TUESDAY 16 MARCH 1999

MR JEFF ROOKER

  665. Minister, you are such a regular visitor to our Committee that we are even dispensing with the formality of a name-plate and hoping that members of the Committee remember your name as they ask you questions; so, welcome. To business. In your memorandum, you did lay great stress on the public health implications of bovine tuberculosis. I am actually rather confused about that. Krebs sees it primarily as an economic issue; in fact, most of the witnesses we have spoken to saw it in that way, too. How significant a risk is bovine tuberculosis actually to human health, in your judgement?
  (Mr Rooker) It is not great. We are not overvaluing what Professor Krebs said, but, the fact that MAFF was not discussing, for example, with the Department of Health on a regular basis cases and outbreaks, in other words, it was assumed it was not bovine TB, we just think that, overall, given what we are doing on several fronts, as you heard this morning, and in previous sessions, it made good sense to actually have a closer look at the TB cases we do get in this country, which are very small, it is about 40 a year[1], without looking in my papers, but it is about 40 a year, just to see what kind of strains they are, just to double-check and not make assumptions. So it is not something—but, nevertheless, we have got people working with cattle, we know it is a disease, we know the disease is in the wildlife, and therefore we just thought that we ought to make sure, on a regular basis, discussions with the Health Department cover what might be—what might be—a tiny loophole, that is all.

  666. So, given the low level of incidence, given the existence of human vaccine, even for those in close contact with animals that may be ill, the prime issues for you are actually, ultimately, animal welfare issues and, primarily, above all, economic ones, I suspect, for the farming industry?
  (Mr Rooker) The prime issues are animal health and protection of the food chain, and economic issues, it is absolutely true, but what we do not want to do is to do that 100 per cent exclusive and ignore the potential tiny element of possible public health, and that is why we are still continuing with that exercise as well.

  667. We are talking about concentration on particular issues; there is a feeling, I think, among certainly the badger groups, that your Department and the farming industry still put a huge emphasis on the badger, in all this, and are much less anxious to discuss the other issues, the other causal factors in the debate. Do you feel, in the light of that criticism, that I am sure you have heard yourself from badger groups, that your five-point strategy is actually a holistic approach to controlling TB in cattle?
  (Mr Rooker) Nothing is perfect. One thing for sure is, there is not one solution here. It is an incredibly complex issue. I would say, I could be corrected by officials, that it is probably the most complicated issue that I deal with, on a day-to-day basis, as a Minister, in the sense that it is not a single—there are so many aspects and facets to it. We are trying to get a holistic approach to it, and we are very much in the dark, in many areas, as you have heard this morning, which is why we are actually seeking to get information. We have got insufficient information to construct a policy, that is basically the bottom line; we do not have a policy, we are seeking the information to construct a policy. Now that has got to include all aspects, and that has got to include, if you like, some of the basic elements that Krebs was very critical of, husbandry on the farm, you cannot just dismiss it and you cannot simply say "Well, we haven't got any scientific proof that it pays to shut the gates at night, therefore we wont bother to do it until we've got the proof", that is quite unacceptable; it is basic commonsense. And, therefore, in that respect, in fact, it is one area, probably before you started questioning, it is one area where I wish I were able to report more progress here today. I think we have made considerable progress, bearing in mind the constraints, which are not just financial, as you have heard, but that is one area where I think I would have liked to have been able to report more progress. But you cannot ignore the fact that husbandry aspects might play a part.

  668. We will come back to husbandry later on, so we will come back to that; but your spies obviously were here when I asked Ben Gill these questions last week?
  (Mr Rooker) No. I read the transcripts.

  669. Can I just ask about the experimental trial beginning before some of the other things were in place, the research projects, the epidemiological questionnaire, that still is not agreed, even now, we were discussing with your officials earlier; do you see that also gives an impression to the animal welfare lobby that you are more keen, as a Ministry, on killing badgers than addressing the other issues?
  (Mr Rooker) To an outsider who is looking at it—and this is not pejorative—in a simplistic fashion, that all we are intent on is killing badgers, the process of the last seven or eight months, since we announced the policy to seek information, on August 17, might look that way. I would have to say, by this August 17, it will not, simply because all the other processes will be in place. We have been accused of being too slow, by the farmers, at going in to kill the badgers, number one, I think we have had that in some of the questions this morning, too slow to start the culling trial; in other respects, doing the culling trial and not doing anything else, well that is simply not the case. This was not something we could rush into. I have to say, it is a tribute to the previous Government they had set up the Krebs inquiry, because if they had not we would have had to do something similar, because, quite clearly, the policy that we inherited was not working, which is why we stopped badger culling and badger removal operations in any new counties in May, early June, 1997. But it could look that way. I would deny that, on the basis of the preparations required, and the fact that our resources were limited for what we were able to do with badgers. You have heard this morning, 238 was the figure; the previous year, MAFF dispatched 2,700 badgers, it did not solve any problems, it did not create a policy.

  Chairman: Let us look at that policy in more detail.

