Vermin, Victims and Disease

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ANGELA CASSIDY JÉ

Vermin, Victims and Disease

Preface

He said, Tt wont take too long .... and it'll be fun?!! Professor Lord John Krebs, addressing the ‘Science for Defra: Excellence in the Application of Evidence’ conference, 2017?

There is something sticky about bovine tuberculosis (bTB), especially in Britain. It seems that anyone who tries to understand or unravel the many threads connecting cows, microbes, badgers and people sooner or later finds themselves drawn into the tangle and making it more so. The above statement was made, with deep irony, as eminent ecologist, science policy player and now member of the House of Lords Professor John Krebs recounted the story (to an audience of government scientists) of his own ensnarement by the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF), of the doomed Conservative government under John Major. Krebs was asked to convene an expert group to review the evidence relating to badgers and bTB; today, over twenty years later, he is still involved with the problem, albeit now as a senior politician. Krebs’s comments echoed the account of another eminent scientific Lord, Solly Zuckerman, as he had sought to extricate himself from the bTB snarl, nearly forty years ago: ‘I said yes, because I like Peter [Walker, the Minister of Agriculture at the time] and because the way he explained the whole thing to me all that would be required would be a week’s work: looking at documents and talking to people in his Department.” This ‘week’s work’ occupied most of Zuckerman’s time for several years, as he prepared and published his 1980 report on what was already a notorious science-policy problem. By February 1981, six months after publication, Zuckerman was begging Walker to ‘please, please take over’ the work of vii viii © PREFACE engaging in public debate:* however, he persisted in defending his work and that of government scientists and veterinarians, corresponding on the topic until the end of 1985, shortly after his retirement as President of the Zoological Society of London.* Zuckerman and Krebs are far from alone in their entanglement: as of the end of 2018, there will have been nine expert-led reviews or reports commissioned by the British government on the problem.

In publishing this book, I declare myself similarly ensnared: I have been researching this controversy—between other projects—since 2008. So what is it about bTB? In part, such stickiness is just in the nature of political problems. Badgers and bTB have both been significant in British agricultural, environmental and animal politics for a very, very long time; and have become even more so since they were mobilised into ‘big P’ Politics, as has happened in recent years. However, I think there is more to it than that. There is something almost addictively fascinating about this problem: some intriguing thread or other catches the curious mind, compelling one to follow a trail which winds itself with no regard for the fiercely defended territories of academic disciplines, nor the carefully tended bounds of science, policy, politics and ethics. This is an intensely focused world of controversy which I think also draws people in because it taps into Big Questions, albeit in an odd and characteristically British fashion.‘ These questions include: How do and how should people live alongside other animals? What does it mean to care along the way, and who or what should (or do) we care for? What is the proper relationship between science and policy, and how can we (as a society) make better decisions under uncertainty? Finally, how can we reach better, richer ways of collectively understanding the messy business of infectious disease out ‘in the wild’, beyond relatively controllable spaces like laboratories, clinics, farms and zoos? I first became aware of the controversy as an undergraduate zoologist, and when I migrated across the disciplines to retrain as a postgraduate in the human sciences I kept a weather eye on the problem—it seemed interesting as a biological and clearly social problem. My early research was on public scientific controversies, and badger/bTB was already developing into an intriguing case study, which I was eventually able to turn my work towards. It’s certainly proved to be so—I’ve been incredibly fortunate in gaining research support from two postdoctoral fellowships, making it possible for me to keep chasing these tangled threads long enough to make some sense of them. As a scholar working in the traditions of STS (science and technology studies) and the history of science, technology and medicine, I seek to understand how and why scientists do their research; how

PREFACE ix knowledge is built, communicated, contested, agreed and acted upon across society; and how these processes change over time. I also strive to understand all sides in a controversy and why they know, believe and do the things that they do. However, my own position—as an ex-natural scientist, who remains fascinated by animals of all sorts; as a pragmatic environmentalist; as a non-vegetarian who tries to live well with the non-human world; and as a human being trying to make sense ofa ridiculous case study amid ridiculous political times—will inevitably flavour this analysis.

