Welsh farmers criticise BBC over ‘irresponsible’ Brian May TB documentary
Emily Price
The Farmers Union of Wales has criticised the BBC following the broadcast of a documentary featuring Queen legend Brian May, who questions if badgers are the cause of bovine TB.
The hour long film, Brian May: The Badgers, The Farmer and Me, aired on BBC 2 last week.
It follows the guitarist and animal rights campaigner on a decade long journey to understand the TB crisis.
Cattle-to-cattle transmission is a serious cause of the disease – but badgers also suffer from TB and are able to transmit it to livestock.
Under current laws, any cow testing positive for the disease must be slaughtered.
Over 11,000 cattle were slaughtered in Wales during the past year placing immense emotional strain on farmers and their families.
In the new documentary, Sir Brian May argues that badgers are being scapegoated, with hundreds of thousands culled unnecessarily over the years.
Evidence
The programme has been branded “irresponsible” by the FUW who say the BBC “overindulged” in the rockstar’s “unproven theories”.
FUW President, Ian Rickman said: “Airing a documentary without balanced scientific evidence offers nothing to the debate around bovine TB control.
“The documentary overindulged an individual’s opinion based on unproven theories of a singular experiment on one farm.
“The farm in question continues to be in a cycle of bovine TB breakdowns which is a situation that is sadly mirrored on many farms across Wales, where current government policy does not allow the culling of badgers to control the spread of TB in cattle.”
The farming union says that evidence from the first, strictly licensed and controlled badger cull areas in England show that rates of TB infections in cattle reduced by 56% following four years of badger culling.
Mr Rickman said: “It is extremely disappointing that the programme failed to portray the vast complexity of bovine TB in any detail, with no expert counter-argument to the proposed theories despite there being opportunities to do so.
“As a farming union representing Welsh farmers, we would welcome the opportunity to work with the BBC to offer a balanced debate based on scientific evidence to try and move the conversation forward and eliminate this devastating disease.
“Frustratingly, the badger was depicted as the victim, with little regard given for the thousands of cattle slaughtered despite scientific research supporting the transmission of infection between cattle and wildlife.”
Complaint
The Countryside Alliance has also criticised the documentary saying it contained “little more than the opinion” of the guitarist.
The organisation says it plans to pursue an impartiality complaint against the BBC.
Welsh Conservative shadow cabinet minister and farmer Sam Kurtz also hit out saying Brian May is “dangerously incorrect”.
In a social media post about the doc he wrote: “The reservoir of the disease is within livestock and wildlife. Failure to tackle one without the other will always lead to increased risk of reinfection.”
In 2016, Brian May partnered with large mammal vet Dick Sibley and farmer Robert Reed, whose farm was chronically infected with bovine TB.
They conducted what they claim is a groundbreaking four-year experiment to eradicate the disease without harming badgers.
Speaking about the documentary, Sir Brian said: “I don’t blame people for being suspicious of me in the beginning, because, you know, I’m a guitarist. You know I’m a rock star. What am I doing? Why would I have some contribution to make?
“I came in to save the badgers. I now realise that to save the badgers, you have to save everybody because it’s a mess. It’s a tragic human drama where people’s hearts are broken.”
A BBC spokesperson said: “While this is a first-person piece authored by Sir Brian May, the documentary, which aired last Friday features numerous voices in the debate on badger culling, including farmers and academics.
“It follows Sir Brian on his journey over a decade to understand the crisis caused by Bovine Tuberculosis and his opposition to the controversial badger cull. The BBC adheres to strict editorial guidelines on impartiality on this matter.”
Board
Two weeks ago, the Welsh Government established a new Bovine TB Eradication Board which will consider scientifically supported methods of eradicating bovine TB in Wales.
Mr Rickman said: “The agricultural community as a whole continues to suffer the devastating consequences of bovine TB in cattle following decades of inefficient Government policies.
“As was shown in the documentary, we have recently seen a number of family farms publicly share the emotional turmoil, the challenging business impact and the impractical workload and mental health effects of dealing with bovine TB on farms.
“As stewards of the countryside, farmers want to see healthy cattle and wildlife on their land. The FUW continues to call for a holistic and scientifically supported approach to be adopted to eradicate bovine TB.”
He added: “The Welsh Government must allow itself to recognise and accept the recommendations of their Advisory Board if they are fully committed to a bovine TB-free Wales. It is now time for Wales to step forward and get to grips with this debilitating disease.”
Support our Nation today
For the price of a cup of coffee a month you can help us create an independent, not-for-profit, national news service for the people of Wales, by the people of Wales.
Far rather trust Mr May. CSA? The blast it and and claim its traditional? There are a few vaccination programs in the UK for badgers that are showing results.
There are a few ‘micro-vaccination attempts’ of badgers, but they are all inside a small perturbation boundary. The only large scale badger vaccination attempt was in Wales, north Pembrokeshire. Ran by the Welsh Government. It was a failure due to new generation birth rate maintaining infected host population, extortionate costs, and then lack of vaccine.
TB is ultimately from a group of soil bacteria. The exact way it interacts with wildlife varies from country to country. It would be interesting to know exactly which other wildlife in the UK has TB and what strains there are. As the government has shut down the Public Health Laboratory Service and diminished the Veterinary equivalent it is doubtful that the UK has adequate resources to deal with epidemic disease or zoonoses in either the human population or domestic or wild animals. Thus it is easier to just kill one sort of animal.
Badgers forage for food in the cow pats and pastures. The reason why it’s an important transmission vector between both species. Other wildlife vectors of cross-infection are insignificant.
Brain May? Is the spell check malfunctioning or is it wine o’clock?
Well he has got a PhD so his first name may have changed to reflect his high level of education and research. Not a dyn bach twp by any means.
As an explanation as to how the disease is transmitted the programme made far more sense than “its the badgers”.
If there were two things that could be implemented right now one would be comprehensive testing (not just the skin test, which if the programme is right only picks up 50% of cases) of cattle being sold and introduced into new herds and bio-security on farms, as if the live TB bacterium is transmitted by feaces yhen that has major implications for how farms are operated. That should not be controversial, easily proveable but difficult to implement.
Faeces cross infection can be minimised by bio-security and what the Brian May failed to explain when the docutainment jumped into Wales is that in Wales the measures he highlighted have been in place for over a decade.
The bTB skin reactor is 90% reliable on first test but declines in efficacy over time. Later tests the efficacy drops below 20%. This is because a infected bovine develops it’s own partial immunity and so does not react to a benign introduction, the test. Male cattle for beef are killed before the efficacy drops but dairy cow kept for many years of lactation cycles the efficacy of the test declines.