The following is the first ever mention of biosecurity (or bio-security) in a UK newspaper. It appeared in the Scotsman on July 1st 1996 and was written by Fred Pearce.
The aliens have landed
Fred Pearce
THEY call them genetic stowaways and biological aliens. You probably have some in your garden. Scotland certainly has some of the most fabulous collections in the world in its great west coast temperate and sub-tropical gardens, at Inverewe, Lochalsh and elsewhere - alien species from New Zealand, China, the Himalayas and the Americas, lovingly collected by generations of botanists.
Amid all the talk of a crisis for the planet's biodiversity, some countries, Scotland included, "probably have far more species now than ever before," Jeffrey McNeely of the World Conservation Union told a conference on alien species today.
But are they friend or foe, these biological interlopers? Should we embrace their bright colours and strange ways, or fear them? After extolling the virtues of the worldwide trade in ornamental plants in increasing local biological diversity, McNeely went on to warn the meeting, at Trondheim in Norway, that "the spread of alien species" is also "a threat to global biodiversity." In biology today, insularity and fear of the unknown is taking hold. "Most alien species turn out to be pests," said another speaker.
The downside to introduced biological diversity lies in the risk that aliens can pose to local species, espe-cially the rare species and "endemics" that are found nowhere else on earth. A simple British example is the red squirrel. The introduction of the grey squirrel increased British biodiversity, but it is now driving the red squirrel north and is one day likely to run it off the islands altogether. Scotland cannot hold out forever.
There are hundreds of similar examples of aliens driving out the indigenous. Of plants, animals, insects and microbes breaking out from one continent, or even a small island, and conquering new territories, causing genetic rape and pillage as they go. Whether carried deliberately by humans - as with ornaments or new crops, for instance - or hitchhiking aboard ships and planes; as parasites on other species or swimming up newly dug canals, the aliens are on the march, often with catastrophic results.
In the past two years the pink mealybug, a beast never before seen in the western hemisphere, has been destroying vegetation and crops in the Caribbean, starting in Grenada.
Some say it arrived in a diplomatic bag from a Far East nation, where it has happily existed for millennia without mishap. But in the Caribbean, where the pink mealybug has no predators, it has run wild, eating teak trees and hibiscus and stripping cocoa plantations.
British biologists this year sent for a Asian wasp to try to control the invader.
Peter Moyle of the University of California at Davis calls this "the Frankenstein effect" - the unpredictable and potentially devastating impact of apparently benign or invisible invaders. And aliens don't come much more devastating than Mnemiopsis leidyi, a jellyfish they now call "the blob that ate the Black Sea." It reached the sea in 1981 as a stowaway in a ship's ballast water from America, where it had never caused anyone any harm. In the Black Sea, it encountered no predators but plenty of food.
It munched its way through the eggs and larvae of numerous Black Sea fish, causing a 90 per cent drop in the sea's fish catches within six years.
Sometimes the invasion is a deliberate act of man. The jury is still out on one of the greatest alien species experiments: the deliberate introduction in the Fifties of the Nile perch into east Africa's Lake Victoria, the world's second largest lake. It has not served biodiversity too well. Before the Nile perch was introduced, the lake had more than 300 fish species known as haplchromines, which are found nowhere else on earth. Today "some 200 are feared to have become extinct", Richard Ogulu-Ohwayo of Uganda's National Agricultural Research Organisation told the meeting.
The haplchromines once ate the lake's algae. Now the lake is filling with rotting algae, which is consuming its oxygen. Ecologists are up in arms, but the 30 million people who rely on the lake for their fish are happy. For now at least, catches are high and the Nile perch is the best catch of them all.
One of the biggest accidental introductions of alien fish followed the opening of the Suez canal linking the Red Sea and Mediterranean in 1869.
Nearly 300 species have moved from the Indian Ocean into the Mediterranean, according to Charles Bou-douresque of the University of the Mediterranean in Marseilles.
And more come every year, though curiously few species have gone in the opposite direction. "Off the Israeli coast," he says, "migrant fish now constitute a third of trawl catches."
One species that probably did not arrive via the Suez canal is a sea grass called Caulerpa taxifolia.
Nobody is admitting how it got from its Indian Ocean home to the Riviera, where its dense green mats just below low-water mark began to displace native sea grasses from the mid-Eighties. But it first appeared just outside the giant aquarium once run by Jacques Cousteau in Monaco.
Out of the way islands often suffer the worst from species invasions.
Hawaii takes in more than 20 new insect species alone every year -roughly a million times the natural inva-sion rate for these remote Pacific islands. "Half of these alien invertebrates are known pests," says Alan Holt of the Nature Conservancy of Hawaii, and they are threatening the plethora of endemic Hawaiian species. Invaders so far held at bay by strict quarantine laws include poisonous snakes and biting insects such as midges and mosquitoes - but for how much longer? Island outposts of the British empire suffered especially, as sailors brought new animals along for food.
Goats ate the forests of St Helena, while cats ate the birds.
And ships' rats have done the same from the Caribbean to the South Pacific. It may have been hunters that saw off Mauritius's most famous lost species, the flightless dodo bird. But in this "ecological disaster zone", says Wendy Strahm from the World Conservation Union, there are more alien plant species growing today than native species.
Even the biggest islands suffer.
After tens of millions of years of biological isolation, the landscape of Australia has been "transformed over the last 200 years" by new species, says Roger Pech, an Australian government biologist.
Rabbits, foxes and the house mouse from Europe have led the way. In New Zealand, according to Michael Clout of the University of Auckland, the most important issue in conservation "is the management of invasive species" such as the rat. A highlight of the country's legislative programme in 1993 was the passage of the Biosecurity Act to help keep out alien species.
It may be too late, as the globalisation of world trade and the exponential growth of air travel brings more and more species across the world every day. But more countries seem to be trying to raise the biological drawbridge. Alien species are no longer welcome.
Thursday 22 November 2012
Saturday 3 November 2012
Friday 26 October 2012
Saturday 20 October 2012
Delayed? U-Turn? Or Failure?
Something seems to have happened to the badger cull. It should have started by now, but this week it seemed to stall. There were suggestions it wasnt going to go ahead: a u-turn was in the pipeline, so to speak. Whatever has happened - and maybe it is just a delay - it can hardly be called a u-turn, even if the cull doesnt go ahead.
When Jim Paice introduced the policy last year, he made it pretty clear that he was putting the ball in farmers' court. If they didnt want to do it, they didnt have to: it was entirely up to them.
Some farmers may argue that the conditions associated with the cull made it pretty hard for them to want it in the first place. Whatever, if the cull doesnt go ahead, it wont be down to a U-turn, it will be down to a much broader failure in TB policy strategy.
There are many reasons why farmers were lumbered with the costs of a badger cull, but primarily it was down to Defra not having any money, combined with a longer standing objective of cost and responsibility sharing in animal health. Since FMD, governments of differing colours have recoiled at the idea of paying out large sums of money to cover an outbreak of animal disease. The move is to make farmers pay more of those costs.
