The Badger Cull: A Case for Animal Rights in England

Matthew TrickettPOLSISUniversity of BirminghamMA Political Theory17 September 2015

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Abstract :

This dissertation argues that the welfarist traditions found in the anti-badger cull movement, inspired by figures like Peter Singer, have created a weak and inconsistent campaign, focussing too much on “humane treatment” and scientific inaccuracies, instead of the moral importance of the cull. The cull is presented here as a consequence of speciesist treatment of nonhumans, for badgers are left victims of a wider routine of farm animal slaughter and exploitation, which is permitted, despite a long-lasting development of laws for the protection of animals. However, this connection of wider animal rights abuses is not regularly exposed by the anti-cull movement, instead, notable figures in the movement make cases against the cull on scientific arguments, focussing on the spread of bovine TB. An argument will be made for a re-invigoration of the movement inspired by Tom Regan and other animal rights philosophers.

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Dedications

I would like to thank Emma Foster for supervising this work and offering helpful suggestions and corrections. I am also very grateful to my partner Elías Pino Sanchez and my mother Barbara Trickett for all their love and support, and the late Elizabeth Bevon for her financial support.

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Contents

Abbreviations

Introduction

1.0 Welfare Laws and the Status of Wild Animals: From Vermin to Protected Species 1.2 Badgers: Legal and Illegal Cruelties1.3 Suppressing the Issue

2.0 Reviving Anti-Speciesist Philosophy to Oppose the Cull2.1 How Did We Become “Speciesists”?

2.2 The Limits of Liberation Under Singer’s Utilitarianism

2.3 Tom Regan on Inherent Value2.4 Ryder on “Panient” Beings2.5 Sentience, Pain or Rights? Which Route to Follow Against the Cull?2.6 Where Utilitarianism Has Failed the Anti-Cull Movement 2.7 Conclusion

3.0 The Ideology of ‘Rural

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Economy’: Capitalism and the Cull3.1 How Death is Sold to Us3.2 Defra: Making Unpopular Policy3.3 The NFU’s Push for the Cull3.4 Conclusion

4.0 The 'Scientific' Debate: Cullers and Anti-Cullers4.1 The Cull So Far4.2 Cheaper Tests with Gassing4.3 The Vaccine4.4 Two “Holistic” Approaches4.5 Classic “Stewardship” Critique of Science4.6 The Animal Rights Critique

5.0 Implications of a Failed Movement5.1 Over Spilled Milk5.2 Government Measures for an OTF Goal5.3 We Have All Been Sett Up5.4 Conditions of Humaneness5.5 The Cull at Warp Speed5.6 Conclusion

Conclusion

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References

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Abbreviations

bTB - Bovine Tuberculosis

Defra - Department of Environment Food and Rural Affairs

FAWC - Farm Animal Welfare Committee

NFU - National Farmers Union

OTF - Officially TB Free

RBCT - Randomised Badger Culling Trial

‘Justice, or even benevolence, will not be a powerful spring of action unless it extend to the whole creation; nay, I believe that it may be delivered as an axiom, that those who can see pain, unmoved, will soon learn to inflict it.’

–Mary Wollstonecraft (1999, p.254).

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Introduction

One of the reasons for this dissertation to focus on the badger cull is because it has become one of the most unpopular policies from the Conservative-led government. There have been sizeable protests in city centres and rural communities, with people dressed in black and white, all ages and from different social backgrounds. Ostensibly the cull has become a method to curb the spread of M. Bovis, or bovine tuberculosis, an infectious skin disease afflicting cattle herds; and also found in wildlife. Whilst it is possible for the disease to spread to humans, such cases never occur because of routine testing and slaughtering of positively-reacting cows.

Critics opposing the cull from different professions of the scientific and academic community have called the cull a failure. Often they will cite how the 2013 and 2014 culls did not meet expected targets, even after killing 2,263 in the latter year. One particular difficulty of implementing the culls they mention is how new badgers can be able to cross into the areas where culling has taken place, otherwise known as the “perturbation effect”. This allows for more badger and cow interactions where infections can be spread through bodily fluids and faeces. But this scientific criticism has not stopped the government from approving a wider cull for 2015. This leads to speculation that vested interests are outweighing sensible consideration of the consequences of culling badgers.

Firstly, the history of welfare laws in Britain will be covered in chapter one. Secondly, philosophical divides of animal rights will be picked apart to give an idea of the perspective of the overall dissertation. Thirdly, the “rural economy”, as referred to frequently by the Tory government, will be scrutinised. Fourthly, scientific evidence, claimed to by both sides of the debate will be studied. Fifthly, recent events, seen partly as the implications of failed anti-culling campaigns, will be reviewed, as a way to open up further

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debate on a revised direction for the future of anti-badger cull movements in England.

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1.0 Welfare Laws and the Status of Wild Animals: From Vermin to Protected Species

The UK has had a very conflicted legal relationship with wild animals. Although perceptions of them has changed over time, their protected status is limited, and designed from a position of maintaining human interests of property and allowing for killing animals under certain circumstances, whether for food or scientific research, or, in the case of badgers, to protect property and prevent the spread of diseases. This will all be explained in this first chapter, and lay the groundwork to discuss vested interests in the culling of badgers, which will come in later chapters.

In the past, entertainment in the form of badger baiting was perfectly legal, and badgers were kept in captivity for baiting with dogs. This began to change as legal protections for badgers came in gradual stages in the twentieth-century, as the suffering of these animals was legally recognised. Elisa Aaltola (2012) writes about how the gradual understanding of animal sentience (feeling pain and pleasure), has been inadequately met with welfare legislations that protect animals only to the extent that human institutions are financially or politically maintained above the interests of animals.

We create dividing categories of animal sentience, between those that can feel pain and those that cannot, these laws define the levels of moral considerations that we give to animals. Thus welfare laws are constructed to go only as far as we can limit our use for them. Suffering, even for wild animals, can become a secondary consideration to broader human considerations. Siobhan O’Sullivan (2011) sets out categories of free-living (wild) and captive animals, further dividing free-living animals into “native” and “introduced” animals. For example, badgers, as native animals in Britain, are classified as being “good” or “desirable”, whilst an introduced animal, like the grey squirrel, is considered a “pest”. This may factor into

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why badgers are given their own act of legislation, the Protection of Badgers Act 1992.

