Pat Bird's TB blog

It's six months since I last posted, and my excuse is the novelty to be 'selling' cattle again ! That's 'selling' as in marketing stuff you were proud to walk around the ring, as opposed to getting what you can through a licensed fattening unit. We've sold about 50 animals of all classes from stores to 3 breeding bulls.

So, while I've been filling in market entry forms what has the rest of the country been up to on the TB front? The Welsh have been led up the garden path trying to mirror the protocol of the  RBCT, although why anyone would want to launch into an infected badger population with cage traps for 8 nights very occasionally, is a mystery. And the NFU, having snaffled a bit of EU modulation cash from our SFP cheques has set up some TB advisory units. The first, based in Exeter was introduced at the Royal Cornwall Show in early June. The 'emotional' and 'trading' sections will take pressure off the Farm Crisis network and Animal Health, but I have reservations about advice for what is referred to as 'disease risk management'.

To me that is Defra -speke for that over used term, bio-security.

This is relatively easy for a single species vector, particularly one which responds to dipping its boots. But it's a different kettle of fish trying to exclude over protected, free ranging wildlife.

The implications of this are wide ranging. We have a government with a severe cash flow problem, and they will be eyeing up the TB budget. I can't see vets queuing up to jab-one, jab-one-free although I understand both testing and transport of reactors may be put out to tender. And abattoirs already have Defra in an armlock on reactor slaughter, with no transparency of costs v. salvage value. So what's left to raid? Farmers.

Already some who may have allegedly overshot their 'test due' date have received a letter reminding them of their obligations under SFP cross compliance. And if the farmer is at fault, all well and good. But if it's your vet having a senior moment, or AHO admin on maternity leave, what then? I did say to the Exeter team, that when they are doling out such 'advice' (biosecurity) they must be pretty sure that it will work. And having been trying (unsuccessfully) for several years to do just that, I assured them it wasn't that easy, despite what Defra had printed in it's 10^th booklet (out of 15 which now replace the single information book farmers used to receive when they went under TB restriction.)

Booklet No.10 is decorated with many pictures of badgers, all looking shiny and bouncy, and contains the following gem:

"Badgers present a particular challenge to farmers who want to keep their herd TB free".

Strictly speaking that is a wriggle. Badgers do not present a problem to farmers at all. But Defra's ongoing prevarication over dealing with the endemic TB which they carry, most certainly does. And I do get frustrated when library pictures of healthy badgers are used to illustrate TB articles. Tuberculosis is an awful death, leaving victims weak, disorientated, often riddled with abscesses, some of which would be extremely painful.

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We are over half way through this years'calving, so groups of cows and calves are batched with an appropriate bull and turned away onto fresh grazing. I'm glad we 'badger proofed' those creep feeders last year as Animal Health vets tell me that at least two outbreaks of TB in young beef calves were most likely traced back to contact with contaminated feed, after badgers entered creep feeders. What height are they? I must measure, as Defra's advice on trough height is still stuck in a groove of 30 inches when they have paid for research which shows badgers leaping into troughs over 4 feet off the ground.

And that is exactly what I mean when I say that if farmers are to be offered biosecurity advice, compliance with which may possibly be linked to the level of tabular valuation money offered for reactors, then 'somebody' better make sure that advice works.

The good news for us, is a second clear test. This means we're now clear to trade for a year, subject to preMT. Long may it continue.

When I first started to scribble the story of our herd under TB restriction, it was June 2009 and we'd just had a second TB test read at severe interpretation and were going to lose another three good young cows.

These were 'inconclusive' on a standard reading, but became 'reactor' status on severe. As they had all calved around the time of the test, and as Defra were not prepared to take the calves as well, I kept the cows on until their offspring could be weaned.

Then we wormed and fluked every animal in August, which delayed their departure - at least for the food chain - until October.

They had no lesions at slaughter, so we were back onto 'standard' interpretation for the next round of testing and I had booked this for November.

But AH had other ideas, and having consulted it's testing bible, said no. It must be 60 days after the cattle had left. Even thought their departure had been delayed and even though their calves were still here.

So December 22nd., was the first available date. But as neither we, nor our vet fancied reading a TB test on Christmas day, it was delayed until last week.

The vet slid into the farm through a haze of fog and snow. And we towed him out over solid ice. But the result was a completely flat test. Not a lump to write down anywhere. Clear.