A NOTE ON ARCHIVES AND SOURCES

Like many historians of the recent past, in this project I have struggled with the challenges of documenting events which are no longer ‘current’ yet have not yet properly been designated as ‘history’. This has meant cobbling together a patchwork of sources, some of which are in conventional archives, but many more of which have been pulled together from libraries, second-hand bookshops, media databases and countless clippings passed to me by friends and colleagues. I am aware of much material which has been unavailable to me for one reason or another. For example, in the National Archives, MAFF Infestation Control Division records on badgers and bTB are extensive, but there is less material from Animal Health or the State Veterinary Service. As far as I can tell, some of this material has not yet been opened for public viewing, but according to some of my interviewees, other records were ‘thrown in the skip? when many of MAFF’s regional offices were closed during the 1990s. The archives of the NFU from 1909 to 1946 are held at the Museum of English Rural Life, but I was unable to access their more recent records. While the RSPCA used to keep internal records, apparently they no longer employ an archivist: similarly the Wildlife Trust’s records are not centrally archived. It is almost certain that there are other sources which will throw new light on what I have just written: in my view this work has just scratched the surface. I look forward to being challenged!

ARCHIVES USED AND REFERENCED IN THIS TEXT

UK National Archives—Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries (and Food): NA MAF UK National Archives—Nature Conservancy Council: NA FT Zuckerman Archive, University of East Anglia: ZUEA

X PREFACE

OTHER ARCHIVES, LIBRARIES AND COLLECTIONS USED DURING THIS RESEARCH

British Library

RCVS Knowledge—Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons Library

London Zoological Society Library

Guardian/Observer, Times, Telegraph, Independent, Mirror and Mail digital archives

Nexis UK print media database

Hansard and House of Commons library

BBC Genome—online archive of BBC Radio Times listings: https:// genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/

INTERVIEWS AND ORAL History MATERIAL

Twenty-one single and group interviews were conducted by the author between 2011 and 2015. Interviewees included: retired MAFF veterinarians, scientists and officers; current Defra veterinarians, scientists and officers; academic scientists; journalists; members of the ISG; and representatives of the NFU, Badger Trust, RSPCA, BVA and Secret World Wildlife Rescue. All the fieldwork was passed through ethical review at the relevant institutions; any quotations used are with the explicit permission of sources.

Caroline Overy and E. M. Tansey, A History of Bovine TB c. 1965-c. 2000: The transcript of a Witness Seminar held by the History of Modern Biomedicine Research Group, Queen Mary University of London, on 13 May 2014 (London: Queen Mary University of London).

British Library Oral History Collection

Somerset Archives—Home in Frome Community Oral Histories

Mass MEDIA SOURCES

Unless otherwise stated, mass media references can be sourced from the following digital archives:

BBC Genome—online archive of British Broadcasting Corporation Radio Times magazine listings

Gale NewsVault: The Independent digital archive

Gale NewsVault: Daily Mail historical archive

Gale NewsVault: The Telegraph historical archive

Gale NewsVault: The Times digital archive

ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Guardian and The Observer

PREFACE Xi

UKPressOnline: Daily Mirror archive Nexis-UK news media database, published by LexisNexis Legal and Professional

Exeter, UK Angela Cassidy l. John Krebs, J. Howard Dalton Lecture, ‘Foot and mouth, flooding and farmers’, Science for Defra: Excellence in the Application of Evidence conference, 29-30 March 2017, Defra/Royal Society, https://royalsociety. org/science-events-and-lectures/2017/03/defra-conference/.

2. S. Zuckerman, ‘Letter to Sir Robert Armstrong’, 12 January 1981, ZUEA S2 PUB 425.

3. S. Zuckerman, ‘Letter to Peter Walker MP’, 13 February 1981, ZUEA S2 PUB 425.

4. Zuckerman was the first Chief Scientist to the British Government—one amongst a string of varied and remarkable scientific and political achievements.

5. A recent example: the famously colourful actor Brian Blessed (who has campaigned against badger culling for some years) lost his cool at a Tudorthemed farming dinner. Following an altercation, Blessed bellowed to the gathering, ‘You’re all cxxxs, I hope you all die of TB!’ A. Parker and Neal Baker, ‘BRIAN CUSSED—EXCLUSIVE—Actor bellows C-word at farmers over badger cull’, The Sun, 18 May 2018, p. 11.