According to an IPSOS MORI poll (2014), 95% of the public support the ban on badger baiting. Unlike the Hunting Act 2004, which was supported by 80% of the public, there is no current threat to remove the Protection of Badgers Act. Despite legislations being put into place, protection for wild animals is not guaranteed. The Hunting Act was up for being repealed in 2015, even though the act has popular support of the public. After securing a second term in the elections, David Cameron praised hunters for helping him to win a tory majority at the general election (Glaze, 2015), and so the status of the Hunting Act and other animal protection laws could still come under threat in the future.

There are longstanding and historical reasons for this based on class divisions of bloodsports. According to Patrick Barkham (2013), badgers were primarily used for baiting by working class men and farmers. Aristocrats did not pursue badgers with much enthusiasm because they did not taste as good as fowls, did not appear in daylight hours and could not be easily hunted on horseback. Digging out a badger from its sett was back-breaking work that was ill-suited to a gentleman, and so baiting was disapproved of because it felt unsporting to stack the odds against the badger. In a bait, badgers are made to fight against dogs because they are prone to violent behaviour when they are provoked. Badger baiting causes cruel and unnecessary injury to both the badger and the dogs being unequally pitted against each other. This lack of use for the aristocrats meant that the badger was offered no laws of conservation, and so their numbers depleted, whereas “higher visibility” animals, were protected much sooner.

1.1 Badgers: Legal and Illegal Cruelties

Instead of being protected and deemed a good “native” species, badgers were previously deemed to be “pests” and “vermin”, much like the

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“imported” species like grey squirrels are considered today. In the Act for the Preservation of the Grayne in 1566, badgers were blamed for eating farmers’ crops, and anyone killing a badger was rewarded with twelve old-pence; the same amount was also rewarded for the head of a fox. In reality, British badgers, or meles meles, are largely carnivorous mustelids, feasting on worms, birds, rabbits, amphibians and slugs, but can be omnivorous too, eating grass and clover. Despite this misplaced blame, the Preservation of the Grayne was not repealed until 1863. Today, rats, rabbits and mice are still considered “vermin" for convenient human interests, to be used for scientific experiments, or exterminated from human developments. Killing rats, rabbits and mice does not require the same licensing as killing a badger (Barkham 2013).

Badgers were scarce in Britain by the mid-nineteenth century, after all of the baiting, digging and rewards for pest control had sent the population into decline. Eventually, the baiting of bulls, bears and badgers with dogs was made illegal in 1835 under the Cruelty to Wild Animals Act, however, as Barkham (2013) suggests, this legislation was brought about with greater concern for the dogs being used in baiting, rather than the wild animals being baited, as keeping pets instead of “working” animals became more the norm. This is a clear example of protecting preferred “high visibility” species. The ban on Badger baiting was consolidated with the Protection of Animals Act in 1911 (section 1:c), which gave a fine of up to £25 per offence and a prison sentence of up to six months without hard labour. This act also prohibited causing “unnecessary suffering” to animals under one’s possession (Protection of Animals Act, 1911, 1b), which is an essential concept of welfare still used in today’s legislations. The Protection of Animals act fell short of protecting wildlife by only covering the baiting of domestic animals, and prohibiting charging money for others to watch the baiting. It was clearly not advocating for a progressive shift to curb farm animal suffering either.

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Shockingly, badger baiting still takes place, rather than falling out of existence, like a relic of something sinister from the past, as Barkham (2012) found. The RSPCA recorded 355 incidents of badger persecution in 2010, including baiting, digging and snaring. They also found that many domestic cats and dogs were made to fight each other for entertainment by their owners. In the UK, the penalties for baiting varies between the different regions, the highest penalty for badger baiting can be found in Scotland, where a maximum prison sentence goes up to three years. But despite the law, there are high rates of badger persecution, and low rates of conviction, especially for “low visibility” animals. Even the RSPCA could be seen as preferring the protection of cats and dogs to wild animals, as they made only 16 badger baiting convictions between 2009-2010. These instances of “unnecessary cruelty” to animals are disturbing, and yet there are perfectly legal acts of cruelty still permitted, in horse racing for example, where excessive use of the whip often hurts and over-exerts the horses. Jockeys in a horse race often get away with beating animals publicly, as their punishment falls to the steward’s discretion, rather than being over-seen by an outside authority. Euphemistically, whipping is called ‘encouragement’, even though their encouragement could lead to injury or heart attacks (Animal Aid, 2015). Like the baiting of badgers, beating any other nonhumans should be prohibited.

When badgers became the first land mammal to gain their own legal protections in Britain with the Badgers Act of 1973, it was a historic achievement for badger campaigners. The act made it an offence to ‘cruelly ill-treat any badger’ by digging, or using tongs and hunting dogs to kill them. Also, the sale and possession of badgers, dead or alive, was made illegal. Nevertheless, with this legislation landowners were still authorised to kill badgers found on their property. Stronger protections were brought into force in 1981 with the passing of Wildlife and Countryside Act, when the facility for landowners to kill badgers without a licence was removed and the fines for penalty were increased. In 1985, contrary to an “innocent until

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proven guilty” stance, the Wildlife and Countryside Act was amended to remove a loophole that those caught attacking badger setts (burrows) were committing an offence unless they could prove otherwise.

Later, with the Protection of Badgers Act 1992, the previous legislation was replaced, and further defined how a person can be guilty of an offence if they wilfully kill, injure, take or attempt to kill, injure or take a wild badger. Further protections were also given to badger setts, which was not provided for in previous legislation. Disturbing a badger sett by blockading the entrances, digging for a badger, or making a dog hunt a badger inside a sett became illegal. Trading or owning a live badger, except in the case of tending to a disabled badger, became illegal. Possessing a dead badger also became an offence. However, with this legislation, there were three important exceptions given to killing a badger. Firstly, when a badger is killed as an act of mercy if it is severely injured, or if a badger has been killed unavoidably in a legal incident (i.e. running over a badger whilst driving) the person involved is not guilty of an offence.

