The badger cull – why was there no plan V?

In a rational world, when you set up a pilot to test something, you conduct the pilot and then evaluate its success against pre-agreed criteria.  You then take your time to learn the lessons from the pilot and decide whether you do it again, do it differently or stop completely and try something else.

When it comes to badgers and bovine TB, we don't seem to be operating in a rational world.  Yesterday's reporting of how many badgers have been and still need to be killed and over what time period and whom, demonstrated how murky the pilot has become.

I wish the independent panel well in making sense of the results of the trial.

The key thing to remember is that these pilots were designed to test assumptions that the Government has made about the effectiveness, humaneness and safety of shooting free ranging badgers with a view to rolling out this method of culling across many other areas of the country.  Crucially, it needs to know whether it is possible to kill 70% of the badgers in a target area predominantly through free ranging shoot over a six week period.

One can only conclude from yesterday's reports that that the objectives of the pilot are changing.

I've written previously about the RSPB's position on the badger cull - we are against it.  But the point I want to make is that for the public to have confidence in government-led trials on highly contentious issues, then there needs to be extra vigilance taken to ensure transparency in reporting, monitoring and evaluation of any trials.  I am not convinced that re-negotiating the terms of the trial in public is a healthy thing to do as it breeds suspicion.

Earlier in the week the Guardian carried an article quoting an ex Defra employee who had been drafted in to assist the Somerset cull by increasing trapping activity.  Shooting free ranging badgers had been the preferred method of culling because it was cheaper than cage trapping.  So it would be interesting to know what difference this additional trapping effort has made to the cost of the cull.  

In addition, the latest proposal appears to be to extend the Somerset cull by a further three weeks (from six weeks) to enable the target number of badgers to be shot.   This appears to change the terms of the license that Natural England granted for the culls and change the objectives of the pilot (see section 5.28 of the government's policy on the pilot here).

Shooting less than the target number increases the risk of making the bovine TB situation worse by stirring up the badger population (perturbation).  The reason for limiting the culls to six weeks was because the science behind culling tells us that culling should be simultaneous across the cull zone.  Extending the shooting over a long period is known to increase the risk of perturbation, therefore making the TB situation worse!  Just to be specific about this the advice on the duration of culling came from Defra’s Science Advisory Council and Bovine Science Advisory Body (the Joint Group) and it was that culling should extend to ‘no longer than 4-6 weeks’.  So we do not see that extending the cull to 9 weeks can be based on science - something that the coalition agreement stated as the precondition for any cull.

We shouldn’t forget that there will be farmers just outside the cull zones who will no doubt be worried sick that they will be at increased risk of a devastating TB outbreak in their herd as a result of an ineffective cull. 

The big problem here is that Defra do not appear to have planned an exit strategy for a failing pilot – there is no plan B.  Defra were advised during the consultation on the cull that one key way of reducing the risk of making the situation worse was to vaccinate all of the badgers in a ring around the cull zone, using the injectable badger vaccine that was languishing in their toolbox.  I guess this should have been plan V.  Why they chose not to do so is just one of many unanswered questions on this issue.

Here are some more.

If estimates of badger numbers vary so much from year to year how can a cull ever be accurately managed?

If the weather can have such a significant effect on badger numbers overall does it have a differential effect on those infected with TB?

Why are the badgers being killed as part of the pilots not being tested to assess whether they were carrying TB?

What would be the police costs of extending the cull by a further three weeks and how will this be funded?

What are the crieria for determining whether the cull has been undertaken humanely? 

Will the data from the two pilot projects be published and available for public scrutiny?

As the pilot proceeds, I expect even more questions to emerge.  And here is one for you.

What do you think about the latest debate about the status of the pilot cull?

It would be great to hear your views.