult, but
it’s certainly possible, and we have not seen any evidence
that suggests that our original position should be changed. We
still stick to badger culling over a wide area as a major and
important tool in the toolbox. We certainly see wildlife control as
part of that whole package of measures.
|
[352] I’d just
like just to reiterate that we are focusing on badgers, but we
expect controls across all the species—the cattle and the
badgers. There’s no one element that can be over-emphasised
over the other. So, we wouldn’t be wanting a badger cull
without these other elements as well.
|
[353] Mark
Reckless: There have been substantial complaints about the
English pilots or trials along our border. I’m not quite
clear whether it’s the fact that it’s shooting or
it’s the way the shooting is happening that is alleged to
make it so inhumane. I just wondered what your assessment of that
was, and also other potential ways of culling or control, such as,
for instance, gassing of setts. How would you assess those in
efficacy and how humane they are?
|
[354] Dr Paton:
So, what’s happening—. Our complaint or our issue with
the free shooting is that when we watch the measurements on—.
If we get observers looking at free shooting, more badgers than we
are comfortable with are taking a prolonged time to die. So,
that’s our issue in terms of humaneness.
|
[355] Simon
Thomas: Just to be clear: free shooting, not traps?
|
[356] Dr Paton:
Free shooting; they are not trapped—they are roaming wild.
Our view is that the humane way to do it—the guaranteed way
of killing a badger—is to trap them and then you shoot them
in the trap. So, you have no issues with accuracy and where the
bullet lands, or that type of thing. That is the current evidence
base we’ve got of the most effective and humane way to
euthanise badgers.
|
[357] Gassing in setts
I am sure is effective. I am less sure that it is humane at this
stage. Obviously, I know that carbon dioxide from when we use it in
slaughter in abattoirs is considered an aversive gas, and makes the
animals very uncomfortable as the concentration rises. So, that
concentration has to rise rapidly. Other gasses are probably
available, but we need the evidence to show that they are humane
and effective at this stage.
|
[358] Mark
Reckless: Sian.
|
[359] Sian
Gwenllian: Can you just describe—? You’ve described
the effect of culling the badger. How does an infected cow look?
Can you describe that, so that we have, you know—?
|
[360] Dr Paton:
Currently, when we pick up infected cattle they are in very early
stage infection. So, a badger that we would normally see as sick at
this point in Wales would be having its lungs filled with large
lesions, would be emaciated, would be generally suffering, as a
typical example. The cattle that we’re picking up,
we’re picking them up at a stage where there may be only
microscopic lesions in the lungs and the abdomen, so ostensibly
these are healthy but infected and infectious animals that could
pose a risk to other animals and to the human food chain. So, they
are then collected from the farm, taken to a normal abattoir and
slaughtered in the normal process that we would do for any other
cattle that we use for meat consumption, or as culled at the end of
its life as a dairy cow. So, they’re dealt with in a humane
manner, or as humane as we possibly can from that point of view. It
is just the sheer number that we’re putting through these
abattoirs with TB, and the reduction in the productivity. These are
animals that potentially have five, six, seven, eight years of
productive life left in them, and we’re taking them out of
the herd far earlier than we need to do.
|
[361] Mark
Reckless: Simon.
|
[362]
Simon Thomas: My understanding is that that animal can then enter
the food chain.
|
[363]
Dr Paton: If it has insufficient lesions, so
there’s—
|
[364]
Simon Thomas: So, is it the vet that checks the lesions, and to say
whether it’s got—? Is it in two parts of the body that
it has to show signs of disease? Is that correct?
|
[365]
Dr Paton: If it’s got a lesion in two parts of the body,
the entire carcase is condemned and not fit for human consumption.