Due to these exceptions, as Barkham (2013) heard from his badger-sympathising interviewees, rumours had spread of incidences when farmers had surreptitiously killed badgers and placed them at roadsides, simply to avoid detection. This is plausible, if not overthought by the interviewees.

Secondly, as section 8 of the Protection of Badgers Act states, if a person can show that his action was necessary for the purpose of preventing serious damage to his land, crops, poultry or any other form of property, he is not guilty of committing an offence if he kills a badger. This can include instances where badger setts are found on building sites for roads and developments.

Thirdly, and most importantly, badgers can be killed in order to prevent the spreading of diseases. This is very important for the badger cull, as we shall see in further chapters, because the justification for the cull is that it prevents the spreading of bovine tuberculosis (bTb) from badgers to cattle. Even with its own legislation, even with a position of a good “native”

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species under supplementary wildlife and ecological acts, badgers still have their lives threatened, ostensibly because of the risk they pose as a reservoir of bovine TB.

1.2 Suppressing the Issue

Discussing these issues in public debate is consistently regarded as secondary or irrelevant to important human politics. When Brian May was brought on to Question Time on the 14 May 2015, he tried to raise the issue of fox hunting, but Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary smirkingly refuted his point:

May: “Why does he want to offer a referendum on that issue and not

for instance on fox hunting?’ Hunt: ‘I think the reason is that there are some issues that are of big

constitutional significance that it really is appropriate to ask the people, like the people of Scotland.’

(Question Time, 2015).

This also happened on the 29 January 2013, when the power for the RSPCA as a prosecuting power against animal abuse was debated in the House of Commons. The debate took place just six weeks after the prosecution of members of the Heythrop Hunt. MP Simon Hart who opened up the debate that day quoted Richard Martin, founder of the Society for the Protection of Animals (before Queen Victoria gave permission for the royal R to be added to the name in 1840), as saying “it would be ill judged for it [the RSPCA] to become known as a prosecuting society and the prime aim should be to alter the moral feelings of the country” (HC Deb, 2013).

Richard Martin was the same MP who drafted the Act to Prevent the Cruel and Improper Treatment of Cattle, or “Martin’s Act”, which made Britain the first country to implement a law protecting animals. Simon Hart

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described Martin as a Conservative MP and a huntsman, a true description, but in the debate, Green MP for Brighton Pavilion, Caroline Lucas, challenged Hart’s argument, giving another of Martin’s quotes to say: ‘if legislation to protect animals is to be effective, it must be adequately enforced’ (HC Deb, 2013). Although both quotes from Martin show a contradiction of his beliefs, the quotation selected by Lucas is the same one that the RSPCA uses on their webpage about this issue (RSPCA, 2013), which would indicate that they share her interpretation of Martin’s beliefs to promote a more assertive RSPCA. In her argument, Caroline Lucas gave an example of the Heythrop hunt, which the RSPCA had successfully prosecuted roughly six weeks before the debate in the Commons.

Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron has ridden with the Heythrop Hunt in the past, mixing with those who were prosecuted by the RSPCA on four counts of unlawful hunting of foxes with dogs (Davies, 2012. Video footage was captured by members of the anti-hunt group Protect Our Wild Animals (POWA, 2015). Similarly, the League Against Cruel Sports also unveiled recent footage of the Hunt Act being wilfully breached in Scotland (League Against Cruel Sports, 2015). With a more lenient pro-hunting government in power, the behaviour of animal persecutors may only become more brazened.

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2.0 Reviving Anti-Speciesist Philosophy to Oppose the Cull

The last chapter analysed the ways in which past and current animal laws in Britain defined the way humans treat animals as subjects. As Garner (2013) pointed out, most changes in the way animals have been used by humans in the last forty to fifty years have come as a result of changing human priorities and levels of awareness to animal pain and suffering. Compared to the old Cartesian way of thinking that animals were like machines of nature, unfeeling and unthinking; many now believe that animals can suffer and feel pain as we humans do (Cochrane, 2013). This new way of thinking spawned changes in the law, from the Victorian era to more modern times; but philosophically, a new and important term came about because of twentieth century revelations of the holocaust and the American civil rights movement. Speciesism.

The 1960s and 1970s brought this term into animal ethics, as ideas of promoting equality, and of combatting prejudice, became more important. Speciesism is a word that was coined forty-five years ago by the English psychologist and philosopher Richard Ryder. The term was later adopted by Peter Singer, Tom Regan and many others. Ryder described speciesism as a prejudice; like sexism and racism: 'based upon morally irrelevant physical differences' (Ryder, 2005). However, whilst different philosophers have used the term “speciesism”, they have presented very different views. This chapter addresses three strands of anti-speciesist philosophy; utilitarianism, rights and painism. My position in the debates will then be expressed before progressing into further chapters about how the speciesist discourses of the badger cull are taking place.

2.1 How did we become “Speciesists”?

In response to the above question, Siobhan O’Sullivan (2011) seems to offer a very convincing explanation; she wrote about how we have internal

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and external inconsistencies towards how we treat animals. This is based upon their usefulness within institutional mechanisms which act to ensure human interests are kept in place above the interests of other species. For example, a rabbit may be protected as a pet, for securing them as property of a human, used for companionship; whilst a similar rabbit may be used for research and subjected to medical experiments. We do not do the same to humans, and have learnt to become speciesist because of the usefulness we think that they have. This can impact on how visible animal suffering is, as the highly visible animals are prone to having greater protections than the low-visibility animals. A protected rabbit in a human’s home is therefore less visible than another rabbit raised in cramped angora farms or university labs.

The external inconsistency relates to how we treat animals differently to how we would treat humans. O’Sullivan’s inconsistency theories come with the necessity of considering non-humans as something ‘external’ to humanity. Our choice of animals to protect, according to O’Sullivan, is based on the species’ visibility. Having high visibility is advantageous for avoiding harm. This cannot be controlled by non-humans, it is a choice of humans alone. ‘It is always better to be a dog than a hen, but if you are a hen it is better to be in a petting zoo than a battery cage’ (O’Sullivan 2011, p.140).