The trouble is, for TB at least, the way it has been managed has been a bit odd. TB, according to the people in charge, is a national disease. It therefore requires a national strategy. Indeed, whilst its true that other countries have not eradicated TB without also addressing the disease in wildlife, it is also true that those countries TB strategies were highly coordinated at a national level, and extremely controlling. The idea that farmers should be allowed randomly to contribute to a national agenda was and still is seen as counterproductive.
Take New Zealand. Farmers and people living in the country had always done a bit of possum hunting before the possum was identified as a vector. In some cases, like on the West Coast, farmers did pool resources to create localised possum control programmes. This was good in that it got farmers involved in the TB scheme - they had "ownership" to use the jargon. But it was also a bit random: the schemes were always subject to the whims of individual farmers whose commitment might vary one year to the next.
That was no good for disease control reasoned officials in NZ. What was good was a national level programme in which everyone was involved, whether they liked it or not. The outcome was a levy which all farmers paid whether they had TB or not. This ensured that disease control operations could go ahead without relying on farmers in whatever locations were selected for culling. Without this collective spirit existing at a national level, then TB would not be at the levels it is today in NZ.
The story is slightly different in Australia as the eradication programme was introduced at different times in different states. But even here there was no question of opting in or out: tough measures were taken. In both cases, TB eradication was strongly linked to clear national level objectives, and to the health of the nation as a whole.
Is there a national vision for TB control? The way that wildlife controls have been handled up til now would suggest not. Based on what has happened in other countries, this doesnt appear to be the best strategy available.
If culling is to play a role in TB eradication, it would be better if it was controlled nationally, in which all farmers contribute to the costs. If not, it risks the policy failure that may (or may not) be about to happen. This could be achieved easily through a national levy, or more radically, letting the Government assume costs for wildlife control, and farmers the costs of TB testing where the potential to involve farmers in the governance of disease is greater, and where there are also potentially more efficiency savings to be made.
When Jim Paice introduced the policy last year, he made it pretty clear that he was putting the ball in farmers' court. If they didnt want to do it, they didnt have to: it was entirely up to them.
Some farmers may argue that the conditions associated with the cull made it pretty hard for them to want it in the first place. Whatever, if the cull doesnt go ahead, it wont be down to a U-turn, it will be down to a much broader failure in TB policy strategy.
There are many reasons why farmers were lumbered with the costs of a badger cull, but primarily it was down to Defra not having any money, combined with a longer standing objective of cost and responsibility sharing in animal health. Since FMD, governments of differing colours have recoiled at the idea of paying out large sums of money to cover an outbreak of animal disease. The move is to make farmers pay more of those costs.
The trouble is, for TB at least, the way it has been managed has been a bit odd. TB, according to the people in charge, is a national disease. It therefore requires a national strategy. Indeed, whilst its true that other countries have not eradicated TB without also addressing the disease in wildlife, it is also true that those countries TB strategies were highly coordinated at a national level, and extremely controlling. The idea that farmers should be allowed randomly to contribute to a national agenda was and still is seen as counterproductive.
Take New Zealand. Farmers and people living in the country had always done a bit of possum hunting before the possum was identified as a vector. In some cases, like on the West Coast, farmers did pool resources to create localised possum control programmes. This was good in that it got farmers involved in the TB scheme - they had "ownership" to use the jargon. But it was also a bit random: the schemes were always subject to the whims of individual farmers whose commitment might vary one year to the next.
That was no good for disease control reasoned officials in NZ. What was good was a national level programme in which everyone was involved, whether they liked it or not. The outcome was a levy which all farmers paid whether they had TB or not. This ensured that disease control operations could go ahead without relying on farmers in whatever locations were selected for culling. Without this collective spirit existing at a national level, then TB would not be at the levels it is today in NZ.
The story is slightly different in Australia as the eradication programme was introduced at different times in different states. But even here there was no question of opting in or out: tough measures were taken. In both cases, TB eradication was strongly linked to clear national level objectives, and to the health of the nation as a whole.
Is there a national vision for TB control? The way that wildlife controls have been handled up til now would suggest not. Based on what has happened in other countries, this doesnt appear to be the best strategy available.
If culling is to play a role in TB eradication, it would be better if it was controlled nationally, in which all farmers contribute to the costs. If not, it risks the policy failure that may (or may not) be about to happen. This could be achieved easily through a national levy, or more radically, letting the Government assume costs for wildlife control, and farmers the costs of TB testing where the potential to involve farmers in the governance of disease is greater, and where there are also potentially more efficiency savings to be made.
Tuesday 16 October 2012
Hansard Badger cull debate
The House of Commons, October 2012: An imagined badger cull debate.
Rt Hon David Heath MP: “Controlling animal disease is not easy. My Rt Hon Friend may suggest it is an exact science. I beg to differ. And it is for those reasons that I am recommending a badger cull.
As scientists have agreed, a badger cull could reduce incidence of bovine TB by around 28% under the same conditions used by previous scientific badger culling trials. We are not using those same conditions. You might say that invalidates our approach. You might say that makes me “anti-science”. I say not. I say it makes our approach no more or less scientific than the Rt Hon Lady's vaccination plan - a plan with no scientific results to say what effect it might have.
Let me outline the reasons behind our decision as follows.
First, to the matter of science. We are not following the culling protocol laid down by the ISG for good reasons. It is simply too expensive. No-one can afford it. Just like vaccination, we do not know if what we are proposing will work. It might. It might not. We could commission a series of new trials to scientifically prove whether it has made a difference or not. To be clear, that is not the purpose of these trials. That would take many years, and the time for action is now.
Instead, we’ve tried to be innovative: to push the boundaries of knowledge, to push the rules. We think what we’ve come up with in that respect should work. But if it does not, we will have one indicator of success or failure: farmers. As my predecessor pointed out, it will be up to farmers to decide whether they want to do this. It will be up to them to pay for it. And if they don’t think its working, then they wont bother. They say you learn by failing: well this is their chance.
Second, Mr Speaker, the aim of our decision is to develop ownership. A clear conclusion of the ISG’s research was that without ownership TB eradication is dead in the water. Experience from other countries show us that without farmer involvement, disease control programmes do not work. You may suggest offering a carrot in this way is unacceptable: but how else do you think we will be able to implement further regulations on cattle movements, risk based trading, and use of more powerful diagnostics that will identify even more infected cattle? As research has shown, without farmer’s believing they have a chance, none of these other measures will have much impact. We have no intention of regulating farmers out of business. It is only by working with them farmers that we will get anywhere with this disease. The means justify the ends
Without this, I would very much like to hear from my honourable friends how they would propose incentivizing positive biosecurity behavious amongst farmers. Are they proposing more regulation? How much will that cost? What will you do about non-compliance? How successful will you be?
No, Mr Speaker. The history of animal disease has always been is one of seeking this balance – a trade off. It is the very reason why farmers are compensated in animal disease outbreaks. It is nothing new. It is the history of animal disease. And it is the way to get things done.
