TUESDAY 9 FEBRUARY 1999

PROFESSOR SIR JOHN R KREBS

  60. Does that mean a spraying thing to clear it?
  (Professor Sir John Krebs) To get rid of it?

  61. Yes.
  (Professor Sir John Krebs) Not necessarily because if you have removed the badgers and badgers are the major source, then there is no replenishment.

  62. We are not looking at two years, though? I heard some suggestion that it could be as long as that.
  (Professor Sir John Krebs) I am hedging a bit because --

  63. We have noticed.
  (Professor Sir John Krebs) I do not know the answer.

  64. You give me the impression there is a spectrum of people who say that the evidence is not good enough. At one end there is the mow the bastards down school; then there is the mow some of the bastards down school. Who is at the other end? Are they at the other end because they are animal lovers who want to protect little badgers or what? Is it genuinely scientific opinion at the other end of the spectrum?
  (Professor Sir John Krebs) The correspondence that we had in the process of writing our review, from people who suggested that badgers are innocent and have been wrongly accused -- I do not know who they were, but from my reading of the letters they were mainly badger lovers.

  65. It is a bit like brock in the dock, which is a bit off. I am not very happy about this sort of thing about somebody is guilty and somebody is the innocent party.
  (Professor Sir John Krebs) Those are not my words; I am quoting from others.

  66. I have a note here that Chris Cheeseman says that it can remain active for 11 months.
  (Professor Sir John Krebs) He knows more than I do and I would accept that. What he does not know is whether the bacterium, once surviving for 11 months in the environment, is still capable of infection.

  67. Is there not going to be an effect whatever experiments you do and whatever areas you demarcate? Farmers are going to take the law into their own hands and go out and kill the badgers. How do you allow for that?
  (Professor Sir John Krebs) As I mentioned earlier in response to an essentially similar question, the more farmers take the law into their own hands, as you put it, the more they will diminish the likelihood that the experiment shows any effect of --

  68. They are not going to sit round waiting for the results of a scientific experiment. They think, as you say, that the correlation indicates the badgers are guilty. Therefore, why not protect their earnings and their cattle by going out and killing them?
  (Professor Sir John Krebs) It is one of those situations of no pain, no gain. You have to look at the longer term as well as the short term.

  69. It is a bit much to ask them to sit back and wait, is it not?
  (Professor Sir John Krebs) Yes, I agree it is difficult but when I spoke to the farming industry they saw significant merit in the experimental trial we proposed.

  70. Why did you pick on 30 ten square kilometre squares? Why pick on so much?
  (Professor Sir John Krebs) We picked on that number on the basis of figuring out how much data you would need to get an effect, if there was an effect. There is a statistical technique called power analysis. This is in figure 5.4 of our report. It basically says if you want to get results after a certain number of years you have to have a certain sample size. Otherwise, if you did it on a very small sample, you might be carrying on for decades before any effect was picked up. It is rather like a clinical trial to test the effectiveness of a drug. You have to choose the appropriate sample size such that if the drug does have an effect you can detect that effect. If your sample size is too small, you may conclude the drug has no effect and go away with the wrong answer.

  71. How did you delineate the areas? Do these have to be defensible areas?
  (Professor Sir John Krebs) No.

  72. With physical boundaries, or what?
  (Professor Sir John Krebs) The ten by ten squares that we used were simply for convenience.

  73. It is very artificial.
  (Professor Sir John Krebs) Yes, they were artificial blocks chosen for the purpose of our analysis and whilst we suggested that they may form the basis of the trial we were not prescriptively saying they had to fit exactly into these squares that we had drawn on the map. The important factor for the trial itself is that you choose a large enough area such that edge effects such as immigration or people nipping in and having a quick pee and nipping out again are not going to destroy the experiment.

  74. You are talking Mr Mitchell's language now.
  (Professor Sir John Krebs) Yes, I thought I was.

  75. These are areas big enough to --?
  (Professor Sir John Krebs) So you can actually clear an area and not have a problem with edge effects.

  76. Obviously there have been changes between the recommendation that you made and what the scientific group have actually put forward. I wonder if you would like to make some comments about the changes, particularly about the triplets being circular with buffer zones in between them rather than square, about the close season and the length of the close season and also about using cage traps rather than snares which you recommended?
  (Professor Sir John Krebs) In writing our report, we recognised that we were sketching out a concept rather than writing an implementation plan. It was always in my mind and in the minds of my review group that the trial as described here was not meant to be the prescription for how it should be done but more a framework, the kind of thing which should be done. MAFF, in responding to that, did, as I recommended, set up an expert group, the Bourne Group, to figure out how this concept could be turned into an action plan. The three things that you refer to are three of the changes that they made -- there are others as well -- for turning the concept into an action plan and I accept that all three of those changes were justified in relation to a compromise between a simple, rather armchair, idealistic concept and a practical concept on the ground.

  77. Is it going to have any effect on the scientific robustness of the trial?
  (Professor Sir John Krebs) I think that anything that reduces the effectiveness of badger removal will reduce the effect of the trial, but having spoken to Professor Bourne I understand that the statistical experts on the group, who are very major figures in this field of statistical analysis, are convinced that the changes that have taken place will not undermine the trial. They may slightly reduce its power but not undermine it.

  78. You said that you can understand why the changes were made because you developed, if you like, a scientific framework. They have to put it into reality and there is always going to be some accommodation made for that. Do you feel that in order for it to be really successful, as we talked about earlier, over five years in the living landscape, should there be other changes that would still keep the integrity of the science but would actually allow the thing to be workable in the landscape?
  (Professor Sir John Krebs) I am not sure what you have in mind.

  79. I am a little concerned about the timescale, about people holding on for five or six -- and I have heard from Professor Bourne it may take even seven -- years. Seven years is a long time when your herds are going down.
  (Professor Sir John Krebs) I would agree with you there that anything that could be done to speed up the trial by recruiting more blocks into it would be helpful in shortening the time to completion. When I said that the three changes you described were not the only changes, another change I had in mind was that, for various reasons, the implementation of the trial has been delayed. As I understand it, in 1998 one triplet was recruited and in 1999 a further four were going to be recruited. We recommended in our report that the trial should start in the spring of 1998 and we had therefore expected it to be well underway by now. For all kinds of practical reasons, MAFF was unable to achieve that timetable and it has slipped. I would agree with you that it is a concern that the trial is going to be extended in time because of this staggered start. If one were going to press for something, it would be for faster recruitment of additional sites.

  Mrs Organ: We talked a little bit about the problems of non-compliance and the trial not working in the way that you have outlined it. I know that you have said that the data back so far is that compliance is high. I would say to you that it is of course on a very small statistical base. For instance, it is only in north Devon and in the Gloucestershire/Hereford area, where the surveying is not even completed now. I wonder if we can come back to this because the thing that most concerns me is the fact that I would like to hear your views about how you think farmers in the area where it is a hot spot but they are on a triplet site that it is a control. How much are we going to have farmers just taking out badgers willy-nilly and illegally?

  Chairman: Would it be helpful if the government were to increase compensation levels in those control areas to deter that kind of behaviour?