6. This programme of work has been supported by postdoctoral fellowships from the UKRC Rural Economy and Land Use Programme (RES-229-27- 0007-A; 2008-11) and Wellcome Trust (101540/A/13/Z; 2013-17). Some sections of this text have been developed from previously published material. Parts of sections 1.1, 2.1 and 2.3 derive from: Angela Cassidy, Rachel Mason Dentinger, Kathryn Schoefert and Abigail Woods, ‘Animal Roles and Traces in the History of Medicine, c.1880-1980’, BJHS Themes 2 (January 2017): 11-33. Sections 6.2 and 6.3 derive from: Angela Cassidy, ‘““Big Science” in the Field: Experimenting with Badgers and Bovine TB, 1995-2015’, History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 37(3) (2015): 305- 25. Both these articles were originally published under a CC-BY licence. Section 1.4 further develops ideas presented in Angela Cassidy, ‘Vermin, Victims and Disease: UK Framings of Badgers in and beyond the Bovine TB Controversy’, Sociologia Ruralis 52(2) (2012): 192-204; and Angela Cassidy, ‘Badger-Human Conflict: An Overlooked Historical Context for Bovine TB Debates in the UR’, in Understanding Conflicts about Wildlife: A Biosocial Approach, edited by Catherine M. Hill, Amanda D. Webber and Nancy E. C. Priston (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2017).

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Many more thanks are due than I can sensibly manage here. This book is the outcome of research conducted over the course of two fellowships— from the UK Research Councils’ Rural Economy and Land Use Programme, and from the Wellcome Trust. Wellcome have also supported the Open Access publication of this volume, making this work available beyond a select academic audience, a possibility that I deeply appreciate.® My thanks to the people who taught me all about animals, evolution and environments: David Attenborough (via the BBC), and later Arthur Goldsmith, Innes Cuthill and Norman Freeman of the University of Bristol. To those who taught me how to think about how science is built by people, as well as how to think like a historian: my mentors and colleagues at the SSU in Edinburgh; Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, University of Manchester (CHSTM) in Manchester; and Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, King’s College London (CHoSTM) at King’s College London. Those who helped me develop this project intellectually, navigate it through stormy employment waters, and bring it safely to fruition: Mick Worboys, Jacquie Burgess and of course Abigail Woods and the One Medicine? project team (Rachel Mason Dentinger, Michael Bresalier and Katherine Schoefert). For generous collaborative data sharing: Tilli Tansey and the Wellcome Witnesses to Modern Biomedicine project; Peter Atkins; and John Gallagher. My thanks to new colleagues at the University of Exeter, who have welcomed and encouraged me as I have written this book (particularly Michael Winter, Robbie McDonald and Claire Saunders). There are the scientists, veterinarians and others with specialist xiii xiv © ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS knowledge of badgers and bovine TB who have taken the time to advise and/or be interviewed by me: without your time, patience and commitment to this topic it would have been impossible for me to understand it. My thanks to those photographers and organisations who have waived copyright fees for the use of their wonderful images. Huge thanks to Paul Brassley, Keith Howe and the other brave souls who read and commented on the manuscript, including the helpful comments of an anonymous peer reviewer. Any persisting errors are most definitely my own. Finally, my deepest gratitude is to my partner James, and my family—Cat, Sam and Toby—who have given me the support, space and time to write this thing out, keep us all in one piece, and most importantly help me think, think and think again.

Part I Contexts Badgers, Cows, TB, Science and Policy: A Primer for the Perplexed

Knowing Animal Health in the Environment

Histories of Tuberculosis in Humans and Other Animals The Great British Badger Debate

Vermin, Victims and Disease: An Overview

Animal Anxieties in the Early 1970s

Becoming Tuberculous: Understanding and Acting on Bovine TB in Wildlife

Following Badgers, Tracing Bacteria

A Change of Direction?