Lastly Mr Speaker, I want to draw attention to the idea that better biosecurity offers a realistic solution to this crisis. As I have indicated, I will be bringing forward new cattle testing procedures and movement restrictions in the coming months. These will make a difference. But suggestions that removing reactors from farms a day or so earlier will make a difference are far from the mark. It is rather like putting on a seatbelt after you have crashed your car. If we are to debate biosecurity, lets stick to the key issues, not be distracted by the kinds of meaningless activities that are only done to make people think they are actually doing something worthwhile.
Mr Speaker, science says a badger cull may work. It might not. This badger cull will allow us to introduce further regulations to help curb bovine TB. It is for this reason alone that a badger cull is meaningful.
Mr Speaker: Order! Order! I call the Rt Hon member for Wakefield...
Rt Hon David Heath MP: “Controlling animal disease is not easy. My Rt Hon Friend may suggest it is an exact science. I beg to differ. And it is for those reasons that I am recommending a badger cull.
As scientists have agreed, a badger cull could reduce incidence of bovine TB by around 28% under the same conditions used by previous scientific badger culling trials. We are not using those same conditions. You might say that invalidates our approach. You might say that makes me “anti-science”. I say not. I say it makes our approach no more or less scientific than the Rt Hon Lady's vaccination plan - a plan with no scientific results to say what effect it might have.
Let me outline the reasons behind our decision as follows.
First, to the matter of science. We are not following the culling protocol laid down by the ISG for good reasons. It is simply too expensive. No-one can afford it. Just like vaccination, we do not know if what we are proposing will work. It might. It might not. We could commission a series of new trials to scientifically prove whether it has made a difference or not. To be clear, that is not the purpose of these trials. That would take many years, and the time for action is now.
Instead, we’ve tried to be innovative: to push the boundaries of knowledge, to push the rules. We think what we’ve come up with in that respect should work. But if it does not, we will have one indicator of success or failure: farmers. As my predecessor pointed out, it will be up to farmers to decide whether they want to do this. It will be up to them to pay for it. And if they don’t think its working, then they wont bother. They say you learn by failing: well this is their chance.
Second, Mr Speaker, the aim of our decision is to develop ownership. A clear conclusion of the ISG’s research was that without ownership TB eradication is dead in the water. Experience from other countries show us that without farmer involvement, disease control programmes do not work. You may suggest offering a carrot in this way is unacceptable: but how else do you think we will be able to implement further regulations on cattle movements, risk based trading, and use of more powerful diagnostics that will identify even more infected cattle? As research has shown, without farmer’s believing they have a chance, none of these other measures will have much impact. We have no intention of regulating farmers out of business. It is only by working with them farmers that we will get anywhere with this disease. The means justify the ends
Without this, I would very much like to hear from my honourable friends how they would propose incentivizing positive biosecurity behavious amongst farmers. Are they proposing more regulation? How much will that cost? What will you do about non-compliance? How successful will you be?
No, Mr Speaker. The history of animal disease has always been is one of seeking this balance – a trade off. It is the very reason why farmers are compensated in animal disease outbreaks. It is nothing new. It is the history of animal disease. And it is the way to get things done.
Lastly Mr Speaker, I want to draw attention to the idea that better biosecurity offers a realistic solution to this crisis. As I have indicated, I will be bringing forward new cattle testing procedures and movement restrictions in the coming months. These will make a difference. But suggestions that removing reactors from farms a day or so earlier will make a difference are far from the mark. It is rather like putting on a seatbelt after you have crashed your car. If we are to debate biosecurity, lets stick to the key issues, not be distracted by the kinds of meaningless activities that are only done to make people think they are actually doing something worthwhile.
Mr Speaker, science says a badger cull may work. It might not. This badger cull will allow us to introduce further regulations to help curb bovine TB. It is for this reason alone that a badger cull is meaningful.
Mr Speaker: Order! Order! I call the Rt Hon member for Wakefield...
Wednesday 26 September 2012
Saturday 22 September 2012
Thursday 21 June 2012
RCTs: the gold standard you say?
Today, the Cabinet Office published a paper on using Randomised Controlled Trials (RCT) for public policy evaluation. The report has been championed by Ben Goldacre, he of Bad Science fame. Its a good report, worth reading (download it here). Except there's one problem: it says nothing of the people involved in RCTs, how they experience them and what that means for their acceptance of any results. This is important - let me explain using the example of the Randomised Badger Culling Trial (RBCT).
A while back I took part in an online discussion for Farmers' Guardian on bovine TB. You can read the transcript and summaries here. I happened to mention that the RBCT should be seen as the "gold standard" in terms of evidence. This was because academics tend to see RCTs as the best kind of evidence possible if you want to prove that something works or not.
I should have known better! If you read the transcripts you can sense Alistair Driver's surprise at what I said, and some of the comments on the debate reflect the same feelings - that the RBCT was not *good* science, never mind the best.
Ive written about this elsewhere, but part of the belief that the RBCT was not good science stems from a lack of trust in those scientists running the trial. There are two things Id point to here. The first is that farmers' own experiences of the trial did not live up to what constituted *good* science. For a start, farmers in some of the proactive culling areas described a war like scenario between protestors and the police which affected the efficiency of the cull. Others described being perplexed at some of the methodologies being used to assess the impacts of the cull on wildlife. There are also some other reasons why farmers rejected the evidence (and other solutions such as vaccination) because of their views and beliefs in nature and ecology.
Secondly, farmers really were not part of the RBCT at all. OK they filled in some 2 hour long questionnaires, and they had to agree for their land to be used - but how involved were they in the experiment? What communication - even - did they receive? A couple of farmers meetings and some newsletters? In fact, the final open meeting of the ISG was held in London - not an area that has much bovine TB - but a location that symbolised the physical and cultural distance between government (science) and the farming industry. Not much attention paid to developing trust there: really, holding it in Exeter would have been better.
Whether or not some of the problems with the cull made any difference to the results (it was supposed to be a real world field trial after all and protests etc are things that happen in the real world) doesnt really matter. The response by the scientists was to say that it didnt, using various calculations and data - the typical deficit response. But by then it was too late and missed the point: farmers - the end beneficiaries of the RCT - had become alienated from it because of the way the RBCT never sought to engage them in it. As I said in the online discussion, for too long farmers have had science done to them, they are not part of the doing of science. And that is the problem.
In a completely different field, Steven Epstein tells a fascinating story of AIDS activists and their gradual incorporation into the running and design of clinical trials for AIDS drugs (paper here but paywall, his book is here). Part of this was down to those activists being able to show how the basic tenets of RCTs (such as randomisation, the use of placeboes etc) were being undermined by the trials' participants. But it also took a lot of scientific learning by these activists to be accepted by the scientific elite. In the end, not only did those scientists running the drugs trials come to value the activists input, but the nature of the trials and the position of the public within them also changed.
So, if we're going to think about doing more RCTs, lets also think about the experiences of being part of one.
Wednesday 20 June 2012
Badger culls and the law: some thoughts on the judicial review
The Badger Trust's judicial review of Defra's badger cull plans starts next week (June 25th) and I was asked recently whether there was any judicial review of the original scientific experiment ran by the ISG - after all both the RBCT and the current trial involve killing badgers and are trials (of sorts).