So, as I squeeze through stacked cattle in the mornings, manoeuvring around 5 working bulls (well three working, and two who'd like to) unless I've misinterpreted the Defra testing bible again, I'm awaiting the 'Get out Jail' card from our local Animal Health office which tells me I can trade again. For now.

A Happy New Year to us all.

The dictionary definition of 'stacked' is "heaped in an orderly arrangement", which is not the way I would describe our attempts to slot too many cattle of different ages, sizes and dietary requirements into our available housing this weekend.

The ravages of a TB herd restriction are probably worse than the constant testing and slaughter. Trade is at a standstill in any meaningful way, while as I described in a previous post, T-Beggars (the TB Eradication Group, or recycled T-BAG ) have proposed many more licensed movements in an effort to free up overstocked farms.

But having been on the receiving end of such trades for too many years, I can say that the pride of presenting and marketing good animals, in the best market climate and to the benefit of your business and not that of your very limited purchasers, is gone.

The 'exempt' finishing units want cheap supermarket fodder, nothing more and will buy down to a price.

And sales for pedigree breeding stock are very limited, meaning too many good cows, heifers and stock bulls end up on the hook.

The sale of the dairy herd left us cubicles for 90, which the beef  fattening group have occupied with three cubicles each, all spring and summer. Automatic scrapers have been coaxed back into life, and these dormitories split into two sections, with some dry in calf cows and heifers and one bull in one half on a maintenance ration, while the 30 fatteners access maize and other goodies from the other side.

But after last weeks' gales and wet, the remaining cattle (32 cows, 32 calves and 2 bulls) were paddling. And although the grass was growing and they had access to kale, the mess on the fields from 664 stilettos was getting beyond a joke, so in they came. And Saturday involved a great deal of rearranging, re-batching and over a very, very long day.

Twenty weaned calves from the first group and eleven of the biggest newly weaned calves are now in the youngstock pens in a different part of the yards.

Twenty-one newly weaned smaller calves are in the front open yard, which normally houses the bulls, lining up against a gate where they can see and smell their mums, but not suck. And the four angus bulls which should have had this yard, have been turned back outside onto a ten acre field which they are busy digging holes in until they sort out who's the boss.

We were told that leaving a fence between mums and calves would ease the noise and stress of weaning sucklers. It didn't. And the valley is echoing to outraged howls from both sides.

We still have too many cows in one area, and have to mix and match again at some point to accommodate them safely. Then comes a strict cull on anything not in calf, not up to scratch - or producing calves not up scratch.

If we had been able to 'market' the bigger animals as stores instead of finishing them to slaughter, we would have had ample room.

So a few choice (and imaginatively descriptive) words were lobbed in the direction of the Right Honourable Hilary Benn MP, Secretary of State for (some) Animal's Health as we struggled to fit this quart into its pint pot, in howling gales and rain.

We fully expect that during such dire weather, the honourable gentleman was cosy in his armchair, reading a book on the life history of badgers.

A sad week for us this week. As I wrote in June, our 60day TB test, threw up 3 inconclusives on standard interpretation, which Defra ratcheted up to 'reactor' status on severe.

All these young cows had calved that week and all had really good calves, two bulls and a heifer. But of course our Minister was not going to waste taxpayer's money slaughtering these extremely 'dangerous contacts' as well - just as I was not going to try and hang them onto another cow, or bucket feed them.

So on welfare grounds they stayed with mum until they were ready to wean. And mum had flukicide and wormer in August, as we didn't want these three to contaminate clean grassland for future grazing.

The end of the road came this week when the drug withdrawal period was up, so they could go into the food chain and offset Defra's costs with a less than transparent 'salvage' income. And three cracking young suckler cows were loaded up and shot. 

As expected, they had no visible lesions (NVL) but the test, doing what it says on the tin, had shown they'd had 'exposure' to the bacteria that causes TB. In the four months since the last test, or five months if I include the latency period of 30-50 days before it, they had not developed lesions, and it is quite likely that they never would.

They did not get the chance. They join almost 21,000 other casualties (up until June) of this crazy non-policy that passes for Defra's 'eradication' of bovine tuberculosis.

Meanwhile, the EU - or rather UK, German and Dutch taxpayers - has coughed up 10million euros to help our vets test more cattle and our abattoirs to slaughter them.

Defra advertised a diversification opportunity last week. At the moment the Veterinary Surgeons Act 1966 prohibits any act of veterinary surgery, which includes the vaccination of badgers by injection, from being carried out by non-veterinary surgeons.