Looking, Seeing, Knowing and Acting xvi CONTENTS

Part II Refran ning Bovine TB (c. 1960-1995) 31 3.2

Animal Health and Cultures of Caring for Livestock MAFF’s Bovine Tuberculosis in Badgers’ Research Programme

‘An Objective Look’

Research Expansion, Policy Tinkering

Managing M. bovis Through Animal Health Care

Ecological Science and the State

MAFF’s Ecologists: Pest (Infestation) Control Laboratories Defining and Redefining the Badger

Managing Badgers through Scientific Care

Part III Contesting Ani: British Conservation and Animal Protection

Following, Understanding and Protecting Badgers

In Sickness and in Health? Caring for Tuberculous Badgers Care, Expertise and Gender in Badger Protection

Cultures of Caring for and with Animals al Health (1996-Present)

6.1 6.2 6.3

6.4

Experts, Evidence and Policy

‘A Proper Experimental Assessment’

“Cutting the Cake? of Science and Policy: The Aftermath of the RBCT

Epistemic Rivalries in bTB Policy

CONTENTS

7 Building a Public Controversy 7.1 UK Newspaper Coverage: Some Key Indicators 7.2 Agricultural Malaise or Environmental Risk? Media Framings of Badger/bTB 7.3 Constituting and Contesting Badgers, OTB and Culling 7.4 A Passing Storm?

8 The Badgers Have Moved the Goalposts! 8.1 TB in Humans, Other Animals and Environments 8.2 Wildlife Conflict and the Great British Badger Debate 8.3 Care as a Driver of Controversy 8.4 Expectations 8.5 Some Questions and Suggestions

A Note on Archives and Sources Archival Sources Used and Directly Referenced in This Volume

Other Archives, Libraries and Collections That Have Been Used in This Research

Interviews and Oral History Material Bibliography

Index

FA

241 243

248 253 263

275 276 279 280 282 285

299 301 303

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Angela Cassidy is a lecturer in the Department of Sociology, Philosophy and Anthropology, University of Exeter, and a member of CRPR (the Centre for Rural Policy Research). She works across the history and social studies of science, with research interests in public controversies; science and policy; interdisciplinarity; and human—animal-environment relations.

ABBREVIATIONS

Archives Used and Referenced in the Text

NA FT

UK National Archives—Nature Conservancy Council

NA MAF UK National Archives—Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries (and Food)

ZUEA Zuckerman Archive, University of East Anglia Other Abbreviations

ADAS Agricultural Development and Advisory Service APHA Animal and Plant Health Agency

ARC Agricultural Research Council

BSE Bovine spongiform encephalopathy

bTB Bovine Tuberculosis

BVA British Veterinary Association

CDE Chemical Defence Establishment

CSA Chief Scientific Advisor

CVL Central Veterinary Laboratory

CVO Chief Veterinary Officer

Defra UK Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs EEC European Economic Community

FAO Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations FERA Food and Environment Research Agency

FMD Foot and Mouth Disease

ICD Infestation Control Division

ICL Infestation Control Laboratory

IEP Independent Expert Panel

ISG Independent Scientific Group

LACS League Against Cruel Sports

MAFF Ministry for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food xxi xxii ABBREVIATIONS

MTBC Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex

NCC Nature Conservancy Council

NE Natural England

NEBG National Federation of Badger Groups NFU National Farmers Union

NIAB National Institution of Agricultural Botany PICL Pest Infestation Control Laboratories

PIL Pest Infestation Laboratory

RBCT Randomised Badger Culling Trial RSPB Royal Society for the Protection of Birds RSPCA Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals

RTA Road Traffic Accident

STS Science and Technology Studies SVS State Veterinary Service

TB Tuberculosis

TBAG TB Advisory Group UFAW Universities Federation for Animal Welfare

VLA Veterinary Laboratories Agency WHO World Health Organization WI Women’s Institute

See also pages 119-23 of the 2018 Godfray review for an extensive and helpful guide to the acronyms of bovine TB and British animal health policy.

