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.