Animals like these hens, kept in low-visibility structures, like battery farms, face the lowest protection. Economic gain for the humans comes before access to a comfortable existence and death. Badgers, as wild animals, fall between the high visibility of a domestic animal and the low visibility of the factory-farmed chicken or cow, as the legislation protecting badgers from hunting and baiting, simultaneously allows for them to be culled in order to prevent the spread of disease. This will be important to note for analysing the ethics of disease prevention in chapter four.

For O’Sullivan, animal protection is a political and democratic issue, worth engaging with on a wider scale. Currently it is people who drive the limitations and inconsistencies we see in today’s animal protection laws who have the most power to decide on what protections are granted to animals.

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This can be seen in her work when she says: ‘the political nature of animal protection inconsistencies is expressed primarily in the capacity the community has to see and engage with animals and then to decide if those animals are being treated fairly or not’ (p.27). Sometimes the visibility of the animals is directly related to the influence of who O’Sullivan sees as driving the inconsistencies.

2.2 The Limits of Liberation Under Singer’s Utilitarianism

The school of utilitarianism has arguably had the most success in galvanising the animal welfare movement that resurged from the 1960s and 1970s. The most recognisable name from this school is undoubtedly Peter Singer, the Australian philosopher, and author of Animal Liberation (2002). He believes speciesism is indefensible, like racist or sexist views. Being a sentient creature, that is, being able to experience pain and pleasure, is why animals deserve our moral consideration, according to Singer. The period where Singer most prolifically forwarded his animal welfare views, namely the 1970s, is important to consider, as it ran parallel to the black and women’s liberation movements. The animal “liberation” movement aimed to inspire a similar realisation of prejudice being held against animals as there is to non-white ethnicities and women. In his most famous work, Singer builds his argument against commonplace claims that humans matter more than animals do, with the following statement:

‘… pain is pain, and the importance of preventing unnecessary pain and suffering does not diminish because the the being that suffers is not a member of our species. What would we think of someone that said “whites come first” and that therefore poverty in Africa does not pose as serious a problem as poverty in Europe?’

(Singer 2002, p.220).

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Subsequently, by quantifying the hundreds of millions of animals being killed for food production every year in the US, Singer tries to aggregate the suffering and put forward a basis to end it, not based on rights, but arguing that all this suffering is done for “trivial” reasons, and so it is wrong.

Utilitarianism maintains that the right act is the one that maximises the best outcome. Singer, in Animal Liberation (2002) does not appeal to having rights, but merely the rightness and wrongness of conduct is judged by the consequences. For example, he criticises most animal experimentation for not having sufficient benefits to justify the suffering that takes place, but he does not oppose all animal experimentation. If researching a cure for a disease that affected many humans, Singer would approve this because of his belief that aggregate benefits would outweigh aggregate suffering. For this, I disagree with this view completely on the same grounds that Gary Francione does in Rain Without Thunder (1996), although Singer considers himself as anti-speciesist by equalising the concerns for humans and animals, even in life and death circumstances such as experimentation, my view is that animal experimentation is always wrong, because consent cannot be given, and without consent, the experiment is an abuse of that individual being’s interests. Singer acknowledges that under certain circumstances, it would be permissible to experiment on non-consenting humans. Nevertheless, Singer is not technically putting humans first and being anthropocentric in his argument. His desire to balance interests is not judged on what species’ interests are being compared. Regardless of the Singer’s ideal fair treatment of humans and nonhumans, his position is not likely to ever be realized. People would not be able to balance the interests of another species fairly compared to humans with no speciesist or anthropocentric bias. We will never see non-consenting humans being experimented on for the benefit of nonhuman species in the same way Singer shows animals being experimented on for the benefit of humans in the photographic evidence in Animal Liberation.

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2.3 Tom Regan on Inherent Value

The American philosopher Tom Regan takes an animal rights view which grants inherent value, of interests and worth, to both humans and animals. This makes a change from the classical philosophers like Immanuel Kant, who restricted having inherent value to what Regan (2004) calls “moral agents”, or those individuals who have the abilities essential for moral agency, or free will. Regan does not consider animals to be moral agents, because they do not have the capability of judging right and wrong actions, but he does consider them to be “moral patients”. These categories avoids speciesist distinction of “sophistication” between the moral agents, and moral patients, by recognising that both categories are equal in moral consideration and equal in worth, or inherent value.

Regan shows a clear influence of Enlightenment thinking, especially regarding the matter of equality. Regan takes a deontological, Kantian approach to equality; meaning that he argues for rights of both animals and humans as a duty that is essential to secure for all. This starkly contrasts with Singer’s utilitarianism, which does not follow that we treat individuals as secure in rights holders, but instead that aggregate pleasure should be preferable to aggregate suffering. ‘To deny that moral patients have inherent value, or to affirm that they have less inherent value than moral agents … is arbitrary. “All animals are equal” is true, when understood in context’ (Regan 2004, p.264).

All beings that are aware, that are not inanimate, are deserving of rights. These beings are what Regan calls “subjects-of-a-life”, presenting an inherent value, morally equal to all others. This moral equality is not presented as equality of intelligence or skills, but as equality in deserving respect. Regardless of whether or not a subject-of-a-life is being killed for trivial or important issues, Regan never approves of their killing or injury as Singer does.

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Inspired by the thinking of Immanuel Kant that individuals must be treated as ends within themselves, rather than an ends to a means, Regan adjusts this principle to widen this moral principle to nonhumans. He appropriates Kant’s theories in order to establish that there are irrevocable rights for both humans and nonhumans. Regan then describes two forms of rights, positive and negative rights in his book Animal Rights, Human Wrongs (2003). Positive rights include the right to be helped, whilst negative rights include the right not to be harmed. Negative rights he portrays as a “No Trespassing” sign, there to remind others to be respectful of how they treat individuals (human or nonhuman).

Regan acknowledges that others view his position as extreme or even absurd, (this is true of how Ryder (2000), viewed Regan’s position), but nevertheless, he believes that causing injury or limiting the freedom of an animal with a subject-of-a-life is wrong. Just because we humans, as a society in general will benefit from infringing on the rights of nonhumans, it does not make it justifiable.