LIST OF FIGURES

Timeline of the badger/bTB controversy. Animal health events are shown below the line; political, legal and environmental events above. See https://time.graphics/line/83803 for an annotated online version

Long-term indicators of UK bTB incidence [N.B. note multiple data sources]. Data sourced with thanks from Atkins (A History of Uncertainty, 301)

‘Of the BADGER, otherwise called a Brocke, a Gray or a Bauson’ (Topsell et al., The History of Four-footed Beasts and Serpents, 1658)

Map initially prepared by Roger Muirhead in September 1971, held in MAFF FT 41/88. Note strikethrough of original ‘X marks the spot’ notation and replacement with multiple outbreaks

‘The badger brigade and their gassing machine near Dursley’— photograph by Jane Bown _https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Jane_Bown. Source: ‘New battle over the “bad” badgers— George Brock’, Observer, 12 Dec. 1976, 3. Reproduced by permission of Guardian News and Media Ltd

Cartoon from Private Eye, January 1982. Zuckerman is depicted on the left, having ‘gassed’ a badger sett, while the Minister (Peter Walker) appears on the right, popping up for air (artist credit: Willie Rushton). Reproduced by kind permission of Private Eye magazine/The Estate of Willie Rushton

PICL public information leaflet. Source: Pest Infestation Control Laboratories (1975)

Woodchester Mansion, viewed from the side of the valley (photo—author’s own)

xxiv LIST OF FIGURES

Mapping badger communities. Source: MAFF (1977, appendix 7) Typical Soper illustration of badgers in action. Source: Soper,

Eileen Soper’s Book of Badgers (51). © ‘Courtesy of Chris Beetles -o on behai - the AD epresentat of F the UK en A Trusts ost > 1990. Photographs supplied by Dr Gordon Mhie reproduced with permission of the Wildlife Trusts Anti-badger gassing activists in the Cotswolds, 1976. Photograph by Jane Bown for The Observer, reproduced by permission of Guardian News and Media Ltd Translating experimental design into lived landscape. Source: Bourne et al., ‘Bovine TB: Second Report of the ] f Scientific Group on Cattle TB’ (27). © Crown copy ight, 1999 UK national newspaper coverage about badgers and bTB, 1950- 2000 UK national newspaper coverage about badgers and bTB, 1995- 2017 UK national newspaper coverage of badger/bTB, by newspaper title and decade A 1 demonstration, London, 1 June 2013. Credit: amer ghazzal/Alamy Live News. Reproduced by permission of Alamy Stock Photos David Cameron and the politics of distraction (Cartoon by Christian Adams, Daily Telegraph, 21 July 2011, 20. © Telegraph Media Group Limited 2011)

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CHAPTER 1 1.1 BADGERS, Cows, TB, SCIENCE AND POLICY: A PRIMER FOR THE PERPLEXED

For over a generation, the vexed question of whether to cull wild badgers (Meles meles: a nocturnal, burrowing relative of weasels and otters) to control the spread of bovine tuberculosis (bTB) in British cattle herds has plagued politicians. Questions of what is known, who knows, who cares, who to trust and what should be done about connections between cows, badgers and the bacterium M. bovis have been the source of scientific, veterinary, policy and increasingly vociferous public debate. Over this time, the controversy has spread—from a local problem involving a handful of people, to a national debate attracting extensive media coverage, costing the country millions of pounds and occupying the time, care and attention of many thousands of ordinary people. Alongside the disease, controversy has spread from its original highly localised context, and has become more visible and significant, creating in recent years a deeply polarised dynamic— tightly focused on badger culling—between increasingly angry opposed sides. Culling advocates argue that tuberculous badgers form a ‘reservoir’ of bTB infection, which must be removed to prevent bTB from re-infecting cattle and spreading the disease further. They emphasise why bTB must be controlled in the first place: it is a zoonotic disease, meaning that people can also catch it. Until well into the twentieth century M. bovis was a significant cause of human TB, particularly in children who drank infected milk: while this public health risk is now well controlled in the

© The Author(s) 2019 3 A. Cassidy, Vermin, Victims and Disease, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19186-3_1

UK, it remains a problem elsewhere.! Opponents of culling argue that bTB is more likely to be spread between the cows themselves, particularly when stressed by modern farming techniques and as cattle are increasingly moved around the country. They also contend that badger culling disrupts the complex social groupings of these wild animals, causing the survivors to move around more, disrupting ecosystems and spreading bTB along the way. They argue that policy should instead focus on alternative solutions which may be more sustainable, such as vaccination (of cattle and badgers) and stricter regulatory controls on farming. Others have deep moral objections to killing badgers, wildlife or any animals under any circumstances.