Even though both sides of the badger cull debate now use the ISGs evidence to support their views, when the RBCT was being set up, both sides were pretty much against it. In this paper (apologies, paywall - contact me for a copy) I reviewed the arguments that were being put forward by the National Federation of Badger Groups (now the Badger Trust), the NFU and MAFF. Basically, whilst the NFU were pretty much suggesting that the answer was known already and the RBCT was an academic exercise, the NFBG were arguing that the relationship between cattle and badgers was much more complex and that different kinds of research needed to be undertaken. The NFBG also questioned the statistical design ot the RBCT and arguing that the experiment would not answer some of the research questions that were originally set.
All of these debates took place in the agricultural select committee who paid great attention to TB between 1997-2008. As an aside, its very much a shame that they have not continued to do so. So much for parliamentary scrutiny.
Although the NFBG were against the RBCT, there was no judicial review. Maybe this was because the RBCT was being run as an experimental field trial and that there was no reason to question the powers that MAFF had to do that.
However, the NFBG did refer the RBCT to the Bern Convention - under which badgers are protected by European law. You can read the NFBGs letter to the Convention here and an appendix here
It meant that those involved in designing the experiment had to make the case to the standing committee of the Convention that there would be no local extinction or other breaches.
You can read Maff's response to the Bern Convention here
There is also a commentary on what happened in the ISG's final report (para 2.27) see here
As the ISG's report points out:
In December 1998, while the ISG was still planning the trial procedures, the Standing Committee of the Bern Convention recommended that the trial be postponed pending an opinion on whether it was in breach of the Convention...The ISG assisted and supported MAFF in making the case that, in the light of the severity of the cattle TB problem in the country and the explicitly scientific motivation underlying the planned culling activities, the trial did not breach either the letter or the spirit of the Convention. Twelve months after it had raised the issue, the Standing Committee agreed with this argument and closed its file on the matter, MAFF agreeing to provide it with regular updates both on the RBCT and on the wider TB control programmeI think its fair to say that those involved saw the challenge as something they could have done without. As somebody close to the experiment once told me: it nearly scuppered the whole thing. In the context of the legal challenge to the current badger cull policy, it will probably be more interesting to see the result of the Humane Society International's complaint to the Bern Convention, rather than the Badger Trust's judicial review. This is partly because of the nature of the current policy and what it could mean for the population of badgers in the UK. Firstly, the new policy is being framed as a "trial". Now, there are a number of issues relating to the difference between trials, experiments and evidence. Our research is showing that the loose way in which those terms are being used is confusing and misleading for many people involved. Its not just a problem in relation to culling, but vaccination too. But essentially, Defra's argument has been that badger cull methodologies are interchangeable, so this is a trial to test the efficiency of shooting badgers, not its impact. In one sense, Defra could defend the badger cull trials simply as trials - just as the RBCT was. There is no policy yet because there are no results yet: until those results are in, all arguments are hypothetical. Indeed, for Defra ministers to prejudge the results might be better grounds for appeal. Secondly, if the trial leads to new cull areas being proposed then this would fall into the area of the Bern Convention. One document from Natural England showed that licences for badger culls had been submitted for pretty much the whole of South West England. When the ISG were working on the RBCT they told in no uncertain terms that that prospect was never going to be a realistic policy - not just because it was seen as socially unacceptable, but because of the Bern Convention. It will be interesting to see what happens at the judicial review. Although the review is framed around 3 issues raised by the Badger Trust, it will be interesting to see whether these matters of the future are matters for consideration, or whether the judges take the view that until the trial is over, there is nothing to rule on. It might be that whatever the result, the legal fight has only just begun.
Thursday 17 May 2012
The social impacts of TB
You may have seen this film about a TB breakdown and the effects TB has on one farmer.
Since Foot and Mouth Disease in 2001 there have been a number of studies of the emotional effects of animal disease upon farmers. Perhaps the most famous is by Maggie Mort and her colleagues at Lancaster University. You can read the paper which was published in the British Medical Journal here - http://www.bmj.com/content/331/7527/1234
There have been other studies looking at farmers' mental health associated with TB breakdowns. Defra looked at the long term impacts of TB breakdowns in this research - http://randd.defra.gov.uk/Default.aspx?Menu=Menu&Module=More&Location=None&Completed=0&ProjectID=15201. The results showed that many farmers experiencing TB breakdowns had much worse levels of mental health than those whose cattle did not have the disease. In particular, dairy farmers that had suffered a large TB breakdown had the lowest levels of mental health, as opposed to beef farmers. In some cases, beef farmers whose cattle had TB actually had better mental health than those that did not.
There are many other studies of farmers and their well-being. But what the video and the Defra research suggests is that different farmers are affected in different ways. Partly this is down to the kinds of relationships that farmers have with their animals. In this paper - http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0743016704000506 - Rhoda Wilkie describes four different degrees of attachment to cattle that farmers have. These may range from "attached attachment" where there are close relationships between animals and farmers, where individuals are recognised and given almost human qualities - often associated with hobby farming; through to "detatched detachment" whereby animals are not seen as sentient creatures and as pure commodities - perhaps the archetypal criticism levelled by some at "commercial" farmers. This may sound familiar, but what Wilkie shows is that these ethical relationships are not always stereotypical; the kinds of relationships between animal and farmer may vary at different times of the production process. As Wilkie points out "any animal, however, that deviates from the routine process of production can stand out from the herd, become individually recognised, have more meaning to the worker, and thus become more than ‘just an animal’".
In Chris Chapman's film, Dai Bevan falls into Wilkie's "concerned attachment" classification. Clearly there are longstanding relationships here going back many years. Does this mean that other commercial farmers do not share his grief over the loss of cattle from TB? There is no doubt that many farmers have found ways of learning to live with the disease - and there is no doubt that economically some types of farm business are disproportionately affected by TB restrictions - the kind shown in the film for example. It would be wrong to make generalisations about the emotional impact of animal disease - and the data on farmer wellbeing backs this up.
But as Wilkie's work and more recently Maggie Mort's work shows, these relationships vary over time. Particularly at the time of death, farmers are concerned to give their animals a "proper" death, as a means of respecting them. In Maggie Mort's work, Foot and Mouth created the wrong kind of death - it was death in the wrong of place. This disruption to the normal routines of farming death was part of what caused emotional distress to farmers. Some people like to wonder aloud why farmers get upset about animal disease "because their animals are going to die anyway". But understanding these different relationships between farmer and cattle, and the different times and places in which they occur, helps explain that conundrum.
Art and science are similar in many respects. Like all good science, Chris Chapman's film raises questions rather than provides answers. It points neither this way or that: the direction belongs to whoever is doing the interpretation. The crucial question is what is it that should be done about the social impacts of animal disease? Some of the previous research on the social impacts of FMD called for better mental health care of farmers and vets during times of crisis. But what form should this take and how could it be implemented? Other people may interpret the film as providing justification for particular policy options. Certainly, many of the comments around the film on twitter and youtube take the view that "something must be done", and that something is a badger cull. These people may also see the film performing the role of educating the public about the suffering that farmers experience in the hope that it persuades them to change their mind about a badger cull. But as Ive explained before, those beliefs are deeply engrained (and both sides of the debate), and are not easily changed by the communication of scientific knowledge: but it is interesting to think whether art rather than science achieves that. Finally, in raising questions about what to do about TB, does the film also raise questions about why it is a problem at all? Is it regulation rather than the disease that is causing the problem here? Does the film remind us that problems exist because people have decided that that they should be problems? Do the original reasons for making something a problem still apply?
