Tomorrow, our MPs will have the opportunity to vote in an Opposition Day debate on government plans for a badger cull. It is almost unheard of for the government to lose an opposition day motion, the last one being on settlement rights for veteran Gurkhas in 2009 – the first time since 1978. I have it on good authority that our parliamentary party has made up its mind that badgers are to be culled in the UK.
I would like to make a few things clear before I get into the meat of this post. Firstly, I’m not an ‘animal lover’ and I’ve never seen a badger. I rarely go for country walks and generally I prefer a city break when I go away on holiday. I have never campaigned for animal rights. I am, however, a scientist and a fan of evidenced-based policy. It is from this angle that I have followed the debate over the last five or six years on the question of how best to tackle bovine TB (bTB). To cull or not to cull.
The debate was first brought to my attention when a similar question was being asked in Wales. My local councillor in my home town of Swansea, Peter Black – also one of our Liberal Democrat Welsh Assembly Members – is a prolific (and very good) blogger. The question of whether or not culling badgers should be used in Wales to tackle bTB was a hot topic on Peter’s blog, with one of his frustrations related to both farmers and politicians refusing to look at the evidence when calling for a cull. This interested me due to my keenness on evidenced based policy and my role on the executive committee of ALDES, the Association of Lib Dem Engineers and Scientists. The Welsh Assembly, by the way, opted NOT to cull but to concentrate more on cattle control measures and to hold back for the development of a TB vaccine for badgers which is currently in development.
Following the announcement that the government was to consult on (and pursue) a badger cull in England, there has been a very public debate about the proposals with a lot of talk about the science behind culling and, with the greatest emphasis on how culling is a bad idea. The pro-cull lobby, however, also provides scientific evidence to support its position. Both sides accuse the other of cherry picking evidence. I decided to try and take an unbiased look at the evidence on both sides of the argument to see if I could figure out on which side of the debate I would land, reporting my findings back to the ALDES committee.
Following my reading, I wrote an article for the ALDES website which I will recommend you read here. To summarise the key points of my article, badgers do increase the spread of bTB and culling badgers does reduce bTB rates – by a relatively small amount – under certain strict geographical conditions. However, these conditions are almost impossible to replicate across the country and, due to perturbation effects, culling will increase rates of bTB if used in most areas. In conclusion, culling of badgers doesn’t make sense as a general policy and any results of the badger cull about to start in some English counties cannot be replicated in the rest of the country. The trial as proposed is unscientific, unlike previous experiments in the UK which showed culling worsens bTB rate.
I joined the party just before the last general election, largely due to some of the great things Evan Harris said about the Liberal Democrats and evidence based policy. In fact, our official party position on the cull is to use an evidence based approach. The position, however, seems to ignore the large body of evidence in place, justifying the cull on the basis of collecting further evidence.
I hope that at least some of our parliamentarians vote against a cull tomorrow. I don’t hold much hope that the cull will be prevented by this motion, however, and I am disappointed that once again our parliamentary party has failed to properly assess the evidence and vote accordingly.
On that note, I would like to offer the services of ALDES to our parliamentarians and politicians at all levels in the party. ALDES is an amazing resource, drawing on a massive wealth of scientific and engineering expertise from the party membership. There are experts in the association from almost every discipline – from medicine and biological science, through to energy, natural resources and even space! Do get in touch via our website if you have any questions and we can put you in touch with a relevant expert.
* Dr Craig Brown is a member of the executive committee of ALDES, the Association of Liberal Democrat Engineers and Scientists and a Lib Dem activist in Haringey, North London.