  670. In your Department's memorandum, it states that "the Government has reluctantly concluded that we need to know when culling badgers can contribute effectively to TB control." Is that a slip of the pen, or do you disagree with Professor Bourne, who says it is a question of if culling badgers has any impact? Given the answer to the last question, it would seem to be at odds with what you have just said?
  (Mr Rooker) No. It might mean `when' may be a factor relating to social group density; `when' might be a time of the year. No-one is arguing there is not a significant impact of badgers on bovine TB, and our task, if you like, is to try to construct a policy to control, and, if we can, eliminate, bovine TB, not to construct a policy to eliminate badgers.

  671. So can the experiment give you the answers to the question, when culling is effective?
  (Mr Rooker) The experiment, by which, if you refer just to the cull, on its own, it is going to give us a great deal of information that we do not have at the present, it is not going to give us everything we need to know in order to construct a policy to go forward; that does come from operating—the culling is only part of the strategy, in seeking information, to construct a policy. And, frankly, we hope so; we are putting resources in, we are using our own staff, we are using external staff, to try to get a grip on what is a very serious problem, which, with respect to what the officials have just said, has not been done systematically, in a scientific way, before. Clearly, there have been previous exercises, no-one is denying that, with Zuckerman and Dunnet, and the various strategies, but there was no large-scale surveying of particular areas, of hot spot areas, before exercises were undertaken, for the collection of information on a scientific basis, although it is in the wildlife, so there are all kinds of pluses and minuses to that, but it was not done in the past; and, therefore, it is a matter of collecting the information, we hope, that can give us the basis of constructing the policy.

  672. Are you confident about the way the trial is going? As I think you are freely admitting, the whole issue is fraught with so many uncertainties, I think everyone accepts that, and, given the problems of the variables of locating comparable sites for triplets and the possible non-compliance and the interference, are you confident that the survey can be successfully completed?
  (Mr Rooker) I am as confident as I can be that we can conduct the culling aspect of the overall strategy in the areas once they are designated. I cannot be certain about the timing of this, quite clearly. I knew last August, I knew every day I lost in August, before I could make an announcement, it put the possibility at risk that we would not do any proactive before the closed season. I told colleagues in Government that delay does not mean delay, delay means nothing this year, that was the reality, and if it had slipped another two weeks, to the end of August, the chances are we would not have got to the point to even do the proactive cull in Putford, subject to the vagaries of the weather, the onset of shorter days, all kinds of factors were into that; and, therefore, we did need to proceed. But given the fact that we had never done surveying like this before, it was a new experience for even the trained staff that we had, in the Wildlife Unit. I loaned them out, very carefully, for the mink farm escapes, and I said "Because I am not prepared to put the", because we were planning for this, we were planning to get started, and yet I had got councillors, I had got farmers, local authorities, screaming at MAFF "Come and solve our problem, the mink are out." The only people we have for that are the Wildlife Unit, they are trained and they are skilled, and I said "We're not prepared to put the start of the Krebs operation at risk"; and therefore we were very careful about that. But it meant that when we went to survey the Gloucester/Hereford triplet it was different terrain, it did take longer, and, therefore, it was not possible to do, if you like, the second proactive. And that I regret, because, obviously, we have only done one and we have got information which, whatever anybody demands and gets from it, is meaningless in telling us what we are going to find when we go to the other triplets.

  673. So are you worried, at the end of the whole culling trial process, that, in fact, it may have been a waste of time anyway, because, given the information we were given earlier, you may well be very close to finding a vaccine to deal with the issue; have you got a worry there?
  (Mr Rooker) No. We may be close, we may not be close, that is the problem. I cannot work on the basis, I do not think it would be very sensible to work on the basis that we have got a fixed time by which an effective vaccine that would control the issue arrives. The information you have just heard about Ireland; obviously, I think more information would need to be given about that, it is maybe not as clear-cut as you might have learned. I do not know much about that, I have to say, but the idea that there is a vaccine there, where we know what the doses are and we are just a little way down the road from doing a bit of work with our colleagues in Ireland and we will solve the problem, means we do not need to proceed with the rest of Krebs, I have to say, is a red-herring, and I am not going to go down that road. The fact of the matter is, we have got the evidence, and I would invite you to look again. Dr Woodroffe said, at page 92, in Krebs, we need the 30 areas and the ten triplets to give us some statistically valid information; doing any more will be a waste of resources. There is a diminishing rate of return, as page 92 clearly shows, and we want to proceed with those as quickly as possible, within the resources both of money and trained staff.