It is estimated that bTB currently costs the British Government around £100 million each year; since culling was resumed in 2010, these have been worsened by policing costs, the political fallout of the controversy, and the emotional and psychological impacts of the disease on farmers and other affected parties.” There are important continuities between DTB and previous British animal health crises, most notably the 2001 foot and mouth disease (FMD) epidemic, and policy responses to the emergence of BSE. All three episodes have involved publicly contested scientific uncertainties; political disagreements over how government should act; conflicts between farmers, policymakers and publics, and the death of many millions of animals.* However, unlike its notorious predecessors, bTB is curiously invisible: sick badgers and cows are nowhere to be seen, while there are only about forty cases of bTB infecting humans each year, mostly in people working directly with animals.* Bovine TB is rarely depicted by the media as a public health issue. Instead, it is framed as two mutually exclusive stories: either a chronic agricultural problem affecting already embattled farmers and a long-suffering government; or an environmental risk and additional threat to fragile wildlife and ecosystems. In Britain at least, the zoonotic risks of bTB are controlled by a regulatory and healthcare system that tests cattle for disease, mostly prevents people from eating diseased meat, pasteurises most milk, and treats the rare human cases. People and animals elsewhere in the world, in countries with weaker, less well-resourced health systems are not so fortunate: however, public debates in the UK rarely acknowledge the global aspects of bTB. Paradoxically, the twenty-first-century controversy over badgers and bTB in Britain may be the consequence of a successful (but largely invisible) regulatory system, which displaces risks from medicine and biology into the more contestable domains of economic, political and moral risk.*

Tuberculosis (TB) is an old, familiar disease problem, also characterised by deep scientific uncertainties and problems still defying resolution in the face of twenty-first-century biomedicine. The clinical disease in humans and other animals is caused by microorganisms known as mycobacteria—a group which also includes the bacterium causing leprosy, and many nonpathogenic environmental bacteria. Those causing TB are referred to by biologists as the M. tuberculosis complex (MTBC): they mostly include microbes which infect a single species, such as M. tuberculosis (humans) or M. suricattae (meerkats). The most unusual member of this group is M. bovis, which infects a much wider range of mammal hosts, including humans, cattle, badgers, deer, llamas, wild boar and domestic cats and dogs. M. bovis is the causative agent of the disease known as bovine TB, increasingly being renamed ‘zoonotic TB’.° Mycobacteria grow slowly and have thick, acid-resistant cell walls: this makes them notoriously difficult to culture and develop reliable laboratory tests for. This slowness and toughness makes TB a very counter-intuitive disease: a long time can pass between infection and the appearance of clinical symptoms, which appear and disappear as the bacteria are active or go dormant, forming cysts (tubercles) in multiple organs of the body (not just the lungs). Unlike, say, influenza, it is not immediately obvious that someone has contracted TB (and it may not be so for many years); testing and vaccination regimes are not fully reliable and use technologies over a century old: while treatments exist, they are neither cheap nor easy, and drug-resistant strains of TB are proliferating. Bovine TB is even more counter-intuitive: it expresses itself in different kinds of animals very differently, it is difficult to directly trace transmission routes, even harder to test for and is resistant to many standard antibiotic treatments.” For these reasons, veterinary disease control regimes tend to use surveillance, movement restriction and culling of sick individuals to stop the spread of infection, rarely turning to human public health tools such as vaccination and treatment. This rarely discussed contrast between human and animal public health lies at the core of today’s controversy, as does the ‘fundamental ontological uncertainty’ (the difficulties of fully knowing) what M. dovisis up to as it passes between humans, livestock and wild animals.®

Over the near half-century that badgers and bovine TB (badger/bTB) have been debated in Britain, the issue has passed across several generations of scientists, veterinarians, farmers, policymakers and politicians. So far, it has been the responsibility of nine prime ministers, fifteen government administrations and twenty-one Cabinet Ministers. As of 2018, there will have been nine expert led reviews of the situation.’ Badger/bTB has provided scientists with steadily increasing opportunities for investigation and advancement, with publications on the topic going from only one or two a year during the 1970s to between thirty and forty a year in the past decade. While several studies and accounts from participants have discussed the recent history of badger/bTB in the UK, these have generally focused upon a single aspect of the issue, such as farming, animal health policy, animal protection or conservation." In this book, I will bring these varying accounts together to analyse how the worlds of farming, animal health, field biology, natural history and animal advocacy have interacted to create the controversy we see today. The timeline in Fig. 1.1 is therefore designed to orient the reader in these intersecting stories, and how they have contributed to the ongoing development of the public controversy.