If it’s in one part of the body, then that part of the
body—so, the forequarters or the hindquarters; they usually
split it in half—that has the lesions within it, and
it’s usually the forequarters, that’s condemned and the
rest can then enter the food chain. And that would be done by a
vet. So, most of the time, meat inspection is done by eastern
European meat inspectors who may be vets, but they’re not
qualified to work here, but TB condemnation is done by the OV, the
official veterinarian, in the abattoir.
|
[366]
Mark Reckless: And on affecting the food chain, can you just
describe a bit more the risk of that?
|
11:45
|
[367] Dr Paton:
Currently, our trading status within Europe is based on us having
an effective, licensed and legal TB control policy and them feeling
that it’s under control. If we don’t have that in place
and they feel that TB is no longer controlled and we’re not
complying with their regulations, then they would ban, or they have
the potential to ban, the export of meat into the EU and we would
lose a major trading partner at that point.
|
[368] Mark
Reckles: Huw.
|
[369] Huw
Irranca-Davies: Sorry, that’s just spurred me—I
wasn’t going to raise this until later, but you mentioning it
there—is there any reason, when we already have a UK TB
eradication policy that is agreed at an EU level, under which there
are devolved Governments that are part and party to that, which
have a different approach, to expect that post Brexit, in the
BVA’s view, if you continue with that model, the EU is going
to turn around and say, ‘We don’t accept it
anymore’?
|
[370] Dr Paton:
We have no particular reason, but we just flag it up as a risk.
|
[371] Huw
Irranca-Davies: As a risk, okay. That’s helpful.
I’m going to move on to the wider—. There’s a
package of proposals here on compensation, in respect of trading,
more restrictions on cattle movements and regionalisation, and the
BVA is supportive, broadly, of the wider package that’s been
put forward. Can I ask, then, what do you see as the role of the
BVA in Wales in driving forward that, in arguing that change, in
explaining that change? You are so close to the farming community
as well. Do you see yourself as having an active role as an engine
for that change to what will be more stringent demands on farmers
as well?
|
[372] Dr Paton:
I would see our role as information transfer and support of the
policies that are in place. So, as an example, advocating for
risk-based informed purchasing and advocating of movement of
cattle, of buying in cattle from places where they are low risk and
bringing them in, so you don’t bring TB onto farms. Our view
would be to promote the best practice within farms as we see it in
terms of trading, in terms of biosecurity, in terms of managing
animals, for their health and welfare—an information-based
and an information transfer organisation, supporting and advocating
for the best practices on farms.
|
[373] Huw
Irranca-Davies: That’s really helpful. Can I then ask
you, where do you see the biggest risks at the moment in terms of
bovine TB? We spend a lot of time talking, understandably, about
the controversial issue of the wildlife reservoir and culling or
alternative methods. Putting that to one side for the moment, in
terms of cattle transmission and cattle movements and so on, where
are the biggest risks? What is happening within the Welsh industry
that we could drive down on greatly, with the farming community
with us, to really turn this around?
|
[374] Dr Paton:
I think informed trading is where I would go with that, and making
sure that farmers are aware, as much as possible, of the risk that
they take when they buy animals, how to mitigate that risk, either
by buying from a specific location—north Wales or someplace
where it’s free—and what to do with those animals when
they enter the herd. I think there’s a huge amount of work to
be done on that. I will put a conflict of interest: I am working on
a bovine viral diarrhoea eradication programme for Wales, and right
at the heart of that is that very concept of informed
trading—farmers knowing where the animals are coming from and
knowing what to do when they get them on the farm.
|
[375] Huw
Irranca-Davies: How do you then, going back to my earlier
question about the BVA’s role in this, on a voluntary,
risk-based trading approach, persuade the wide body of
farmers—every farmer is different, every farming family is
different—that it’s in all of their interests to take
this informed approach?
|
[376] Dr Paton:
We have to use the network of vets that I’ve got. The most
effective thing I can do, or my members can do and I can do, is
persuade them to take that information and sit down over the coffee
table with their farmers who they’ve built up a relationship
with and get them to pass that message on and say, ‘This is
why you’re hurting yourself if you do this—.’