Before I talked about O’Sullivan’s theories of visibility and inconsistency, but if we take Regan’s beliefs of animal rights seriously, we have to admit that ignorance to suffering, or not caring about the suffering inflicted upon others for one’s own benefit, is evil.

Regan admits that even the “mundane” choices that we make are inescapably evil. He gives examples of a person abstaining from leather and instead wearing cotton, but being unable to ensure that no animals were killed in the harvesting of the cotton. This is a good thing to approach from a realistic sense, but not so to depress the reader to say “what is the point?” and never make any attempt to avoid actions that lead to suffering for other beings. Rather, the first duty to follow for Regan is to end our support of animal using industries.

‘The bodies of literally billions of animals intentionally, deliberately and systematically injured every year […] Where, then, do we find the evil visited

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upon by animals in the cotton industry, for example? Not in the same neighborhood. The harm caused to animals by the cotton industry is not intentional, not deliberate and not systematic’

(Regan 2003, p.119).

Therefore, for Regan, it is not a failure to purchase products from non-animal industries which unavoidably may cause pain and suffering to nonhumans. What he suggests is that we should try to live simply, avoiding too many things that will cause harm.

2.4 Ryder on “Painient” Beings:

In response to the ideas of Tom Regan, that animals have the same rights as humans inherently, Richard Ryder wrote an article in The Guardian that all beings that feel pain are deserving of the same human rights as we human animals are born with. Ryder dismissed Regan's explanation of nonhumans having "inherent value" because 'value cannot exist in the absence of consciousness' (Ryder, 2005). Instead, Ryder is motivated by seeking the ultimate good, which is happiness, which is easier to achieve with the freedom from pain and suffering. Any subjects who feel pain cannot be forced to suffer by others. Avoiding the ultimate evil of pain is more important to Ryder than creating pleasure, therefore Ryder is not a utilitarian.

One of the first points of argument found in philosophical discussion about how to treat animals is how we can prove and know that nonhuman animals feel pain just as humans do. The French philosopher Rene Descartes believed that because animals lacked language, they also lacked any mental life and could not suffer pain (Cochrane 2010, p.11). Ryder regards that this runs contrary to what most people now think, as most of us now understand that animals do feel pain. Therein, for Ryder, being able to suffer pain is what

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determines whether another living being deserves moral consideration. Or as it can also be phrased, being a “sentient” being.

In Animal Revolution (2000) Ryder sets out his position of “Painism”, in which, like negative utilitarianism, deliberately inflicting pain in all of its manifestations, including emotional pain, is morally wrong. As Francione (1996) put it, it is a combination of Singer’s emphasis on pain and Regan’s concern for the individual. Unlike utilitarianism, Ryder’s philosophy does not give significant consideration to aggregate pain, but rather focuses on individual pain. The best example to give for this comes from animal experiments, which Ryder writes about in his other works. For Ryder, the benefit that many could have from discoveries made through intense suffering forced upon an individual without consent, is not fair or just.

2.5 Sentience, Pain or Rights? Which Route to Follow Against the Cull?

So far we have seen that anti-speciesist philosophers have had the same goal for ending a system based on unfair distribution of justice favouring humans above nonhumans, but for different reasons and with different outcomes. Concern for wildlife issues should be motivated by recognising that animals are sentient beings who suffer pain as humans do. Inflicting cruelty and death upon them should be regarded as ethically unacceptable. Other species have a right to be left unexploited by humans, and feeling that a species other than one’s own should be hurt or killed because it is in some way inferior, or less important, is “speciesism”.

When Singer (2001) wrote Animal Liberation in 1975, it sparked a wide-scale debate on animal ethics and converted many compassionate people into vegetarians. Part of the process of knowing that one can become a vegetarian or a vegan comes from having an inspiring example set out for you. The task ahead for the anti-cull movement is to realise the abolitionist aims, to tactically politicise their message with effective demonstrations, and

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to have enough support to bring about safeguards and barriers against the killing of other living beings, no matter the species. Other writers that have come after Singer have propelled animal ethics into the limelight, and have come to criticise the effects of Singer’s philosophy, one of his fiercest critics is Gary L. Francione (2000). Francione sets out a more legally based argument for abolitionism and the removal of the property status of animals:

‘the property status of animals, renders completely meaningless any balancing that is supposedly required under the humane treatment principle or animal welfare laws. What we really balance are the interests of property owners against the interests of their animal property… such a balance will rarely, if ever, tip in the animal’s favour.’ (Francione, 2000, p.)

Francione also uses the idea of speciesism, saying that we have “morally schizophrenic” beliefs and behaviours towards animals. Going vegan should no longer be seen as a drastic step to take for moral principles, but something achievable for everyone.

2.6 Where Utilitarianism has Failed the Anti-Cull Movement:

Most Western countries have made legal changes to the status of animals with anti-cruelty laws which set the boundaries of utility and avoiding “unnecessary” suffering. Allowing for “necessary” or “unavoidable” suffering presents the same type of limitations to equality that Singer and the utilitarian school have established. Wherever there is a threat of disease affecting human health, or the suspicion of a threat to humans, there is also an opportunity for promoting speciesism and economic protections that put animals at a disadvantage. This is where use of the word “necessary” causes the most contention. Meanwhile, as debates ensue, more nonhumans are left

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to suffer, and our duties for upholding their interests and inherent rights are left unperformed.

It would seem that using terms like “speciesism” has not been adopted by the current generation of badger cull opponents; or perhaps it has fallen out of favour with the previous generation, who might have read Singer, Regan and Ryder. The names and core ideas might have been dropped, but the welfare position inspired by Singer’s utilitarian view, appears to be the most popular. Many are of the opinion that the cull is wrong because it does not have any effect leading to an end of bovine T.B. (Woodroffe 2015). This specifically is the logic of argument that Singer makes against animal experiments. Perhaps, like Singer, if they felt like there was a “necessity” for the cull or an experiment, they might relent and permit killing the badgers. This may explain the terrible conclusions of Barkham (2013), who, whilst showing admiration for badgers, does not oppose farmers culling badgers out of necessity in areas of T.B. infection.