And Defra, having drawn in more than 4000 extra herds onto annual testing, which will involve preMT as well, are keen to share this work - and the largesse - among as many competent lay persons as possible.

So, if anyone fancies a bit of moonlighting, located in hotspot areas of the highest TB infection, trapping, vaccinating, marking and releasing endemically infected badgers, the link to a consultation paper is http://www.defra.gov.uk/corporate/consult/tb-badger/index.htm on the Defra website.

Entries close on the 10^th January 2010, which is just about the time we shall be testing the herd again.

At last week's launch of the TB Eradication Group's (TBEG) recommendations to government, the tone for the discussions was set by beef farmer George Richardson, whose cattle have been under TB restriction, on and off, for well over a decade. His opening shot pointed out that the only way to deal with bTB was to deal with the maintenance reservoir of infection in badgers. Everything else was peripheral to this.

Unfortunately it is the 'everything else' which is the only remit TBEG can work with. So using a bright red crayon, they have filled in all the gaps west of a line from Mr. Richardson's patch in North Staffordshire and moving south towards the Dorset coast, put a further 4000 farms on to annual or two year testing. A 10km buffer zone, (on TBEG's map, if not on the resident badgers') protects areas east of this. How long will this line hold I wonder?

I don't have a problem with more regular testing of cattle - but I have a very big problem with not tackling the source of the problems my cattle are flagging up. I watched Hilary Benn at his last appearance before the EFRA committee.

His jubilation was tangible when by changing one  word in the title of a group whose conclusions he can ignore anyway, he broke the impasse over industry 'co-operation' with his Cost and Responsibility Sharing - and levies.

The man was positively gleeful. But he had not changed tack at all. 'Eradication' meant different things to him, than it did to the industry representatives who now sit around his table discussing cattle measures, more cattle measures and only cattle measures.

There will be no removal of TB super-excreter and grossly infected badgers - at least until after this government has been removed. And even then, it appears that Defra's civil servants are still opposing any method of badger control which they quaintly describe as 'not validated'.

I remember a similar attitude in 2001, and the flat refusal of Fred Brown's offer to use his PCR 'Smart Cycler' while Defra faithfully followed a mathematical model and culled 11 million animals, chasing FMD around the country.

Unfortunately, any new administration next May, still has to get around the word 'targeted' when paired with 'badger cull'.

Both Conservative and the Lib-Dems have this pre-condition within their commitments, notably made while out of office.

So how do you 'target' a cull, if such stunning technology as PCR or the years of experience in identifying unhealthy sets offered by the now redundant Wildlife Unit operatives, is met with a brick wall of intransigence?

One idea which may have legs, is a makeover of the 'Clean Ring' strategy which worked so well in the past.

 A wealth of information is held by local Animal Health Offices on where wildlife based TB problems are. They are able to examine widespread evidence provided by cattle breakdowns over large areas. It's not rocket science. If cattle are clear on regular testing, it's a pretty good indication that the badgers on that farm are healthy too, and should be left strictly alone.

But on farms like ours, and that of our neighbours who have just lost eleven animals to Defra's killing machine, there is a problem. And that problem is not going to be solved by testing more cattle, killing more cattle, or by offering 'unvalidated' bio-security advice which owes more to model farmyards and plastic cattle than a working environment covering several hundred acres.

With easier access to finishing units, long distance hops and extended testing periods, TBEG has gone out on limb to make TB easier for farmers to live with. Or put another way, for my cattle to die from.

Those three severe interpretation 'reactors' are booked to go next week, now that their calves stand a reasonable chance of survival and the cows themselves are clear of a withdrawal period for a fluke and worm drench. And then we test again. For the fourth time this year.

The main thrust of these stories from the farm gate concern cattle, badger TB and the effect of the disease on our business. But another problem is the damage that excavations by these black and white, subterranean miners cause.

In the last few years, numbers have increased substantially, (by 77 per cent in a decade) and they have to live somewhere. Their setts have a Grade 1 listing and even if the occupants undermine roads, excavate graveyards, drain canals and reservoirs or cause injury when people fall down into their tunnels there is very little that can be done as the following snippets illustrate.

A decade ago, allotment holders in Richmond were forced to give up their plots as badgers excavated two setts under them, and made use of a ready filled larder.

