The UK’s top environmental scientist strongly defended government plans to cull badgers in the hope of controlling cattle disease at a meeting in London yesterday.
In front of a largely hostile crowd, Bob Watson, chief scientist of the Department for Food, Environment and Rural Affairs (Defra), insisted the culling plans were ‘science-led’. But he faced strong opposition from some scientists, including the god-father of research on badgers and their link to tuberculosis in cattle: John Bourne.
The government was criticised by a number of experts earlier this year when it unveiled its plans to allow badgers to be trapped and shot, or simply shot. It hopes the moves will help arrest the spread of bovine tuberculosis but critics say the plans could actually make things worse (see Nature’s recent editorial on this topic).
“The science tells you an effective cull can reduce bovine TB,” Watson told a meeting at the Zoological Society of London. The government proposals – currently out for consultation – were “absolutely science led” he said.
But others at the meeting were less convinced.
Rosie Woodroffe, a researcher at ZSL and scientist on the UK’s huge Randomised Badger Culling Trial (RBCT), warned that a poorly conducted or patchy cull could make things worse. “This is not a situation where you just achieve nothing,” she warned. “We potentially spend money, kill badgers and increase TB in cattle.”
Although rock star and badger campaigner Brian May stood up to denounce the plans as “completely morally unacceptable”, most of the debate was over how a cull would be implemented.
The UK’s RBCT found that within an area of highly organised and tightly controlled culling levels of bovine TB dropped. However, the incidence of the disease rose in a band of land immediately outside the culling area, due to increased movements of badgers disrupted by the culling.
All four speakers at the meeting – Watson, Woodroffe, Imperial College scientist and RBCT member Christl Donnelly, and head of the Royal Veterinary College Quintin McKellar – largely agreed that this means any cull has to meet very specific criteria in order to stand any chance of being effective. It has to be large enough that the benefits within the culled area outweigh the increase in bovine TB in the neighbouring zone. It also has to be coordinated, efficient and sustained over a reasonable period of time.
Whether the government proposals are robust enough in these areas was hotly debated. One bone of contention is over the proposal to allow shooting of free running badgers, possibly by farmers. This was not tested at all in the RBCT, which used specially trained operatives in a trap and shoot approach.
“There is no evidence at all that the shooting approach has any scientific basis,” said Bourne, in an intervention from the meeting floor. “It isn’t there. Suggesting farmers do it really is a by-guess-and-by-god approach.”
Bourne, the retired former chairman of the Independent Scientific Group on Cattle TB which ran the RBCT, said the implementation proposals were a “step away from science”.
Watson insisted that free shooting was an option and part of the consultation. Comments on its applicability would be taken into account, he said.
McKellar added that although there is no evidence on free shooting of badgers there is experience of free shooting of other animals – such as foxes – in the UK.
The consultation on the proposals is open until 8 December. Debate will doubtless continue long after this point.
Image: detail from photo by ARendle via Flickr under Creative Commons.