Bovine TB was first found in wild badgers in 1971, at a time when regulatory systems had brought levels of disease in humans and cattle to historic lows. Following a frantic period of investigation and legislative change, MAFF introduced a full-scale badger culling policy by 1975: however, it was rapidly mired in controversy. Following a review conducted in 1980 by Lord Solly Zuckerman, scientific investigations confirmed the reports of badger advocates that ‘gassing’ (pumping sodium cyanide powder into the animals’ underground setts) was not working quickly enough to be ‘humane’, resulting in the withdrawal of the technique. Between 1982 and 1995, a range of alternative culling policies were tried; over the same period animal advocates won further legal protections for badgers. In 1996, senior scientist Prof. John Krebs was commissioned by government to review the situation once again. He concluded that while MAFP’s existing research suggested that there was a link between bTB in badgers and cattle, the evidence was ‘circumstantial’, and that a ‘proper experiment’ was needed to directly test the effects of badger culling on bTB in cattle.’ The incoming Labour government was convinced, suspending culling and commissioning the largest field experiment ever conducted in the UK, the Randomised Badger Culling Trial (RBCT) to do exactly that. After nearly ten years and approximately £49 million, the Independent Scientific Group (ISG) conducting the work concluded that—contrary to widespread expectations—culling had the potential to make things worse; that it ‘cannot make a meaningful contribution to bTB control in cattle’.'* This inflamed the controversy, with other scientists, farmers and veterinarians contesting their findings in

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(Oursse6) 38 eee i H kannsa (Asosincwes) utig emisa an, policy, Parliament and the wider public sphere. Following a change of government, the new minister reversed MAFF’s (by then Defra) long-standing commitment to return to culling, taking the ISG’s advice and making the (short-lived) decision to not cull, investing in vaccination as an alternative policy solution.

In 2010, the incoming Coalition government declared its intention to return to badger culling, starting with two pilot culls using a new ‘free shooting’ technique—carried out by private consortia under licence, and paid for by industry.!® As the policy was implemented, the badger/bTB debate moved from a specialist policy concern, mostly of interest to farmers, veterinarians, conservationists and animal advocates, into the political and media mainstream. The new policy was met by legal challenges and widespread protests (including marches, social media campaigning and local action directly disrupting culls), attracting more media coverage in more prominent places than ever before. Despite the concerns of another group of government-commissioned scientists about their ‘effectiveness, safety and humaneness’, and widespread criticism from scientists including Krebs, the culls continued. Since 2015, following the election of a Conservative majority government, Defra has started a ‘rollout’ of the policy, issuing licences in seven new areas. This was followed by further licences in 2017, and the 2018 announcement of licencing across the country, including in areas with low bTB rates in cattle.’° This geographical extension has been accompanied by a gradual relaxation of the conditions attached to licencing culls—originally shaped by the ISG’s findings.'”

To move towards a deeper understanding of the controversy, we need to think about the development of badger/bTB debates in a broader context. To start with, how do these events relate to what the disease itself was doing? Figure 1.2 conveys a broad picture of how the incidence of bTB in British cattle herds has changed since the 1950s, when mandatory disease control measures were originally introduced.'? By the late 1960s, this regime appeared to have been a resounding success, with rates of bTB in cattle dropping to unprecedentedly low levels: when badgers were first connected with bTB in the early 1970s these rates had levelled out, but there was little to hint at the problems to come. It is also worth noting the timing of the resurgence of bTB: the lowest point of incidence was in the early 1980s. While bTB was returning during the 1990s, it was not until after the FMD outbreak of 2001 that today’s epidemic became fully apparent. From a socio-historical point of view, the lack of any clear correlation between disease incidence and episodes of public controversy (see Chap. 7,