The rights view of Regan is not widely subscribed to in the movement. It is complex to consider that there are many who are not vegetarian or vegan and still defend the rights of badgers. It emerged in May of 2015 that the Prince of Wales wrote letters in 2005, urging the then Prime Minister Tony Blair, for a badger cull to take place. Citing arguments to protect the rural economy, he said:

‘I, for one, cannot understand how the ‘badger lobby’ seem not to mind at all about the slaughter of thousands of expensive cattle, and yet object to a managed cull of an overpopulation of badgers – to me, this is intellectually dishonest.’

(Carrington, 2015).

The views of the prince are unsurprising, but his use of the words “overpopulation” is ludicrously exaggerated and inaccurate. The estimated population is quite low (Barkham 2013), but even if it was high, killing them

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is not justified. Importantly, he holds the view that the “badger lobby” are fine with killing cows too. There is clearly not a rights message being put across by the anti-cull movement against the killing of all individual nonhumans. Awareness of the plight of badgers has risen on the political agenda, but whether or not we can consider the badger a ‘visible’ animal, in the sense that O’Sullivan discussed, is complex. All the activism, demonstrations and sabotage has not coincided with a widespread paradigm of granting rights to wild and farmed animals.

2.7 Conclusion

This chapter has laid the philosophical groundwork for what is to come in later chapters, analysing the badger cull from an anti-speciesist, animal rights perspective. To me, it makes more sense to see an abolition of animal use on a basis of Regan’s animal rights theory. Granting basic equal rights to all individual “subjects of a life”, is a less arbitrary way of giving rights that establish the “no trespassing” signs, in order to prevent a trampling on the basic rights of moral patients and moral agents. Where Ryder felt that using the term “rights” was unconvincing, I disagree. Ryder may be doubtful of the ability to convince people that animals (and even humans) have inherent rights, but advances have been made since establishing legal protections of basic rights since the Age of Reason. Genocides of the past brought about conventions of human rights, on this basis of seeking to maintain basic human dignity, to avoid being used and disposed of as an object. The same should now be done for nonhumans too, as we would have for human moral patients (i.e. infants or the senile). Therefore, the best philosophy to follow for the anti-badger cull lobby should be an abolitionist one, with rights considered for badgers as equal subjects of a life.

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3.0 The Ideology of ‘Rural Economy’: Capitalism and the Cull

The political economy, which is determined by, and determines the socio-economic relationships wrapping around our daily lives, is analysed in this chapter, because the choices we make, from simple things like what we choose to eat and wear, end up effecting the lives of others. The progression of this chapter will be to first unveil patterns of consumption with theoretical explanations for the statistics, then secondly I will critique the government’s Department of Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) for their ideological framing of the cull, and thirdly, I will critique the National Farmers Union (NFU) which holds great sway in informing government decisions on justifying why culling the badgers has been deemed “necessary”. Overall, unpacking these three critical parts of the chapter will help guide the argument for abolishing animal use and shifting the anti-badger cull lobby to the position of arguing for animal rights.

3.1 How Death is Sold to Us

More than 9 out of 10 adults in the UK consume animal products, or otherwise make use of their derived “commodities” according to Defra (2014a). Producing these death commodities is the basis of capital production for the agricultural industry. This figure is important to know in context to the badger cull because the “rural economy“ and the government-led cull are very closely linked together. This will be analysed when discussing the NFU (National Farmers Union) and Defra (Department of Environment Food and Rural Affairs).

The origin of the animal products consumed by nine-tenths of humans the UK, comes from a suffering and sentient being. The public are not ignorant to this fact, as this high rate of animal consumption persists despite almost 40% of people feeling concerned about animal welfare, according to Defra (2014a). Rather than many people being ignorant to the suffering

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taking place for their meals, there is just an inconsistency between their concern about animal suffering and what they choose to buy. Concerns for the price of food was shown to come before animal welfare concerns in the report, but nevertheless, sales of products that were labelled as “free-range”, or with similar certificates of welfare standards consistently went up year by year, with a total of almost £2 billion spent in 2012. This shows the damaging effect of Singer’s utilitarian thinking about animals, because people are making fewer adjustments in their ways of living, choosing instead to buy products labelled as free-range. Critics of Singer, like Gary Francione would argue that this kind of labelling does not acknowledge that the lives of animals reared under “free-range” circumstances may still be subjected to cramped and stressful living conditions, and eventually suffer the same death as any other farm animal.

At this point, it is very useful to bring in Jean Baudrillard’s concept of the “disappearance of reality” from Simulacra and Simulation (1995), as Torres (2007) did in his Making a Killing work. Torres uses Baudrillard’s theory to show that there is an ideologically persuasive effect upon the “consumer”, showing an image of an increased level of welfare, becoming real in the mind, without knowing it as an empirical first-hand fact. The message of increased welfare is communicated to consumers through the media, without ever actually knowing the real experiences of the animal commodities and this helps to maintain nonhumans’ status as unworthy of rights. One may not need ask more about the life that the animal had lived. In a sense, methods of communication have changed dramatically since Baudrillard and even Torres’ writings, with the internet reducing the distance from knowledge about how animal products are produced, we should have seen a reduction in animal exploitation, but in our philosophical consideration of animals, there has been no such change. Arguably, this is because our material dependency on using animals has not changed. The exploitation of animals is allowed to take place because the production of meat and dairy is built upon the foundations of a strong separation between the production process and

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the purchaser, or as Marx (2004) called it, a deep “fetishisation” of the commodities.

Both Hegel and Marx believed that overcoming alienation was the way to achieve historical progress, but unlike Hegel, who believed that overcoming alienation was an individual struggle, Marx believed that overcoming alienation required the change in material conditions, and such a change could not be brought about by individuals. Thus, if we consider the “rural economy” as another word for the capitalist class in rural England, we can supersede their distorting alienation that is exploiting nonhumans (Marx, 2004).

