On July 5th and with the Brexit vote in mind, the Badger Trust sent out a press release calling on Defra to halt the badger culls. As the Badger Trust’s CEO Dominic Dyer said:
“Defra is already reeling from a brutal round of budget cuts and does not have the staff capacity to cope with rearranging subsidies to farmers under the Common Agricultural Policy, changing food labelling and safety regulations, free movement of labour and disease control policy, to mention just a few. Every key aspect of Defra’s work will now have to be reviewed and significantly altered to cope with this workload and we cannot see how such a marginal and ineffective policy like the badger cull can survive this process.”
Dyer should know – he used to work for Defra.
And what makes the badger culling even more pointless is that:
“Defra has already stated that they will never be able to tell if culling has impacted on the levels of TB in cattle and, given the £25m they have spent so far on this policy, we cannot see a rational justification for them continuing with it.”
Why can’t they prove culling badgers will/should/may help lower the levels of TB in cattle?
Some years ago a study into bovine TB – which included the role badgers might play – was carried out. It was called the Randomised Badger Culling Trial (RBCT) even though half the time and money went on studying the problem in the cattle.
Over several years nearly 11,000 badgers were culled. The conclusion of the scientists was that:
- culling could result in a 16 percent reduction in the increase; not the total amount of TB in cattle, but the annual increase in infection within the area where badgers were culled.
- however – it could also cause an increase in TB in surrounding areas, therefore
- “…badger culling cannot meaningfully contribute to the future control of cattle TB inBritain.”
- And bovine TB was best controlled “through cattle-based measures”
The first badger culls in Somerset and Gloucestershire, unwillingly funded by the taxpayer, were ‘pilot’ culls that were meant to run for four years, after which Defra could hopefully judge whether they had any impact on bovine TB. The regulations under which they were run were (supposedly) based on the process put together for the RBCT.
The word ‘pilot’ was scrapped after the first year. They became simply ‘badger control’ programmes. The initial regulations have been changed, dropped or scaled right down, and more culling areas are – possibly – being rolled out across the country. As all the parameters have been changed it is now impossible to tell what, if any, genuine impact culling badgers might have on TB in cattle.
If Defra cannot prove that culling badgers will help farmers beat bTB, then what is the point?
55 percent of theUK’s income from farming comes from the EU via the Common Agricultural Policy support. Would any post-Brexit government be able to replace this? Would they even be willing to?
Defra is already drastically cutting farm inspections in the hope of saving some money.
To make matters even worse, we then learn that Defra (for which read theUK taxpayers) will be paying retrospective EU fines for some years after we leave the EU, whenever that is. That is because Defra, year after year and via the Rural Payments Agency, made such a mess of paying farmers the CAP subsidies that were due, causing real financial problems for many farmers.
So far fines amounting to around £660 million have been paid, and there are more to come. And they will have to be paid, regardless of whether we leave the EU or not. Farmers should remember that those fines have to come from the Defra budget, which will already be straining to cover all the other items in the farming budget.
Westminster has a cavalier approach to all things concerning the environment and ecology. And environmental damage, particularly where the soil is concerned, impacts on food production.
Back in 2001, at the height of the foot and mouth disease crisis, there was a television interview with an ‘advisor’ to the government. When faced with the possibility that British farming might be destroyed by the way FMD was being handled (and at that time many suffering farmers felt that the aim was to put them out of business), he casually replied, “That’s okay. We can import all of our food.”
No. it’s not okay. Depending on what terms we leave the EU, large scale importation of food might not be an option. With the ongoing global financial turmoil and the pound losing its value, the prices of imported goods are set to rise while the value of exports fall. And while farmers grow feed crops like maize, we still import a vast amount of animal feed, another cost that will hit farmers, on top of all their other worries.
Bovine TB is, for England at least, a problem; killing badgers won’t solve it.
It is onlyEnglandthat is culling badgers. Scotlandis officially TB free, with very few herd breakdowns. InWalesno badger culling is done, but strict testing, bio-security and cattle movement controls have produced a marked drop in slaughter rates and herd breakdowns. Northern Irelandalso does not cull badgers.
Over and above the CAP subsidies, the EU currently gives the UK £23 million a year to tackle bovine TB in cattle. They do not allow any of this money to be used for culling badgers, hence the £25 million of our money that Defra has spent on the culls. What the EU money pays for includes testing of herds, compensation for farmers and, one hopes, ongoing research into and trials on vaccine for cattle.
