Sett questions

As the government's chief scientist leads calls for the slaughter of badgers to eradicate bovine TB, a farmer has discovered a potential link with cattle fodder. So why is nobody checking out his hunch? Chris Baker reports

Sett questions


Dick Roper watched the first of his cattle being taken away for slaughter in the winter of 1999. He knew there were badgers on the farm. Four big setts had been there for as long as anybody could remember, but that did nothing to lessen his anguish when a handful of cattle in his fattening yard tested positive for bovine tuberculosis (bTB).

The rest of his 600 Aberdeen Angus cattle stayed free of infection, but outbreaks in the fattening yard kept returning. All through the winter and into the next summer, there were more cases. It was not until the last animal in the yard had been killed that he got rid of the disease.

"Talk about a shock to the system," Roper recalls. "It leaves you feeling totally impotent because there is nothing as an individual you can do. You are immediately in the hands of vets and ministry officials telling you what to do."

But the situation got him thinking. He wondered why it had been only cattle in the fattening yard that contracted bTB. There were no badgers getting in, he was sure of that. In any case, animals elsewhere on the farm would have been in closer contact. The only difference as far as he could see was that the cattle that became infected had been fed maize silage, while the others had not.

Unexplained hotspots

For Roper, who has spent 28 years managing a 1,200-hectare (2,965-acre) farm high in the Cotswolds, near the old wool town of Northleach, diet seemed to be the key. Farmers know that maize is low in several minerals, particularly selenium, so cattle that are fed maize are routinely given supplements to balance the lack of essential nutrients. The amount of supplement needed by cattle, or sheep or pigs, has been precisely calculated.

Roper's thoughts turned to badgers. If they were eating maize, would they need a supplement to their diet too? Badgers love maize; they will get into fields and gorge themselves, knocking down the stalks to reach the cobs. Given the chance, a badger will eat hardly anything else.

His thoughts turned to the last time bTB was endemic in the countryside. In the 1930s, 40% of the UK's dairy cows were infected. Compulsory testing from 1950 led to almost complete eradication of the disease, apart from a few persistent and unexplained hotspots in the south and west.

Roper talked to farmers and vets who had been involved in the programme. They all agreed that once a parish had been cleared of bTB there was very little reinfection. "It was like somebody dropping a lead weight on my foot," Roper says. "For 150 years, bTB has been written about. It was endemic in our cattle. Obviously badgers got it, so why was there no reinfection?"

Fodder maize is a comparatively recent innovation on British farms. In 1970, less than 2,000 hectares of maize were being grown in England. By 1980, 20,000 hectares were being cultivated. This year, 145,000 hectares of maize were grown in the UK. Initially, the crop was confined to an area south of the M4, but new, hardier varieties mean farmers further north have begun growing maize as cattle fodder.

During the same period, badger numbers have almost certainly increased. Before the 1980s, there are no reliable figures. By 1988, the badger population was estimated at 216,000. Today, there are thought to be about 288,000 badgers in the UK, with the majority in the stock-rearing west.

Meanwhile, bTB began its upward trend from the late 1970s, the outbreaks beginning in the south-western counties where maize was first grown in large quantities. In the first eight months of this year, new cases of bTB were confirmed in 1,290 herds in England, Scotland and Wales, and 17,600 animals slaughtered.

"I did as much research as I could, then looked at the areas where maize was being grown and compared it to the bTB figures," Roper says. "They did not totally match, but it was too bloody close to say it was not significant. Have we as farmers accidentally introduced a completely new diet to the badger that has dropped its immune system over the edge? We know it does it for cattle. We know we have to supplement the cattle. But nobody is [providing supplements] for the badger."

Roper, a registered organic farmer with the Soil Association, felt he had to respond to his findings. From mid-2000, he placed blocks of molasses, laced with the largest dose of selenium allowed, near each of the four badger setts on his farm. "Over the next four or five years, this [area] became one of the hottest spots in the country for bTB," Roper says. "At one point, I think it was 2005, every herd surrounding me went down with bTB. Yet we were in the clear."

He is quick to point out that geography could be playing a part. The A40 and Fosse Way border his farm on two sides, the heavy traffic acting as a barrier to wandering badgers. The river Leach runs through the centre of the farm, and the setts are along the valley bottom, so his badgers tend not to stray too far.

Seven miles from his farm, Roper rents a small piece of land where the fields are surrounded by woods, and badgers come in from everywhere. The cattle there contracted bTB, as did those on his neighbours' farms. Roper believes that what is significant about that is that it is nothing to do with his cattle being organic, and nothing to do with the minerals he feeds his cattle. The only difference is that the badgers there, unlike those on the main farm, haven't been fed supplements.

Roper admits that all this is no more than a hunch. He says: "All I have done is treat my badgers the same way as I would treat my cattle - nothing more than that - to try to make sure the diet is supplemented and their health is maintained."

But his sense of frustration at officialdom is palpable. He is sure that a relatively simple and inexpensive piece of research should be able to prove, at the very least, whether his hunch is wrong.

Brock the beleaguered

Despite being Britain's favourite wild animal, the badger doesn't really have a place in the pantheon of wildlife mythology - unless you count the country gentleman character in Kenneth Grahame's classic children's book, The Wind in the Willows. Unlike the mystical hare and majestic stag, the earthy badger inhabits a vernacular universe. It's one of us. Tough, reliable, curmudgeonly - that's Badger.

But no amount of anthropomorphising is going to save badgers from being culled on a huge scale if David King, the government's chief scientist, and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs get their way. Ignoring a 10-year scientific study that cost the lives of 11,000 badgers and proved that a large cull would not solve the bovine TB problem, King last month opted for slaughter.

Word is that the government is ready to throw the badger to the farming lobby as a sacrifice. Farmers have undoubtedly had a tough time recently, and a few thousand scape-badgers may assuage them.

In the early 1800s, the poet John Clare wrote movingly about how "the old grunting badger" was pitted against dogs for sport - badger baiting. Although this was banned in 1835, it took another 138 years, and a national campaign that mobilised public opinion, for the 1973 act to outlaw the digging out of badgers from setts.

From then on, the badger's star began to rise. Legislation in 1981, 1992 and 1996 made it an offence for anyone - farmers, gamekeepers, property developers, home owners - to mess with badgers or their setts, except under licence.

The badger became the symbol of the British nature conservation movement. By the end of the 1990s, the local network of groups that watch out for badger abuse formed the Badger Trust, and all the UK's 47 Wildlife Trusts, sporting the badger logo, unified around an image that represented a conservation success story and a sense of identity - a sort of domestic version of the WWF panda.

A survey by the People's Trust for Endangered Species estimated that 10,000 badgers are still killed illegally each year, but by far the biggest cause of badger mortality is legal: 50,000 badgers a year die in road traffic accidents. Estimates vary, but the UK badger population is between 300,000 and 350,000, although there has not been a comprehensive survey since 1992. Apart from natural fluctuations, the population seems stable. What is far less stable is any arbitration between the badger's legal status, its cultural value, ecological concerns and the politics of agriculture.

Blood-sport victim, conservation icon, diseased pariah - the badger has an identity crisis. But despite this, and because of great PR, the badger has a firm grip on the affections of the British people. As John Clare wrote: "The badger grins and never leaves his hold."

Paul Evans, Guardian country diarist