Big Society Badger Cull?

The Guardian today reports that a badger cull is likely to get under way soon in England. It'll be led by farmers, so its an example of the Big Society in action they suggest. This is true - when the consultation document was launched in September 2010 this was how it was described - no surprise there, that is the way policy has to be framed these days. But it was also the cheapest option - far cheaper that a government-led cull (as planned in Wales). Whether a farmer-led cull is a good thing is debatable - it may be better as in New Zealand for government to take care of wildlife controls and farmers pay for cattle controls. The belief in NZ is that farmers will not do it properly or forget or get disinterested - this from a country with a much better cooperative tradition amongst farmers than the UK. Certainly, there's only limited evidence that farmer coops in the UK work particularly well, and a lot suggesting its the other way around.

But most interesting in the Guardian piece was the claim by the police - the National Wildlife Crime Unit no less - that: "There is a very real danger of illegal badger persecution being carried out under the pretext of culling activity...Devon and Cornwall were identified as hotspot areas for bovine TB earlier in the year and there is concern that political acceptance of this method may see farmers managing the problem themselves without obtaining a licence."

This may be true, but the fact is that this is going on already, and has been going on in a quite organised way for many years now. One wonders why the NWCU didnt point that out - its not either as if its a well kept secret. Take these comments in the Farmers Guardian. My paper in the Journal of Rural Studies due out soon (email me for a copy if you don't have access) also talks why farmers kill badgers and the discursive neutralisation techniques they use to justify their actions. We can think of neutralisation as a means of rationalisation, but it can also direct us to some fundamental problems in the nature of regulation and the relationship between the state and the public, in this case farmers. Indeed, in an earlier paper in the Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers I showed how one response from the Government's handling of bovine tuberculosis was for traditional management strategies (e.g. badger culling) to be relied on (illegally).

All of this should focus our attention on two key points. If farmers shoot badgers because they feel frustrated and alienated from government then we might want to think about some other forms of governance for bovine TB. Secondly, we should be a lot more honest about the failings of animal health regulation. The fact is everyone knows what is going on: vets, policy officials, conservationists, farming unions the police and politicians yet it is rarely, if ever, mentioned publicly. On the contrary, it seems that it is implicitly tolerated. There are no real policing resources to do anything about this, nor any real desire it seems within government. But making this an issue, defining the terms under which wildlife can and should be protected may make for a more realistic debate.