Landowners and farmers are now taking on much of the cost of the culls apart from the policing, which over the last three years has cost us £6.5 million.
Financing the badger culls
Any area that applies for a licence to cull badgers has to set up a ‘contracting company’ with a board and members. The company is in charge of the shooters (who must hold appropriate gun licences) and trappers, all of whom have to be trained (training and licensing costs are among those for which Defra is ultimately responsible).
The company also has to demonstrate that, through its members and participating landowners, it has the finance to cover all four years of the cull. Farmers have to pay up front to become members, and must financially commit to the cull for the four-year period.
Due to all the expensive machinery now required for modern farming, most farms run large overdrafts. Will they now be looking at their post-Brexit overdrafts and wondering if they should pull out of the culls?
There are of course the rich landowners. Some of them have been eager for their land to be part of culling areas and willing to make the financial commitment. In their terms the money needed might seem fairly minimal, but the Brexit vote has seen the investments of the rich take a hammering. No one yet knows what will happen to trade and investment, and culling badgers might become an unnecessary distraction.
The effect of the Brexit vote on farming
According to West Dorset MP Oliver Letwin who was, until he was sacked, in charge of putting together a huge negotiating team, there are over 40 years of trade and other agreements to unpick and rewrite in a way that is acceptable to the EU, while still demanding that we have it all when we leave. Our political grandees suffer from an enormous sense of ‘entitlement’.
Given the government’s arrogant attitude towards the EU and the reaction that is having in much ofEurope, it is likely that what theUKends up with will not be favourable to farmers, some of whom do well from trading with the EU. Certainly, where Scottish farmers are concerned, over 70 percent of their business is exporting to the EU.
Initially, many farmers were in favour of leaving the EU, having been persuaded by the Farming Minister George Eustice’s optimistic line. He even claimed the farm animals would vote for Brexit. The NFU, particularly in Scotland, was not so sure. The NFU Chair Meurig Raymond expressed doubts about what would happen to farming, food prices and agricultural exports. After the vote to leave, farmers are really waking up to how it might affect them. Like the rest of government, Defra had no ‘plan B’ for what it would do if Brexit won.
Radio 4’s daily Farming Today programme has featured a lot of worried farmers – and there are some who will just physically leave. John Shropshire runs G’s, one of the UK’s largest vegetable growers, and has farms not just here but in Spain, Poland and Senegal. Much of his business relies on access to the European Single Market. When Farming Today asked what he would do if that access became difficult, he said he would move all his operations outside theUK.
Farmers are beginning to regret voting to leave the EU. The promises that politicians made may not be, and in fact are unlikely to be fulfilled. And the costs keep rising. The Farmers Weekly reported on the new insurance regulations that were going to increase the burden on farmers. While it said a lot about how much more responsible farmers will have to be in drawing up their insurance contracts, it did not mention that it will inevitably turn out to be more expensive.
With such an uncertain economic future, farmers committing part of their shrinking budgets on killing wildlife really is a distraction. We need farmers; they grow our food. But they are also in charge of much of our highly valued countryside. They should be properly paid to look after our wildlife, not kill it. In counties like Dorset, a healthy and bio-diverse ecology is a draw for visitors. Farmers can help our tourist industry. Sadly, culling badgers is damaging it.
And we taxpayers should be encouraging Defra to stop wasting money (and attracting fines) and start really helping farmers to implement those ‘cattle-based measures’ that will control the TB in cattle. With Brexit staring us in the face, there is no better moment to call a halt to the culls and to start genuinely helping the farmers.
All in all, it might seem just possible that the badger culls could be a victim of Brexit, and the badgers might return to being the fully protected wildlife they are meant to be. But before you get too hopeful, consider this:
At a meeting with some of his constituents Oliver Letwin was asked whether, considering how much theUKhas benefited from the EU environmental and wildlife protection laws, the government would consider putting all that protective legislation into our own domestic law. He assured them that of course it would all be part of our law when we finally left the EU.
“But,” he added in his cheery manner, “that doesn’t mean we can’t dismantle it if we want to.”
Lesley Docksey ©01/08/16
(A shorter version of this article was published by The Ecologist)