Perhaps the biggest question that Chris's film should make us think about are what are the terms in which we intervene in animal disease, and in nature? Maybe the answer to that question would be a better guide to managing diseaes.
Since Foot and Mouth Disease in 2001 there have been a number of studies of the emotional effects of animal disease upon farmers. Perhaps the most famous is by Maggie Mort and her colleagues at Lancaster University. You can read the paper which was published in the British Medical Journal here - http://www.bmj.com/content/331/7527/1234
There have been other studies looking at farmers' mental health associated with TB breakdowns. Defra looked at the long term impacts of TB breakdowns in this research - http://randd.defra.gov.uk/Default.aspx?Menu=Menu&Module=More&Location=None&Completed=0&ProjectID=15201. The results showed that many farmers experiencing TB breakdowns had much worse levels of mental health than those whose cattle did not have the disease. In particular, dairy farmers that had suffered a large TB breakdown had the lowest levels of mental health, as opposed to beef farmers. In some cases, beef farmers whose cattle had TB actually had better mental health than those that did not.
There are many other studies of farmers and their well-being. But what the video and the Defra research suggests is that different farmers are affected in different ways. Partly this is down to the kinds of relationships that farmers have with their animals. In this paper - http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0743016704000506 - Rhoda Wilkie describes four different degrees of attachment to cattle that farmers have. These may range from "attached attachment" where there are close relationships between animals and farmers, where individuals are recognised and given almost human qualities - often associated with hobby farming; through to "detatched detachment" whereby animals are not seen as sentient creatures and as pure commodities - perhaps the archetypal criticism levelled by some at "commercial" farmers. This may sound familiar, but what Wilkie shows is that these ethical relationships are not always stereotypical; the kinds of relationships between animal and farmer may vary at different times of the production process. As Wilkie points out "any animal, however, that deviates from the routine process of production can stand out from the herd, become individually recognised, have more meaning to the worker, and thus become more than ‘just an animal’".
In Chris Chapman's film, Dai Bevan falls into Wilkie's "concerned attachment" classification. Clearly there are longstanding relationships here going back many years. Does this mean that other commercial farmers do not share his grief over the loss of cattle from TB? There is no doubt that many farmers have found ways of learning to live with the disease - and there is no doubt that economically some types of farm business are disproportionately affected by TB restrictions - the kind shown in the film for example. It would be wrong to make generalisations about the emotional impact of animal disease - and the data on farmer wellbeing backs this up.
But as Wilkie's work and more recently Maggie Mort's work shows, these relationships vary over time. Particularly at the time of death, farmers are concerned to give their animals a "proper" death, as a means of respecting them. In Maggie Mort's work, Foot and Mouth created the wrong kind of death - it was death in the wrong of place. This disruption to the normal routines of farming death was part of what caused emotional distress to farmers. Some people like to wonder aloud why farmers get upset about animal disease "because their animals are going to die anyway". But understanding these different relationships between farmer and cattle, and the different times and places in which they occur, helps explain that conundrum.
Art and science are similar in many respects. Like all good science, Chris Chapman's film raises questions rather than provides answers. It points neither this way or that: the direction belongs to whoever is doing the interpretation. The crucial question is what is it that should be done about the social impacts of animal disease? Some of the previous research on the social impacts of FMD called for better mental health care of farmers and vets during times of crisis. But what form should this take and how could it be implemented? Other people may interpret the film as providing justification for particular policy options. Certainly, many of the comments around the film on twitter and youtube take the view that "something must be done", and that something is a badger cull. These people may also see the film performing the role of educating the public about the suffering that farmers experience in the hope that it persuades them to change their mind about a badger cull. But as Ive explained before, those beliefs are deeply engrained (and both sides of the debate), and are not easily changed by the communication of scientific knowledge: but it is interesting to think whether art rather than science achieves that. Finally, in raising questions about what to do about TB, does the film also raise questions about why it is a problem at all? Is it regulation rather than the disease that is causing the problem here? Does the film remind us that problems exist because people have decided that that they should be problems? Do the original reasons for making something a problem still apply?
Perhaps the biggest question that Chris's film should make us think about are what are the terms in which we intervene in animal disease, and in nature? Maybe the answer to that question would be a better guide to managing diseaes.
Thursday 10 May 2012
No country has eradicated TB without...
You'll hear this line often: "No country has successfully tackled bovine Tuberculosis without tackling the disease in the wildlife".
I could link to thousands of times this gets used by Defra's communications people and in speeches by Jim Paice.
The fact is that bTB has only ever been eradicated in modern times from one country - Australia. You can read about what it took to eradicate in this book - Beating the Odds in A Big Country. Perhaps the title of the book shows how difficult it was - and not simply about shooting some wild buffalo. The other country that is close to eradication is of course New Zealand.
Is it wise to generalise from two cases? Is it wise to generalise from two cases with completely different attitudes to wildlife and reasons for eradication than ourselves? If so, maybe there are some other catchy lines that Defra should be trotting out as regularly as the "no eradication without wildlife controls" line. Here are some:
- bTB has only been successfully eradicated in countries where the wildlife reservoir is (universally) perceived as a pest
- bTB has only been successfully eradicated when greater regulations have been placed upon farmers
- bTB has only been successfully eradicated when systems of risk based trading / incentives for responsible trading have been introduced
- bTB has only been successfully eradicated when the agricultural industry have paid for it
- bTB has not been successfully eradicated without farmers going out of business because of regulatory controls
- bTB has only been successfully eradicated when the farming industry are part of the governance of bTB
- bTB has not been successfully eradicated without spending a lot of money, not reducing the amount spent
- bTB has only been successfully eradicated when all stakeholders are in agreement
- bTB has only been successfully eradicated when there has been a clear and coherent plan in place
- bTB has only been successfully eradicated when politicians have been sidelined
I could probably think up some more, but you get the message. Maybe you could tweet me your own to @garethenticott
I could link to thousands of times this gets used by Defra's communications people and in speeches by Jim Paice.
The fact is that bTB has only ever been eradicated in modern times from one country - Australia. You can read about what it took to eradicate in this book - Beating the Odds in A Big Country. Perhaps the title of the book shows how difficult it was - and not simply about shooting some wild buffalo. The other country that is close to eradication is of course New Zealand.