It’s that relationship between the local vet and the farmer
that’s going to be key to getting these things accepted
within the farming community.
|
[377] Mark
Reckless: Thank you. Can I go to Jenny and then Simon?
|
[378] Jenny
Rathbone: What’s your role in helping to control the
secondary market that inevitably will rise up if you’ve got
better controlled sale of clean cattle that farmers know where they
come from? There will inevitably always be people who just want to
offload cattle that they suspect may be infected.
|
[379] Dr Paton:
That’s partly a caveat emptor-type thing and it’s going
back and talking to the farmers themselves and saying, ‘Okay,
there is this secondary market, we know these are clean animals,
these are animals that we’re less sure of that are out there
on the market—don’t touch those.’ And, in terms
of us, it’s again going back to those vets and to having that
conversation about, ‘You want a high health unit. Protect
yourself; don’t buy that from those particular sources. Let
the guys who are more risk averse, or let them go direct to
slaughter.’
|
[380] Jenny
Rathbone: But you wouldn’t propose better regulation or
more regulation to say: you may not bring cattle into Wales unless
they’ve been tested as TB free.
|
[381] Dr Paton:
We would be happy to see—again, with all the health
programmes that I’m trying to build—moving cattle with
a known high health TB-free status. It has to be the way forward,
and limiting the ability of infected cattle to be moved either into
Wales or around Wales has to be part of what we need to do.
|
[382] In terms of the
BVA and its role, it really isn’t about farmer
education—using that vet-farmer channel.
|
[383] Jenny
Rathbone: But do you think it requires both things, i.e. both
the farmer education and the regulations—
|
[384] Dr Paton:
I think so, yes.
|
[385] Jenny
Rathbone: —to prevent the trading of animals about which
we don’t know whether they’re infected or not?
|
[386] Dr Paton:
I would be much more comfortable seeing animals that we knew the
status of being moved around.
|
[387] Jenny
Rathbone: Okay, thank you. The last thing: I just wanted to ask
what the prevalence of disease from TB is in cattle that are not
housed in sheds, so that there are breeds that you can keep out for
12 months of the year.
|
[388] Dr
Parton: Lower than in within sheds, I think, there. So, those
areas that are closer to being officially TB free are in the sort
of areas where there’s a significant number of beef animals
in the herd population, and so they are lower in those areas.
|
[389] Jenny
Rathbone: So, the major source of infection, as far as
you’re concerned, is animals that are housed indoors and in
close confines.
|
[390] Dr Paton:
Well, they certainly have larger numbers of animals that are
infected. So, it is a risk factor, and it does increase the problem
for those particular animals. Source? It depends on whether they
buy in or whether they’re closed where that disease then
enters that herd.
|
[391] Jenny
Rathbone: Would you see that as an argument for changing the
way we farm?
|
[392] Dr Paton:
I would see that we need to be improving health and welfare across
the board, and helping our farmers to provide best practice to make
all diseases better. I’m not changing the way we farm. We
still have to have a farming industry at the end of this, so there
has to be a limit to how far we can actually push farms—they
still have to be able to run their businesses and do things, but we
can work with them to improve things within those businesses to the
best of our ability.
|
[393] Jenny
Rathbone: Okay.
|
[394] Mark
Reckless: Simon and Huw both wanted to come in. I’m not
sure which is most on this topic.
|
[395] Simon
Thomas: Yes, it’s following on, really, because the
implication of what you’ve said is you’d like to see
fewer cattle movements per se, and if we’re going to have
cattle movements, you want this informed trading, so that we know
that the cattle that we’re really moving are completely safe
and disease free. This is a little bit anecdotal, but, I mean,
certainly, the farmers I talk to tell me that it’s been very
marked recently that cattle buyers from Scotland in particular were
no longer interested in buying cattle from Wales, including the
parts of Wales that are disease free, because they simply would be
taking a risk, and maybe there are social pressures—as I
understand, there are social pressures in Scotland, because the
surrounding farmers don’t want Welsh cattle on that farm
because, ‘Don’t go there, mate’. So, is the
regionalisation approach a way, perhaps, of reopening some of these
reasonable markets?
|
[396] Dr Paton:
Absolutely, because, what most people are looking at is the yearly
testing interval, to say what the risk that we’ve got here
is, and we know, sitting around the table, that north Wales is
essentially free. There are farms in areas that have not had TB for
a significant length of time. So, if we can then change that and
give them, the farmers, our trading partners, confidence that in
these areas, if you buy cattle from these areas, it is a low-risk
choice to make, then we will open up those markets, or we are
likely to open up those markets again.
