Badgers' health is given top priority

A NEW private initiative to tackle bovine TB has started in Devon. It is a move away from a widespread badger-cull policy, to one which relies on promoting the existence of healthy wildlife living alongside healthy cattle.

Although this is not a new concept, the approach is. The project involves trained assessors carrying out a wildlife assessment on participating farms within a 10-square-mile area.

It was discussed at a private workshop for farmers and vets at Roadford Lake Conference Centre.

According to Richard Gard of the Institute of Agricultural Medicine and Rehabilitation and a co-founder of the project, this has never been done before in any formal research. Knowing how many badgers there are on the farm, where they are and establishing their health status is essential to combating the disease, he said.

But no-one single farm can deal with this in isolation, he added. Which was why the success of the project relied on farmer co-operation.

The pilot scheme, which started last winter, involves 10 farms over 10 square miles. "Getting farmers to co-operate is not as difficult to achieve as some might think," he said. "At our first meeting, we invited 10 farmers and 14 turned up."

But Richard Gard, a writer and researcher on animal and human health, said the first and most critical point of contact was local vets. He had been working for some time to encourage local practices to become involved since, through on-farm testing, they have the best information regarding the hotspots in their practices and could co-ordinate local areas of assessment, he said.

The group claims to have no political agenda, but North Devon vet Andrew Cobner admitted that "the political game will have to be played at one time or another".

He added: "The Four Counties trial in Ireland took out 90 per cent of the badgers in the trial area. They reduced bovine TB by up to 90 per cent in that area, but the Irish Government decided against a cull because it would be politically unacceptable. We should go to politicians to tell them we don't need to do that. We can reduce TB by taking a targeted approach."

The Healthy Badgers – Healthy Cattle Group is not advocating any illegal activity which is why, in due course, licences for the culling of infected badgers will be applied for.

The group also maintains conversations with Tory MPs about the aims and objectives have been encouraging.

But Mr Cobner warned that even a targeted approach to TB control might take a long time.

"It took Australia 20 years to eradicate the disease, even though they also tackled the reservoir of infection in the wildlife," he said. "Eradication is a long-term programme, but there has to be a holistic approach."

The meeting also heard from the well-known badgers and bovine TB farming expert Bryan Hill, who is a key player in the project.

He said his 30 years of experience examining wildlife, their habitats and territories enabled him to identify the health status of badger setts and predict outbreaks before they happened.

His on-farm assessments identify healthy and unhealthy badger activity and the setts were marked green and red respectively on a map.

The Healthy Badgers – Healthy Cattle project is open to all farmers in Somerset, Devon and Cornwall until April 2010.

This winter the group is working with farmers in 10 sq m areas of six to 10 farms per area. Each area will be co-ordinated by local vets and will probably mean one or two areas per practice.

Since this is a private initiative, there is no public funding, and a wildlife assessment would cost £300 per farm.

The project involves an initial meeting in the area with participating farmers, the local vet and the project team, where practicalities are discussed. Maps showing field boundaries on all the farms are to be made available.

The second phase is the wildlife assessment, which is carried out over several days. And the final phase is a meeting with all participants to review the findings, discuss the TB situation in the area and ways to improve biosecurity.

Next July the Healthy Badgers – Healthy Cattle group intends to hold a workshop to talk about the observations of this winter, and plan a way forward for local TB control.

More information is available from Mr Gard on 01647 24434.