  674. Coming back to the experiment in the Republic of Ireland, have we requested a—
  (Mr Rooker) Yes; sure.

  675. Fine. So, in response to some accusations being made on the political front, it is largely a technical issue, I agree with you, on the political front that that whole trial is, in fact, just a political effort to show that something is being done, while, behind the scenes, the vaccine is the factor which is going to sort of solve the problem; you are clearly very robust in your response to that?
  (Mr Rooker) Yes. But the point is, I am not going to con anybody. There is not a vaccine, I have no guarantee of a vaccine, I have no guarantee of a timescale of a vaccine, or the effectiveness, whether it is for cattle or for badgers, and the delivery, and we have got a problem of an animal health disease, small but increasing, that we have to deal with. And, therefore, I think it is best to proceed on the basis that we are now, knowing, in parallel, if you like, that we are maximising the work we can do on a vaccine; if a vaccine had been easy to find and it was commercially a thing to be doing, by the way, one of the drug companies would have come up with one by now, and they have not. This is MAFF, public sector driven, do not forget, this is not industry driven, in terms of drug companies, because they could detect a market, they would have found a drug and they would have marketed it; well, they have not, and therefore it is best that we do not rely on that, and proceed on the wider fronts that we are doing, not just the trial but all the other aspects of Krebs, I cannot emphasise that too much. If I can just point this out, because this is not unimportant, we announced, when we did this, we knew we would have to double the size of the Wildlife Unit, we knew we would have to recruit extra people in these areas, it is not well-paid work.

  Chairman: I think this leads us on to the area of questioning Mr Marsden wanted to pursue.

  676. If I can talk about the timing of the trial and, in particular, to start with Putford. We have heard some criticisms that work began there without sufficient trained personnel and at a time of year which made efficient trapping difficult. I know you have partly touched upon that, but would you accept that the Putford triplet was implemented without sufficient planning?
  (Mr Rooker) No, it would not have gone ahead otherwise; we were up against the deadline, obviously, we were up against the deadline, in December, we knew the closed season, we had already announced, as you know, February, March and April, we would not be doing that. We were sufficiently advanced, with trained staff, I might add, the idea that trained staff were not there is nonsense, we have a Wildlife Unit so there are 50 people who are trained and skilled, they have been conducting badger removal operations for some years; we were not using any new staff, we had not recruited any new staff at the time, in fact, we had only just placed the advertisements, as I recall. Clearly, it was the first time we had ever done an exercise like this. MAFF has not been involved in a, this is not a badger removal operation with knobs on, it is much more sophisticated than that, and, therefore, we are on a learning curve, and, I suspect, by the time we come to do the fourth and fifth triplet, we will naturally be using the experiences we have gained on the first and the second, that is inevitable, whether it is terrain, whether it is the time of day. And, I freely admit, it is a bad time of the year, is December, but, nevertheless, the closed season is February, March and April, parts of the year where we will be conducting the culling will be, of course, in the longest days of the year.

  677. So it can only be put down to part of the learning curve that the work began before external auditing measures were in place?
  (Mr Rooker) Yes, sure.

  678. And about the environmental impact assessment, and so on; okay. Since then, the original timetable proposed has slipped considerably, and Professor Bourne has now talked about a culling trial of seven years to complete. What factors do you think then are slowing down the implementation of the trial, and what can be done to speed it up?
  (Mr Rooker) You see, we have identified two triplets, this year we plan to identify four more, and the following year the other four, to give us the ten. The speed with which we can implement those triplets, once they are identified, obviously, the first thing, once they are identified, is to do the survey, because we do not discuss with anybody or choose the policy, because it is chosen at random, which of the three strategies in the areas of the triplet; it just depends on our progress. I cannot say that. I do not think Professor Bourne was saying we are not going to learn anything for seven years, we are going to learn as we go along anyway. But we will proceed to identify, our plan is to identify four this year, it was two, four, four, that was our strategy, in terms of the financial resources we have, knowing we had to double the number of staff involved, and it is a big exercise, of course, once you have identified the hot spots, on the latest available information, contact all the landowners, get permission, and proceed with that. This is not a five-minute job, part of it is done on the desk, a lot of it is done out, on the field, and we will proceed as quickly as we can. I cannot say whether it will be five years; the Krebs original suggestion was for periods like that. Obviously, we have to return to the areas, we have to see what is happening with the disease as well, and it will take some time, but it will not take that long before we start to learn results, but we are not going to take policy decisions on the basis of one triplet, as the first one we ever did, and December, up against the deadlines; far from it.

  679. If you found there were scientifically valid results that were being obtained from the trial, say, within two years, three years, whatever, would you be prepared then to curtail the experiment?
  (Mr Rooker) No; the answer to that has got to be no. What I would say is, if there were scientifically valid results that were given to us by the Independent Group, discussed with officials, and, of course, discussed with other people as well, that enabled us to start to make a policy, then I think we would use it; but the idea that, halfway through the exercise of, let us say, only doing five of the triplets out of the ten, we find something that is useful to us and we simply abandon, I think would be very short term. We have set this up, that is not to say we are going to do it, come what may, but it is a package, and we are in the unknown here; we cannot get a lot of help from other countries around the world because of the uniqueness of the situation here, obviously we are getting help from specialists in New Zealand because they have a similar problem, but it is not quite exactly the same as ours. So we will have, by then, hopefully, got the work on the husbandry and other matters proceeding. But whatever comes out scientifically valid we will not lock it away and say "Well, we'll open up the locker in five years' time and see if we can make use of this", far from it.