|
[397] Simon
Thomas: And then the second question around there was, you
know, there’s quite—. Actually, Welsh farming is often
quite diverse, though people like to think it’s all a
monoculture, but, you know, even your sheep farmer will have
suckler cows, but they may be close to or they may happen to be in
a higher, intensive area, but the suckler cow trade is quite
important to Welsh farming. Is there a way of having informed
trading, even if things are coming from what looks on the face of
it to be a TB high-risk area, when there is this difference, as
you’ve just pointed out in your earlier evidence, between
dairy and beef as well?
|
[398] Dr Paton:
It really depends on how much level of information you want to give
or associate with that cow. So, if I can point to a farm and say
‘It has not gone down with TB for 10 years’, then
that’s quite a safe farm to buy things from.
|
[399] Simon
Thomas: Even though the farm itself might be in an area
geographically—
|
[400] Dr Paton:
Yes. You might not consider it as safe as a farm in a low-risk area
that’s been free for 10 years, but you’d certainly
consider it safer than the farm next door that’s gone down
with TB every year or so. So, if we can give that sort of
information in some fashion with the cattle, then that might give
buyers the confidence to say, ‘Right, I’ll buy that
individual animal.’ So, it’s a possibility. It really
comes down to studying the social science to see how much
confidence that gives people to do it and I guess the only way to
get that information is to provide it and then see what happens
with purchasing patterns.
|
[401] Mark
Reckless: Huw.
|
[402] Huw
Irranca-Davies: I’m intrigued here by the clarity
you’ve had on the need to involve the sociological-cultural
aspects of working with and trying to persuade the farming
community of a certain direction of travel, but also the regulatory
aspects, which you’re not ideologically opposed to at all.
So, I’m assuming that you would be supportive in terms of
cattle movements of two of the proposals within this, which are
also in the regulatory side and the enforcement side, to look at
compensation penalties if there are illicit movements between herds
that lead to chronic herd breakdowns that exasperate the problems,
and not only that, but the actual linking of these to
cross-compliance. So, whether it is cattle movements, breaches of
non-compliance with veterinary requirements notices, et cetera,
this could hit their actual single farm payments under the existing
CAP. Would you be supportive of this?
|
[403] Dr Paton:
Broadly supportive. Obviously it has to be proportionate to the
offence and the evidence base that we have for those particular
issues causing a problem on there. So, I have, overall, no problems
but when we drill down into the detail, what exactly is the penalty
and how proportionate is that to the offence, if you want to put it
that way—
|
[404] Huw
Irranca-Davies: And without wanting to put words in your mouth
you’d be broadly supportive of a proportionate approach to
both of those, because the message from that would be that good
farmers will continue to be able to be so. It’s those who do
do the illicit movements and the illicit trading that would need to
be reminded quite strongly through these penalties.
|
[405] Dr Paton:
I would be wanting to reward good farmers and put all the pressure
on poor farmers or farmers that do not work to improve TB.
|
[406] Huw
Irranca-Davies: Great clarity from the BVA on that.
|
[407] Mark
Reckless: Thank you. Before we close, can I just ask Paul
whether you need any further contribution? If there are any other
points that Members want, if they could indicate now I’d be
grateful. No. Fine. All done. Thank you very much for that valuable
veterinary perspective. We’re grateful for you attending.
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11:58
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Cynnig o dan Reol Sefydlog 17.42 i Benderfynu Gwahardd
y Cyhoedd o’r Cyfarfod
Motion under Standing Order 17.42 to Resolve to Exclude the Public
from 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).
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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).
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Cynigiwyd y cynnig. Motion moved.
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[408] Mark
Reckless: I’m now going to propose that we move into
private session, so, thank you.
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[409] Dr Paton:
Thank you very much for your time.
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Derbyniwyd y cynnig.
Motion agreed.
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Daeth rhan gyhoeddus y cyfarfod i ben am
11:58.
The public part of the meeting ended at 11:58.
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