Contrasting to traditional Marxism, the post-Marxist school of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe emphasised that society should be perceived as pluralist, and never as generalisable as Marx presented it to be (Laclau & Mouffe, 2001). Prescribing universal demands on the behalf of others is never going to lead to a desirable outcome for all the diverse and antagonising interests in society. What Laclau and Mouffe propose is a radical democracy, letting antagonising opponents learn to become civil, “agonistic” sides of a debate. The current hegemonic bubble which protects all the “rural” economic interests, instead of the subject interests of nonhumans, could be deflated if we chose to do so. Radical democracy might serve as a route to animal liberation, but those advocating it may be outnumbered until the 9 in 10 of people start to move on from speciesism.

3.2 Defra: Making Unpopular Policy

No department of the UK government is dedicated to animals. Whilst there are branches dedicated to animal welfare for food standards like FAWC (Farm Animal Welfare Committee) and for pet crime, like the RSPCA, there is not a department ensuring rights of animals to any acceptable extent. So it can be assumed that no important consideration is given to nonhumans for their own sake, but instead, issues related to animals are often bundled into

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environmental, agricultural or economic departments. The main policy makers (or ideology makers) to consider with the badger cull, is Defra, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. This department is not widely supported by environmentalists, nor animal rights/welfare groups, because instead of implementing protective policies for animals and the environment, Defra prioritises animals and the environment as resources for the agricultural industry. On top of this, Defra serves as a source of information to the public about nutrition, encouraging the public to continue consuming animal products.

When David Cameron remarked that the badger cull was probably one of his “most unpopular policies” (Damianyk 2013), much of the media seemed to agree. When defending the cull, Defra and the Prime Minister do not talk about the loss of lives, but the loss of livestock and money. Presenting the unpopular strategy in more appealing language, arguing that the safety of beef and dairy supplies must be maintained. It would blindly link one’s perception (as promoted by Defra) that healthy meat and dairy consuming diets can be put in danger due to the disease. This is despite the fact that bovine TB has not been transmitted to humans since the 1970s (Barkham, 2013), but nevertheless, the strategy report from Defra (2014b) still warns of the zoonosis risks of the disease.

Defra is aiming to have an officially TB free status (OTF) by 2038 (Defra, 2014b), and the badger cull is central to their plans. Owen Paterson, the former head of Defra, wrote in the 2014 strategy report that the methods used of surveillance to test and slaughter positive reactors to TB, along with a post-mortem surveillance at slaughter, has worked only in other EU countries and Scotland because they did not have a significant “reservoir of wildlife” infecting cattle herds. Therefore, the solution offered is to cull the wildlife.

With the “surveillance” strategy in 2013, one quarter of herds in the South West and West Midlands were placed under movement restrictions, 6.2 million bTB tests were administered, and 26,000 positively-reacting cattle

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were slaughtered. Post-mortem surveillance at slaughter often finds that slaughtered cows were actually TB free (Barkham 2013).

After much delay, the badger cull in winter 2013 was implemented, with fairly poor leadership shown by Owen Paterson, because the cull failed to meet the target of reducing 70% of the badger population in “hotspot” TB areas. Furthermore, the trial cullings were extended, costing more money than expected because the badger numbers were much higher than estimated. In an interview with the BBC (2013), after the cull trial had concluded, Paterson was accused by the interviewer of “moving the goalposts” because of the extension, to which Paterson replied that it was in fact the badgers who had “moved the goalposts”. The soundbite repeated and seemed more ridiculous every time it was quoted. The Political Scrapbook (2013) collated the most humorous responses from the Telegraph, the Huffington Post and campaigners Devon Against the Badger Cull.

3.3 The NFU’s Push for the Cull

In July 2014, Paterson was replaced as the Environment Secretary by Elizabeth Truss from the Department of Education. Upon taking her new position, the Conservative MP for South-West Norfolk zealously vowed to “use every tool in our toolbox” to tackle bovine TB (BBC, 2014), saying that she was determined to “press on” with the cull (Demianyk, 2014).

In an attempt to re-establish public support for Britain’s “rural economy”, Truss has led a focus on encouraging more young people to work as farmers and to buy more British food. She attempted to push this agenda as a benefit of cutting pollution from imports, but this point is easily found to be false when one realises that this extra food being produced is not intended for British people to eat, it is for selling abroad. Competing with other food producers around the world has been a top priority since taking over as head of the department.

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Support for the cull is largely not found in the public, but has instead been pushed by a network of small and large scale farmers under the National Farmer’s Union (NFU). These networks come together in an effort to protect their financial interests. As an industry, they have greater sway over policies that affect the rural economy than the anti-badger cull movement and the rest of the public. This was very visible on Tuesday 25 February 2014, when the National Farmers Union (NFU) held their annual conference at the International Conference Centre in Birmingham, with hundreds of attendees from around the country who are working agricultural sector as well as hosting representatives from both the Conservative and Labour parties (Davies, 2014).

The NFU at the time had been culling mostly in Gloucestershire and Somerset. Peter Kendall, the former head of the NFU who stepped down from his role the day after the Birmingham conference, said that:

‘I am confident […] that through the combined efforts of farmers, the NFU and government over the last year to illustrate the impact TB has on farms, and the scientific basis for badger control, more people than ever recognise the need to address the disease in badgers.’

(Saul, 2013).

It seems then, that wildlife gets in the way of making profit. He called for gassing and snaring to be used in the cull in order to meet the target of killing 70% of the population (Bowern, 2013). A three week extension period granted to cull the badgers, killing 90 extra badgers in Somerset, leading to a total of 940 during the total nine week period. In Gloucestershire, eight more weeks were granted to carry out the cull, but again the results were seen as a failure to kill enough badgers.

At the conference, a demonstration was held against this meeting and against the badger cull, with a gathering of hundreds of people. Many protesters at the conference in February 2014 were outraged simply at the

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cost of the cullings in a time of austerity and cuts to welfare spending. Others were vegan groups advocating the end of animal farming. Work done by the grassroots anti-cull supporters, the Vegan Organic Network, calling for stock free farms which do not exploit animals, has impressively built a network of thousands of farmers internationally, finding an alternative to the cruel and speciesist ways of farming.