Is it wise to generalise from two cases? Is it wise to generalise from two cases with completely different attitudes to wildlife and reasons for eradication than ourselves? If so, maybe there are some other catchy lines that Defra should be trotting out as regularly as the "no eradication without wildlife controls" line. Here are some:
- bTB has only been successfully eradicated in countries where the wildlife reservoir is (universally) perceived as a pest
- bTB has only been successfully eradicated when greater regulations have been placed upon farmers
- bTB has only been successfully eradicated when systems of risk based trading / incentives for responsible trading have been introduced
- bTB has only been successfully eradicated when the agricultural industry have paid for it
- bTB has not been successfully eradicated without farmers going out of business because of regulatory controls
- bTB has only been successfully eradicated when the farming industry are part of the governance of bTB
- bTB has not been successfully eradicated without spending a lot of money, not reducing the amount spent
- bTB has only been successfully eradicated when all stakeholders are in agreement
- bTB has only been successfully eradicated when there has been a clear and coherent plan in place
- bTB has only been successfully eradicated when politicians have been sidelined
I could probably think up some more, but you get the message. Maybe you could tweet me your own to @garethenticott
Friday 30 March 2012
Wednesday 21 March 2012
Vaccination in Wales
It turns out that I correctly predicted what would happen in Wales in relation to a badger cull: that it would be replaced by vaccination (see below). That it took a year to make this decision is perhaps the most damaging part of it - wherever you stand on the debate. It always seemed to be the likely outcome and does nothing from detracting from the idea that bovine TB is "the political disease", as my NZ friends like to tell me. Indeed, the prediction I made was one I (and others) made last year pretty soon after the change in government in Wales last May.
After the announcement, I was on to BBC Radio Wales to talk about some of my research and what it said about the day's decision. You can hear it here:
Bbc radio wales 20032012 by GarethEnticott
I'll have some more detailed findings of the survey of public attitudes of badger culling in Wales up soon.
But its also interesting to think about what the vaccination "project" - as its been called actually means in practice, as well as the way it was presented. On the one hand the Welsh Government were very careful to call it a project as opposed to a trial or a pilot. Yet at the same time, the minister talked about the ability to get evidence from the project about the wider effectiveness of vaccination. Its not actually clear what the aims of the project are, but judging by the reactions of the farming unions, one might be whether the Government are able to get onto farms in the first place to vaccinate badgers. More on this soon.
After the announcement, I was on to BBC Radio Wales to talk about some of my research and what it said about the day's decision. You can hear it here:
Bbc radio wales 20032012 by GarethEnticott
I'll have some more detailed findings of the survey of public attitudes of badger culling in Wales up soon.
But its also interesting to think about what the vaccination "project" - as its been called actually means in practice, as well as the way it was presented. On the one hand the Welsh Government were very careful to call it a project as opposed to a trial or a pilot. Yet at the same time, the minister talked about the ability to get evidence from the project about the wider effectiveness of vaccination. Its not actually clear what the aims of the project are, but judging by the reactions of the farming unions, one might be whether the Government are able to get onto farms in the first place to vaccinate badgers. More on this soon.
Friday 16 March 2012
Monday 12 March 2012
Saturday 4 February 2012
Thursday 19 January 2012
Friday 13 January 2012
Superstitious? Don't be.
Its Friday 13th. You have something stressful to do. Do you put it off until another day because it'll be bad luck to do it on Friday 13th? If that stressful thing was a TB test would you think it might be better to arrange for the following week? And if you did, would you be right to do so?
Studies of medicine have a long history of looking to see if there is any temporal pattern to the outcomes of things like operations. You may have seen this on the news recently, a study which said that "patients who are admitted to hospital at the weekend are more likely to die than those admitted during the week". There are lots of other studies that do similar things but with days like Friday 13th, full moons, and superstitious periods found in different cultures and religions.
For example, according to farming folklore, dogs are more aggressive at full moon (Chapman and Morrell, 2000). However, analysis of dog bites requiring admission to hospital during the lunar cycle fails to find any relationship. Other studies also fail to find a relationship between lunar cycles and psychiatric disorders, anxiety, suicide, or emergency hospital admissions (see Raison et al, 1999; Owen et al, 1998; Wilkinson et al,1997; Mathew et al, 1991; Cohen-Mansfield et al, 1989; Thompson and Adams, 1996) but some weak associations with spontaneous full term delivery, aggression and crime (Ghiandoni et al, 1998; Lieber, 1978; Thakur and Sharma, 1984).
The evidence for the links between Friday 13th and human health is mixed. One study (Scanlon et al, 1993) of admissions to accident and emergency on Friday 13th compared to Friday 6th shows that whilst some types of accident (such as poisoning) were not higher on Friday 13th, others specifically transport accidents were higher on five out of 6 friday the 13ths despite there also being fewer vehicles on the road. In fact, the study reveals a 52% increase in the risk of a traffic accident on Friday 13th. Other studies find a link between car accidents and Friday 13th for women but not men (Näyhä, 2002, but later contradicted by Radun and Summala, 2004) and a full moon (Laverty and Kelly, 1998). Friday the 13th is also unrelated to use of emergency services (Lo et al, 2011) blood loss, emergencies or intestinal perforations during operations (Schuld et al, 2011) and post-tonsillectomy haemorrhage (Kumar et al, 2004).
This may all sound like a bit of fun and jokey research: is there much you could do about any of this if it turned out to be true anyway - what is the causal link? Overall, if you lumped all these studies togeher and ran a meta-analysis, you'd probably find no effect.
But anyway, what about studies of animal health? Is there any evidence that Friday 13th is not a good day to be conducting a TB test, for example? Well, Ive looked at the evidence from thousands of TB tests going back to 1992. I compared results of tests read on Friday 13th with those read the day before, on thursday and friday the week before, and on thursday and friday the week after. Realistically, these are the days you would test if you hadnt wanted to read the test on Friday 13th.
For those of you who are superstitious, the results are disappointing. In the analysis, adverse tests (thats finding either a Reactor or IR, or both) on Friday 13th were never more likely to occur than on any of the other possible reading days. If there was any effect, then it was the other way around. The analysis seemed to show that bTB tests the week after Friday 13th turned up more adverse tests than on Friday 13th.
These are only some preliminary results and Ill be writing them up as soon as time allows. But, if you have any other superstitions when it comes to animal health please let me know: email them to me, or tweet them to @garethenticott. I'll also post the full references eventually, but you could probably find them in Google Scholar.
So, if you are testing today, good luck. You may well have been better off not waiting until next week.
Studies of medicine have a long history of looking to see if there is any temporal pattern to the outcomes of things like operations. You may have seen this on the news recently, a study which said that "patients who are admitted to hospital at the weekend are more likely to die than those admitted during the week". There are lots of other studies that do similar things but with days like Friday 13th, full moons, and superstitious periods found in different cultures and religions.
For example, according to farming folklore, dogs are more aggressive at full moon (Chapman and Morrell, 2000). However, analysis of dog bites requiring admission to hospital during the lunar cycle fails to find any relationship. Other studies also fail to find a relationship between lunar cycles and psychiatric disorders, anxiety, suicide, or emergency hospital admissions (see Raison et al, 1999; Owen et al, 1998; Wilkinson et al,1997; Mathew et al, 1991; Cohen-Mansfield et al, 1989; Thompson and Adams, 1996) but some weak associations with spontaneous full term delivery, aggression and crime (Ghiandoni et al, 1998; Lieber, 1978; Thakur and Sharma, 1984).
