September 2009 Archives

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.