Animal culling is not a topic I find easy to discuss. Researching for this article has been very upsetting, but it’s for that reason that I need to write down my concerns.
In England, it is legal to cull animals which have tested positive for bovine tuberculosis (bTB) in order to curb the spread of the disease. Culling in England hit the news recently because of a controversy surrounding Geronimo the Alpaca. Born in New Zealand, Geronimo tested negative for bTB four times before being imported to the UK by Helen MacDonald. There, he tested positive twice. The British tests for bTB work differently to the tests used in New Zealand, and according to Iain McGill, a vet and TB researcher, Geronimo tested positive only because he had been micro-vaccinated before his tests, causing a high level of antibodies and thus a false-positive result. In spite of this, the British Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs sanctioned Geronimo’s destruction.
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| Geronimo the Alpaca - PA Media, BBC |
Geronimo’s death warrant sparked controversy in the media, but after four years of court battles, protests and petitioning, Geronimo was removed from his home by four vets and at least 10 police officers and euthanised on the 31st of August. He is said to have whimpered, frightened, as he was taken away, without Ms MacDonald or any other companions. Ms MacDonald’s veterinary advisors say that initial findings from Geronimo’s post-mortem show that he did not have the disease (although the government chief veterinary officer, Christine Middlemiss, claims to have found "a number of TB-like lesions").
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| SWNS, BBC |
Christine Middlemiss has since stated that, “No one wants to have to cull
infected animals if it can be avoided, but we need to follow the scientific
evidence and cull animals that have tested positive for bTB to minimise spread
of this insidious disease and ultimately eradicate the biggest threat to animal
health in this country.”
This is a highly controversial argument. In 2014, the government published its new Strategy for achieving officially TB free status by 2038, including culling, badger vaccination and further measures to prevent the spread of bTB. (Culling is also allowed in extreme cases in Wales and Northern Ireland, but Scotland is currently considered officially bTB free.)
Badgers – a protected species - make up a large source of
bTB, and since 2013, 140’000 have been killed. Figures from 2018 also show that 105
camelids, six sheep, 99 goats, eight pigs and 10 deer have been destroyed. In the
past year, 27,000 cattle in England have been slaughtered.
A lot of research has been done on the effectiveness of
badger culls. From the 1990s, it was established that a 70% cull of badgers
could lead to a 16% reduction of bTB over 9 years. It was therefore long
accepted that the ends did not justify the means. However, since a new set of
culls was introduced in 2014, further research has been undertaken.
In 2019, researchers found that the incidence of bTB had
fallen in in two areas where badgers had been culled and slightly increased in
a third area. According to Professor Rosie Woodroffe, “In Gloucestershire, which
appears to show the biggest effect of badger culling, there has been an upswing
in TB in cattle this year which has not been included in this research. So it
is possible that if they were to repeat the same analysis, the benefits for
this year would not look the same as they do in the published study."
Iain McGill also argued that the data published by the government
was already two years out of date, and had it included data from 2018, which saw
a 130% increase in tBT cases in Gloucestershire, it would paint a very
different picture. What’s more, any
success in reducing the incidence of bTB cannot solely be attributed to culls:
we must also take into account the use of other measures introduced in the government's new Strategy.
Moreover, the culling of badgers is undeniably inhumane. Badgers are trapped in cadges and then shot at
dawn, causing unnecessary suffering. In 2019, it was established that up to 23%
of badgers took more than five minutes to die after they were shot, inflicting “immense
pain” on the animals.
The government cannot possibly claim to be acting according to scientific advice, yet they have just approved seven new culling zones in England. This is the same government which is presiding over a new Animal Welfare Bill, which discussed animal welfare in the Queen's Speech this year and which laid out an Action Plan for Animal Welfare including recognising animal sentience in yet another bill.
The killing of Geronimo is illustrative of these contradictions. The government has entirely got its priorities wrong, deploying a disproportionate amount of force to cruelly slaughter an alpaca despite the advice of many independent vets and researchers. That is not what a "global leader" in animal welfare, as the government supposedly aims to be, looks like.
Furthermore, in Wales last year there were calls to review bTB policy amid concern that many healthy animals are being slaughtered. All animals with positive or inconclusive results are killed, resulting in huge losses for farms.
Ultimately, bTB infections are extremely costly to farms - on
average, an infection costs a farm £34k, of which £12k is paid by the farm
and the rest picked up by the government. This disease costs taxpayers more
than £100 million each year. It is therefore in everyone’s interests that bTB is tackled in an effective way, and culls are not the solution.
Culls are an inhumane and painful way of pretending to tackle a disease and should not be allowed to continue.