By contrast, Yang et al (2008) suggest that in southern China people avoid taking risks during so-called “ghost months” when superstition has it there are wandering ghosts released from hell. The study finds that the number of accidental drownings was significantly lower during ghost month periods. Similarly, another study (O’Reilly and Stevenson, 2000) shows that a superstition over being discharged from maternity on a Saturday leads to higher than expected discharges on Fridays and lower discharges on Saturdays.
This may all sound like a bit of fun and jokey research: is there much you could do about any of this if it turned out to be true anyway - what is the causal link? Overall, if you lumped all these studies togeher and ran a meta-analysis, you'd probably find no effect.
But anyway, what about studies of animal health? Is there any evidence that Friday 13th is not a good day to be conducting a TB test, for example? Well, Ive looked at the evidence from thousands of TB tests going back to 1992. I compared results of tests read on Friday 13th with those read the day before, on thursday and friday the week before, and on thursday and friday the week after. Realistically, these are the days you would test if you hadnt wanted to read the test on Friday 13th.
For those of you who are superstitious, the results are disappointing. In the analysis, adverse tests (thats finding either a Reactor or IR, or both) on Friday 13th were never more likely to occur than on any of the other possible reading days. If there was any effect, then it was the other way around. The analysis seemed to show that bTB tests the week after Friday 13th turned up more adverse tests than on Friday 13th.
These are only some preliminary results and Ill be writing them up as soon as time allows. But, if you have any other superstitions when it comes to animal health please let me know: email them to me, or tweet them to @garethenticott. I'll also post the full references eventually, but you could probably find them in Google Scholar.
So, if you are testing today, good luck. You may well have been better off not waiting until next week.
Sunday 8 January 2012
A resurgence in wildlife crime? Or just bad stats?
This week in the Guardian, Patrick Barkham claimed that badger baiting was "making a comeback". Now, the idea of badger baiting is truly abhorrent, but does that mean that we can't look at this claim critically? The article presents some data saying that reports of badger baiting have increased. Here's exactly what Patrick wrote:
There are a number of problems with this. Indeed, if the kind of stats used in this article were about cancer or homeopathy, the internet's stats geeks would be all over it. The fact that they are not, or that the comments section is similarly absent from dissent, says a lot. Does it mean that when it comes to things like this, things which arent fun or amusing, we can be a bit looser with data? I'm not sure about that.
One by one, here's whats wrong:
There's no doubt that doing research on wildlife crime is complicated. The data often isnt there - many wildlife "crimes" are simply not "crimes". Some research - like this one on Dog fighting [free pdf] - uses interviews offenders to get round this. If you're interested in understanding the reasons and rationalisations for dog fighting, then you could watch this video too:
The Causes of Urban Dogfighting: Annual Lecture 2010 from League Against Cruel Sports on Vimeo.
These methodological challenges make doing criminological research on wildlife crime challenging to the say the least. The case is a bit different for badger baiting: it is a statutory offence, so data should be available. But to claim that something is making a "comeback" - a bold claim - we need to know what level it has been in the past. This is particularly important when the overall level is relatively low: small changes may result in apparently big differences (a comeback? see below). The questions we need to ask are what were levels of badger baiting like in the 1970s, 80s or 90s? In which year was the highest level of badger baiting incidents recorded? We're simply not told: hardly the basis to make a claim of a comeback. Indeed, basing this comeback on two years of data is hardly a trend either. Why isnt that data being presented? If it doesnt exist, how can a comeback be claimed? Is it down to bad data management? Or it could be down to all sorts of other reasons...
Secondly, the article mixes up reports with incidents - they are completely different. You may have multiple reports of just one incident: it may be that more people are reporting the same incidents. Ben Goldacre wrote a similar explanation on reports of a rise in the number of people taking anti-depressants based on the number of prescriptions. However, in this case as the data seems to come from the same source its likely this is just careless use of language. Nevertheless, the data mixes up all sorts of different types of wildlife crime under the heading of badger baiting: snaring is not badger baiting, at least as it is traditionally understood (but could conceivably contribute to it). Moverover, the data from the police does not even record a rise in reports of badger fighting (which the article seems to be about). For this data, it would be interesting to know how many reports of the same incident there are and whether this has changed. This would give us a clue to the explanation...
Thirdly, if incidents have risen, what is the explanation: there may be other things going on with the data that explain the changes rather than reaching for some societal breakdown explanation. Simply, the context of reporting may have changed. People may have become more aware of badger baiting through awareness campaigns, or through badger culling being in the news. Given the timescales this is possible.To be fair to Patrick, he does kind of undermine his resurgence argument in the same sentence by pointing this out:
The other possibility is that more resources have been put into policing crimes against badgers. When you look more often for something, you tend to find it more often. So any rise in incidents may not be a real increase at all. Again, this is quite possible. During this time there has been increased resources put into the creation of the National Wildlife Crime Unit (launched in 2006). Badger baiting has always been on its list of priorites. The article itself makes the point that Operation Meles was set up to combat these crimes (although this started after the reporting period). Again, Patrick undermines the "resurgence" argument when he also points this out:
The increased resources issue is probably a good explanation for this. In Fyfe and Reeves chapter in this book, they describe how police forces have been taking wildlife crime more seriously, thanks to extra resources. The establishment of the NCWU and an increase in the number of dedicated wildlife crime police officers, but it hasnt been plain sailing either: even those dedicated wildlife crime police officers still make the distinction between wildlife crime and "real" crime. Its this real crime that is the priority whatever anyone may say about wildlife crime. Again, it may be. Their intention is to plough more money into catching offenders by working with the police whilst also effectively funding their own wildlife crime enforcement agency. But the absence of an equivalent baseline means that what we won't know from this is whether there has been a rise in badger baiting. Perhaps the most interesting thing about this is the "Big Society" approach to the enforcement of wildlife crime. Despite a recent increase in policing resources, you could surmise that LACS dont have much faith in the police's ability to really deal with the problem of wildlife crime (as they see it). That opens up a whole can of worms over the purpose of regulation, whose role is it to enforce statutory regulations, and the point of statutory regulations without statutory enforcement. Returning to the badger cull, if the Government have privatised wildlife control by licensing farmers to cull badgers, then LACS actions show the extent to which the protection of wildlife is also being privatised.
Finally, I was interested to see the article make a link between bovine TB and the "rise" in badger persecution.
Its also interesting to see a police officer recognise a distinction within the treatment of badgers: he seems to suggesting that farmers killing badgers is not "real" wildlife crime. Its seems likely that its those "real" criminals that he's going to go after, and this distinction may well legitimise the continued actions of those others. This is what wildlife criminologists agree on: that there is a broad spectrum of what constitutes wildlife crime. And what regulation researchers agree on is whatever the agreed definition, only part of it will be enforced - it will vary according to a range of social factors. That's probably not good news if you're a badger, but it doesn't mean there's been a resurgence in wildlife crime.
"but according to Operation Meles, a police and charity partnership to combat badger persecution launched this autumn, there were 243 reports of badger fighting in 2009 and 2010. The RSPCA recorded 355 incidents of badger persecution, including illegal snaring as well as digging and baiting, across Wales and England in 2010, compared with 255 reports in 2009".