In 2005, they broke into Erlestoke prison in Wiltshire, biting a prison guard in the process. In Kent, they have excavated the road into Dargate which regularly cuts off the village, as 'elf and safety' won't allow traffic over it, and the badger protection laws won't allow them to be moved very often, or very far.

In 2007, after the use of one-way-gates, they had returned for the fourth time - slightly further down the road and at considerable cost. In Saltdean near Brighton,  residents experienced the joy of a farm slurry store undermined and collapsing - on a Sunday afternoon.

 Over £25 million  worth of damage to agriculture was caused by badgers in the one year Defra dared to ask, and they seem to be attracted to graveyards, both ancient and modern. The Ministry of Defence say that a Bronze age burial barrow in South Pembrokeshire is being asset stripped of its contents by badgers, and further reports of damage come from Salisbury Plain, Dyfyd and Ashbourne.

Last year badgers have created a honeycomb of tunnels under the 12th century graveyard at St Lawrence Church, in Cheltenham. They disturbed two other graves - and four more in danger of collapse were cordoned off. Relatives were extremely distressed to find coffins and caskets exposed, and their carefully tended graves looking like a bomb site.

 Meanwhile on our patch, the maize crop is under attack. Standing straight and tall overlooking the sea in a 'before' shot, a second picture shows a patch felled and the cobs chewed.

It is an early variety which will be harvested just as soon as we can. And then securely sheeted down. And then there is problem of 'badger proofing' the centre feed passage - without causing pneumonia and heat stroke to the cattle sealed up inside.

What a delightful chap. Jack Reedy, vice-chairman of the Badger Trust, interviewed in last week's FG must have had cattle farmers, especially those under herd restrictions and losing shed loads of cattle, enthralled.

His kindly brow, knitting with genteel compassion, Reedy showing genuine understanding of our problems and gave much information, which may be of help to us lesser mortals.

The Badger Trust deals in 'facts' says Mr. Reedy, while TB hit farmers - that's me - trade on emotion. His arguments, he confirms, are based on 'sound science'.

So quite unemotionally I ask, would that be the 'science' with which I am familiar, or the sort of 'political science' so recently delivered by members of the ISG?

Professor Bourne was at pains to make clear to various committees that a small amount of badger culling may be sanctioned, but only to act as an inducement for more brutal cattle measures of the sort Mr. Reedy is proposing. And which he openly told veterinary colleagues at the beginning of his culling trial, would be their only option at the end of it.

He reiterated this political steer which his 'trial' had received when interviewed both by the EFRA committee and the Welsh Assembly in July 2007. His evidence to the latter, prompting this explosive gem from Mr. Paddy Rooney, representing the CLA and a member of the TB Action group who said:

" Perhaps I might preface my remarks by saying that I was brought up as a scientist; it was not in this discipline, but scientific principles hold, whatever the discipline. One of the things that I was taught was that, in designing an experiment to try to address an issue or a problem, you may not like the results, but you accept them. I find it deeply shocking that responsible scientists should have been prepared to undertake a research study having been told at the outset that there is a conclusion that they are not allowed to reach. I find that utterly disgraceful".

Indulging in a bit of political back covering, Professor Bourne also told ministers in 2007 that badger culling 'as was conducted in this trial' had no place in policy. He was careful to say that, he said, as other types of culling which had not been part of the trial and thus may have had a different outcome. For sure, he certainly showed us all how not to cull badgers.

 But that is the type of 'political science' which seems to attract Mr. Reedy and his fellow travellers, who appear to neither know nor care about any research pre ISG, or post RBCT.

The basis of Bourne's badger dispersal trial is contained in a description of the way 'risk' was assessed. Farmers involved with the RBCT filled out a long TB99 form which identified the possible causes of why the farm had suffered a breakdown. This still happens and is used to assess the need for back tracing of cattle movements and contacts. (In 2001, mine said 'no risk' from everything - except badgers, but the ISG ignored it along with all the others.)

This form should have formed the basis of the RBCT mathematical modelling. However for whatever reason, it did not. It was binned and the modellers used an 'assumption' of cattle contact across farm borders, bought in cattle and badgers as their points of reference. All three calculations were then given 'roughly equal importance'. 

This is despite evidence from local AHOs, which consistently showed that at least 76 per cent and up to 90 percent of TB outbreaks in the worst areas are down not to cattle at all, but to badgers. Mr. Reedy accepts that badgers play a role in TB hotspots and says he "would be an idiot to deny that". Indeed.

