Vermin, Victims and Disease British Debates over Bovine Tuberculosis and Badgers ANGELA CASSIDY Vermin, Victims and Disease Angela Cassidy Vermin, Victims and Disease British Debates over Bovine Tuberculosis and Badgers Angela Cassidy Centre for Rural Policy Research (CRPR) University of Exeter Exeter, UK ISBN 978-3-030-19185-6 ISBN 978-3-030-19186-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19186-3 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019 This book is an open access under a CC BY 4.0 license via link.springer.com. Open Access This book is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence and indicate if changes were made. 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Neither the pub- lisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institu- tional affiliations. Cover design by Tom Howey This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland For James, who keeps me together, helps me understand all sorts of stuff, does (not) put up with my nonsense, and is an endless source of tea, hugs and Ridiculous Inspirational Posters. PREFACE He said, ‘It won’t take too long …. and it’ll be fun’!! Professor Lord John Krebs, addressing the ‘Science for Defra: Excellence in the Application of Evidence’ conference, 20171 There is something sticky about bovine tuberculosis (bTB), especially in Britain. It seems that anyone who tries to understand or unravel the many threads connecting cows, microbes, badgers and people sooner or later finds themselves drawn into the tangle and making it more so. The above state- ment was made, with deep irony, as eminent ecologist, science policy player and now member of the House of Lords Professor John Krebs recounted the story (to an audience of government scientists) of his own ensnarement by the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF), of the doomed Conservative government under John Major. Krebs was asked to convene an expert group to review the evidence relating to badgers and bTB; today, over twenty years later, he is still involved with the problem, albeit now as a senior politician. Krebs’s comments echoed the account of another eminent scientific Lord, Solly Zuckerman, as he had sought to extricate himself from the bTB snarl, nearly forty years ago: ‘I said yes, because I like Peter [Walker, the Minister of Agriculture at the time] and because the way he explained the whole thing to me all that would be required would be a week’s work: looking at documents and talking to people in his Department.’2 This ‘week’s work’ occupied most of Zuckerman’s time for several years, as he prepared and published his 1980 report on what was already a notorious science-policy problem. By February 1981, six months after publication, Zuckerman was begging Walker to ‘please, please take over’ the work of vii viii PREFACE engaging in public debate:3 however, he persisted in defending his work and that of government scientists and veterinarians, corresponding on the topic until the end of 1985, shortly after his retirement as President of the Zoological Society of London.4 Zuckerman and Krebs are far from alone in their entanglement: as of the end of 2018, there will have been nine expert- led reviews or reports commissioned by the British government on the problem. In publishing this book, I declare myself similarly ensnared: I have been researching this controversy—between other projects—since 2008. So what is it about bTB? In part, such stickiness is just in the nature of political problems. Badgers and bTB have both been significant in British agricultural, environmental and animal politics for a very, very long time; and have become even more so since they were mobilised into ‘big P’ Politics, as has happened in recent years. However, I think there is more to it than that. There is something almost addictively fascinating about this problem: some intriguing thread or other catches the curious mind, com- pelling one to follow a trail which winds itself with no regard for the fiercely defended territories of academic disciplines, nor the carefully tended bounds of science, policy, politics and ethics. This is an intensely focused world of controversy which I think also draws people in because it taps into Big Questions, albeit in an odd and characteristically British fashion.5 These questions include: How do and how should people live alongside other animals? What does it mean to care along the way, and who or what should (or do) we care for? What is the proper relationship between sci- ence and policy, and how can we (as a society) make better decisions under uncertainty? Finally, how can we reach better, richer ways of collectively understanding the messy business of infectious disease out ‘in the wild’, beyond relatively controllable spaces like laboratories, clinics, farms and zoos? I first became aware of the controversy as an undergraduate zoologist, and when I migrated across the disciplines to retrain as a postgraduate in the human sciences I kept a weather eye on the problem—it seemed inter- esting as a biological and clearly social problem. My early research was on public scientific controversies, and badger/bTB was already developing into an intriguing case study, which I was eventually able to turn my work towards. It’s certainly proved to be so—I’ve been incredibly fortunate in gaining research support from two postdoctoral fellowships, making it possible for me to keep chasing these tangled threads long enough to make some sense of them. As a scholar working in the traditions of STS (science and technology studies) and the history of science, technology and medi- cine, I seek to understand how and why scientists do their research; how PREFACE ix knowledge is built, communicated, contested, agreed and acted upon across society; and how these processes change over time. I also strive to understand all sides in a controversy and why they know, believe and do the things that they do. However, my own position—as an ex-natural sci- entist, who remains fascinated by animals of all sorts; as a pragmatic envi- ronmentalist; as a non-vegetarian who tries to live well with the non-human world; and as a human being trying to make sense of a ridiculous case study amid ridiculous political times—will inevitably flavour this analysis. A NOTE On ARCHIVES AnD SOURCES Like many historians of the recent past, in this project I have struggled with the challenges of documenting events which are no longer ‘current’ yet have not yet properly been designated as ‘history’. This has meant cob- bling together a patchwork of sources, some of which are in conventional archives, but many more of which have been pulled together from librar- ies, second-hand bookshops, media databases and countless clippings passed to me by friends and colleagues. I am aware of much material which has been unavailable to me for one reason or another. For example, in the National Archives, MAFF Infestation Control Division records on badgers and bTB are extensive, but there is less material from Animal Health or the State Veterinary Service. As far as I can tell, some of this material has not yet been opened for public viewing, but according to some of my interviewees, other records were ‘thrown in the skip’ when many of MAFF’s regional offices were closed during the 1990s. The archives of the NFU from 1909 to 1946 are held at the Museum of English Rural Life, but I was unable to access their more recent records. While the RSPCA used to keep internal records, apparently they no longer employ an archi- vist: similarly the Wildlife Trust’s records are not centrally archived. It is almost certain that there are other sources which will throw new light on what I have just written: in my view this work has just scratched the sur- face. I look forward to being challenged! ARCHIVES USED AnD REFEREnCED In THIS TEXT UK National Archives—Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries (and Food): NA MAF UK National Archives—Nature Conservancy Council: NA FT Zuckerman Archive, University of East Anglia: ZUEA x PREFACE OTHER ARCHIVES, LIBRARIES AnD COllECTIOnS USED DURInG THIS RESEARCH British Library RCVS Knowledge—Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons Library London Zoological Society Library Guardian/Observer, Times, Telegraph, Independent, Mirror and Mail digital archives Nexis UK print media database Hansard and House of Commons library BBC Genome—online archive of BBC Radio Times listings: https:// genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/ InTERVIEWS AnD ORAl HISTORY MATERIAl Twenty-one single and group interviews were conducted by the author between 2011 and 2015.