There are a number of problems with this. Indeed, if the kind of stats used in this article were about cancer or homeopathy, the internet's stats geeks would be all over it. The fact that they are not, or that the comments section is similarly absent from dissent, says a lot. Does it mean that when it comes to things like this, things which arent fun or amusing, we can be a bit looser with data? I'm not sure about that.
One by one, here's whats wrong:
There's no doubt that doing research on wildlife crime is complicated. The data often isnt there - many wildlife "crimes" are simply not "crimes". Some research - like this one on Dog fighting [free pdf] - uses interviews offenders to get round this. If you're interested in understanding the reasons and rationalisations for dog fighting, then you could watch this video too:
The Causes of Urban Dogfighting: Annual Lecture 2010 from League Against Cruel Sports on Vimeo.
These methodological challenges make doing criminological research on wildlife crime challenging to the say the least. The case is a bit different for badger baiting: it is a statutory offence, so data should be available. But to claim that something is making a "comeback" - a bold claim - we need to know what level it has been in the past. This is particularly important when the overall level is relatively low: small changes may result in apparently big differences (a comeback? see below). The questions we need to ask are what were levels of badger baiting like in the 1970s, 80s or 90s? In which year was the highest level of badger baiting incidents recorded? We're simply not told: hardly the basis to make a claim of a comeback. Indeed, basing this comeback on two years of data is hardly a trend either. Why isnt that data being presented? If it doesnt exist, how can a comeback be claimed? Is it down to bad data management? Or it could be down to all sorts of other reasons...
Secondly, the article mixes up reports with incidents - they are completely different. You may have multiple reports of just one incident: it may be that more people are reporting the same incidents. Ben Goldacre wrote a similar explanation on reports of a rise in the number of people taking anti-depressants based on the number of prescriptions. However, in this case as the data seems to come from the same source its likely this is just careless use of language. Nevertheless, the data mixes up all sorts of different types of wildlife crime under the heading of badger baiting: snaring is not badger baiting, at least as it is traditionally understood (but could conceivably contribute to it). Moverover, the data from the police does not even record a rise in reports of badger fighting (which the article seems to be about). For this data, it would be interesting to know how many reports of the same incident there are and whether this has changed. This would give us a clue to the explanation...
Thirdly, if incidents have risen, what is the explanation: there may be other things going on with the data that explain the changes rather than reaching for some societal breakdown explanation. Simply, the context of reporting may have changed. People may have become more aware of badger baiting through awareness campaigns, or through badger culling being in the news. Given the timescales this is possible.To be fair to Patrick, he does kind of undermine his resurgence argument in the same sentence by pointing this out:
"Most of those involved in wildlife crimes believe the current increase is due not to a contagion of cruelty but to the growing courage of witnesses...to report such vicious acts"
The other possibility is that more resources have been put into policing crimes against badgers. When you look more often for something, you tend to find it more often. So any rise in incidents may not be a real increase at all. Again, this is quite possible. During this time there has been increased resources put into the creation of the National Wildlife Crime Unit (launched in 2006). Badger baiting has always been on its list of priorites. The article itself makes the point that Operation Meles was set up to combat these crimes (although this started after the reporting period). Again, Patrick undermines the "resurgence" argument when he also points this out:
"North Yorkshire police have become more robust with it all. We've started to go after them. One of the reasons the police are so interested in poaching, apart from trespassing, is that quite often people are suspected of going into outbuildings on farms and stealing equipment, tools, diesel and metals"Of course, its conceivable that a reduction in resources/changes to police priorities explains the rise: as the risk of prosecution declines, so might offenders be more likely to engage in these activities. Given that resources are pretty low for wildlife crime though, I think this is unlikely. Whatever, the point is that changes to the policing context mean that "rises" are not necessarily real.
The increased resources issue is probably a good explanation for this. In Fyfe and Reeves chapter in this book, they describe how police forces have been taking wildlife crime more seriously, thanks to extra resources. The establishment of the NCWU and an increase in the number of dedicated wildlife crime police officers, but it hasnt been plain sailing either: even those dedicated wildlife crime police officers still make the distinction between wildlife crime and "real" crime. Its this real crime that is the priority whatever anyone may say about wildlife crime. Again, it may be. Their intention is to plough more money into catching offenders by working with the police whilst also effectively funding their own wildlife crime enforcement agency. But the absence of an equivalent baseline means that what we won't know from this is whether there has been a rise in badger baiting. Perhaps the most interesting thing about this is the "Big Society" approach to the enforcement of wildlife crime. Despite a recent increase in policing resources, you could surmise that LACS dont have much faith in the police's ability to really deal with the problem of wildlife crime (as they see it). That opens up a whole can of worms over the purpose of regulation, whose role is it to enforce statutory regulations, and the point of statutory regulations without statutory enforcement. Returning to the badger cull, if the Government have privatised wildlife control by licensing farmers to cull badgers, then LACS actions show the extent to which the protection of wildlife is also being privatised.
Finally, I was interested to see the article make a link between bovine TB and the "rise" in badger persecution.
"According to Ian Hutchison of Operation Meles, some of the increase in the persecution of badgers in particular is connected to their unpopularity with the farming community because of bovine TB in cattle. Until there is a cull, some people are taking the control of badgers into their own hands. But the setting of dogs on them is a different kind of killing. "It's a macho thing, to be honest," says Hutchison".Depending on how you want to define persecution, I think the point being made here is mostly wrong. You can read some of my research on farmers' attitudes to badgers and culling them here. Of all the farmers that have participated in our research, most of them regard badger baiting as from another world. Some of them have talked about the people involved in it as being from another world; they mention dodgy people in pubs; and talk of not wanting to get mixed up in that business. Sure there are those who will turn a blind eye if people turn up on their land. Neither does it mean that farmers dont kill badgers. But what our research shows is that farmers views on badgers are intensely complicated: protective, hostile, ambiguous, contradictory and changeable.
Its also interesting to see a police officer recognise a distinction within the treatment of badgers: he seems to suggesting that farmers killing badgers is not "real" wildlife crime. Its seems likely that its those "real" criminals that he's going to go after, and this distinction may well legitimise the continued actions of those others. This is what wildlife criminologists agree on: that there is a broad spectrum of what constitutes wildlife crime. And what regulation researchers agree on is whatever the agreed definition, only part of it will be enforced - it will vary according to a range of social factors. That's probably not good news if you're a badger, but it doesn't mean there's been a resurgence in wildlife crime.
Wednesday 4 January 2012
The origins of the badger cull
Sorting out my clutter, I came across this on my hard drive. In 2006 Jim Paice gave a presentation to a TB Forum at the Hatherleigh show. There were some other speakers as well, but here he is outlining how important a badger cull would be (along with other measures - you can hear his desire for PCR too). All of this was a year before the ISG released their final report.
Jim Paice MP at the Hatherleigh show 2006 by GarethEnticott
Jim Paice MP at the Hatherleigh show 2006 by GarethEnticott
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