On hotspots remaining in the UK after the TB eradication clearances of the 1960s, Mr. Reedy says that the weather and not culling out whole herds, caused the consequent spread of disease. He is wrong on both counts. In the West Penwith area of Cornwall in the early 1970s, whole herd slaughter, cohort slaughter, licensed movements and severe interpretation of synchronised tests were used by the DVM of the time, who was 'fierce' in his goal to clear out TB.

He failed, and the CVO reports of that decade confirm that he failed. Not until badger culling was started in 1974/ 75, did reactor figures finally start to drop. Similar stringent cattle measures were used in the Republic of Ireland with equally expensive and futile results. And climate? The Scilly Isles and Isle of Man share the same air space and geological features as SW England, but have no badgers and no home grown TB.

And the SW's badgers have not migrated northwards and westwards either, as the VLA's TB spoligotype maps show. The disease is circulating in clearly defined patches between tested, slaughtered cattle and free ranging badgers, exercising their right-to-roam. 

And then 'closed herds'. Mr. Reedy scoffs at the suggestion, citing show visits, lorries, and shared equipment as other possibilities for the spread of TB.  But as I said in my first FG blog post, I have a piece of paper from BCMS written in 2005, confirming 'no bought in cattle on the database'.

We did not show cattle (although we sold some good ones) and our boundaries were inspected by Defra's predecessor as being totally secure, with the cattle accepted as part of their voluntary EBL scheme. Lorries have access directly from the public road (not through cattle entrances) and we share no equipment. At that time (2005) we'd had continuous 60 day TB tests for over 4 years and lost too many good, home bred cattle.

But I'm not about to 'trade on emotion' about their totally unnecessary deaths or the strain it put on our business. Or even the fact that we are still uninsurable, still under TB restriction and unable to run our business as we would like. I'm not 'emotional' at all - but I am bloody angry at the sheer waste of money, time and effort Defra and their assorted snake-oil-peddlers throw into tiptoeing around trying to avoid this elephant in the room.

I am 'disappointed' that having published biosecurity research which they had commissioned, Defra can still publish duplicitous advice to farmers - and offer taxpayer's money for more research.  And I am surprised that apparently intelligent people, still believe that the earth is flat.

The first days of September and we have horizontal rain, blown in on a westerly gale. I took the photo of some of this year's calves last week, bright eyed, bushy tailed and inquisitive in the bright sunshine. Today, sitting snug in the farm office, they make a better picture than what's going on outside.

Another creep feeder has been ordered, and later this week will be delivered to our chap-who-does-the-welding, for its badger-modifications. He attaches a simple hinged flap with a rolled edge, which drops down to give access to feed during the day, but which can be flipped up to close it off at night.

Another job, but all farm assurance schemes say we must 'prevent the ingress of vermin'.

 I have contacted the manufacturers to suggest a factory  'modification' - with no charge for the idea of course, but throwing the obvious crumb, that a third creep feeder would be most welcome!

In general, farmers have no idea how resourceful badgers can be when their evening meal is at stake. After hoovering up the local earthworms, hedgehogs, frogs, toads and ground nesting birds, cattle feed stores and TMR troughs are a breeze.

They can flatten out to slither under your sheeted gates, climb to 16 feet (or more), and as I said in an earlier post, they've been filmed vaulting into cattle troughs over 4 feet off the ground.

And if all accesses to your buildings are hermetically sealed, and your cattle haven't by that time succumbed to pneumonia, these resourceful creatures have been known to dig a Colditz - type tunnel into farm buildings. Arriving in the middle of earth floored areas through the top of a very large molehill.

I'm told that the walls of the badger pound at VLA Weybridge, designed to keep them in, are reinforced concrete sunk 15 feet in the ground. Not many farm buildings or feed stores have that degree of armour plating.

Mycobacterium bovis, the bacteria that causes TB is a tough cookie; an organism with wearing a wax jacket and having a centre that will withstand practically everything apart from UV rays. 

It loves water, withstands freezing and survives submersion in acid. Boiling for 15 minutes will zap it, but that's not terribly practical in a farm situation. Weather influences its survival when on grassland, and away from the sun's rays, it can survive for months. Underground it's survival extends to years.

The point is that whatever we know from decades of previous research about the survival of this organism, is missing the point. It has no place plastered across my grassland in the first place. And I have no wish to donate the three cheeky youngsters in this week's photo to the maw of Defra's culling machine.