I've been at the CLA Game Fair today - always an interesting event!
I met lots of old friends and some people I wouldn't exactly class as friends but are quite interesting.
We had a small reception on our stand which was well attended - including two Defra Ministers, Mr Paice and Mr Benyon. Our Chief Executive, Mike Clarke spoke about Futurescapes and the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust's relatively new Chairman, Ian Coghill, made an excellent speech which majored on collaboration. Ian would, himself, be a very easy person with whom to collaborate.
I was on a panel which was supposed to discuss whether the government's priority should be fox-hunting, badger culling or bird conservation!It was a discussion about badgers!
Because the Minister Mr Paice was on the panel we learned quite a lot - I think I helped to tease out the information. The government will consult in the autumn on the way forward. This will include a review of the science and an approach which will, it seems, include some culling, some vaccination and some controls on cattle movements. The costs of any culling will largely be met by the farming industry.
I think the RSPB can welcome this approach. This issue is very contentious - that much was clear in the room and each time I mention badgers on this blog. To set out the thinking and the science must be a good idea. I am sure that Mr Paice is keen to see some badger culling go ahead, but at least the government is sticking to its election manifesto pledge to be led by science (it seems) and at least there will be a consultation before a decision. We await the consultation with interest.
A love of the natural world demonstrates that a person is a cultured inhabitant of planet Earth.
It seems to me that a fraction of all the resources and money that has been thrown at this to prove the position one way or another and in the meantime the culling of cattle and compensation paid could have been more usefully employed in developing an effective vaccine for btb. This is taken from Defra's web site:
“The best prospect for control of TB in the British herd is to develop a cattle vaccine” – Krebs Report (1997).
Developing a TB vaccine for badgers and cattle is a long-term goal and a substantial part of the Defra research programme focuses on this. Total investment (since 1998) in vaccine development reached more than £17.8 million by the end of March 2008. Over £5.5 million was invested in cattle and badger vaccine research in 2007/2008. Real progress has been made. Testing candidate vaccines in naturally infected cattle and badgers, and developing novel vaccine delivery systems, is underway and work on developing potential vaccination policy options has begun.
£5.5 million?!! - a few clicks on Google reveals that we, the tax payer, paid £108million in 2008/2009 to 'address' bovine TB in Great Britain!!
Personally I'm getting tired of the debates on what infects what animal (and the increasingly aggressive stance taken by some interest groups). I'm certainly against the wholesale sterilizing of our countryside (as I suspect that once badgers have been wiped out it'll be Deer that will be blamed next..) based on inconclusive research. See the following website which makes equally interesting reading ;
www.badgersandtb.com/index.htm