One group not present at the conference demonstration were those farmers who oppose the cull. Surprisingly, some farmers feel misrepresented by the NFU. The NFU only represents 18% of the agricultural workforce with its 55,000 members, out of approximately 307,000 farmers (Gordon McGlone, 2013). Adam Quinney, Vice President of the NFU said they did not even ballot their members for their opinions on the badger cull. Defra’s Animal Health and Welfare Board of England (AHWBE) held a consultation with farmers and stakeholders which showed that there was no consensus for a badger cull. Farmers are concerned with the indiscriminate shooting of large numbers of badgers without first being identified as infected.

3.4 Conclusion

Not enough say is given to animals in Britain’s democracy. The first step to recognising inherent value in animals as moral patients is to deflate the hegemonic influence held by the rural economy and politics of meat and dairy production. The badgers are scapegoats, standing in the way of this production, leading farmers and politicians to dismiss the importance of their lives. They simply do not matter as much as producing capital. This disregard for wildlife became one of the most unpopular policies of the government, but this will not stop the cull. Acknowledging the workings of the economy, we can see the commodification of other living animals, which sheds light behind the ideology of the pro-cullers. Defra holds the hegemonic power of official information behind food in the UK as well, producing the information

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given to schools and also influencing the public on their shopping habits. Uncovering this ideological bias which favours of culling wildlife and protecting the rural economy, will aid in the progression towards the next chapter on how the cull is debated on “scientific” merits.

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4.0 The Scientific Debate: Cullers and Anti-Cullers

This chapter examines the ways in which objectivity of science is claimed by both those in favour of the badger cull, and those who campaign and argue against the cull. The laws protecting badgers which were analysed in the first chapter allow for killing of badgers to prevent the spread of diseases, but there has been a persistent dispute about the scientific truth that the cull would stop the spread of TB. The government and farmers’ groups insist that the cull would be the most effective way to have a TB free England, and the anti-cull movement looks to the randomised badger culling trial (RBCT) to argue that the science falsifies this claim. When the debate focuses so much on being scientifically right, there is no space to argue for the rights of the badgers not to be culled. Firstly the events of the cull so far will be assessed by looking at what the scientific objectives were, then the various methods of controlling bTB will be examined more in depth, looking also at who has chosen these methods and why. General opposition to the scientific position has come from two camps, the rural support of land “stewardship”, and those for animal rights.

4.1 The Cull So Far

Rosie Woodroffe of the Zoological Society of London, worked on a ten year study of badger culling, funded by the UK government, to establish how effective badger culling would be in preventing bTB. The trial concluded with a range of policy suggestions, but said that “badger culling cannot meaningfully contribute to the future control of cattle TB in Britain”, which was supported by many scientific peers, but was never universally accepted (Wilson et al, 2015). One surprising finding was how the cull could actually worsen the spread of the disease because of the perturbation effect, in which disruption to the badgers’ territorial behaviour encourages badgers from outside the cull zone to roam into the newly uninhabited setts, which gives

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more chances of interacting with infected badgers and cattle (Woodroffe, 2015). Any badgers that recolonised the cull zones afterwards would also be genetically disadvantaged, lacking any immunity to bovine TB from natural selection, worsening the spread of the disease.

After the findings of the RBCT emerged, Defra remained very suspicious, and they still needed to appease the NFU who blame the badgers for spreading the disease. Angered at the costs they face, the government has been heavily lobbied to do more to fight the spread of TB. The latest figures from the ONS (in Defra, 2015) says that the number of cattle compulsorily slaughtered as reactors or direct contacts was 8,936 during January to March 2015, compared to 8,820 during January to March 2014. Numbers have been rising and in total, between January 2008 and April 2014, 314,000 cattle were slaughtered because of bTB (Defra 2014b, tbfreeengland 2015).

Sir David Attenborough said about previous years’ cullings that the government was “ignoring science” by granting extension weeks. In response to such high profile criticisms, Owen Patterson, former head of Defra, said that there was nothing “absolutely right” in science (Demianyk, 2013). The statement he made is somewhat realistic in its perception of science. In contrast to this logic, some things cannot be proven absolutely wrong either. Indeed, rather than “ignoring” the science, Patterson was believing that the cull had not been proven absolutely wrong yet. One could compare this way of thinking to Karl Popper, the Austrian epistemologist who said that science was about problem solving, falsifying ideas to prove them wrong and revolutionising knowledge over and over again (Popper, 2002).

Part of the problem with implementing a scientific culling trial, however, is that wildlife cannot be strictly controlled like inanimate objects in a sterile laboratory. This is what Patterson may have meant when he said the badgers “moved the goalposts” (BBC News, 2013). With such unpredictability, the costs of the cull alongside the method of testing and slaughtering cattle continued to rise. At the same time, the desire to

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appease critics angered by the rise in spending on the cull, the government has been secretly researching the effects of new substances to poison badgers, as we shall see in the next section.

4.2 Cheaper Tests with Gassing

Since 1971, when the first badgers were found to have bovine TB, controversy and public debate about the killing of badgers has been a part of the political agenda. Although there was a decline of bTB infections in the 1980s, outbreaks of other animal diseases such as BSE (mad cow disease) and foot and mouth disease have led to mass slaughters of millions of other animals in Britain.

The first badger culls related to bTB took place in 1975 in Thornbury, where the badgers could be confined to a 40 square mile area between the Severn estuary and the M5 motorway. The intention was to prevent the perturbation effect of newly incoming badgers re-infecting the area. In these initial stages of the outbreak, the government decided to amend badger protection laws to allow licence holders to gas badger setts close to areas of infection. The poison used was a white powder called cymbal, which would produce hydrogen cyanide when exposed to water . This poison was placed in the entrance to a sett, regardless of whether or not the inhabitants were carrying the disease or not, and regardless of any other animals that may cross the path of the sett (Barkham 2013).

Whilst the gassing of badgers was considered a convenient way to implement the cull, but concerns were expressed for the preservation of other animals that were affected by the gassings. This was partly the reason for the ban on using of poisonous substances to cull badgers, instead, it was more favourable to use traps and shooting. Gassing was also considered very inhumane, as the poison was supposed to put the badgers to sleep, killing them quickly and painlessly. The problem was that this was not adequately tested, and the notion that gassing was somehow more humane was widely

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criticised. Furthermore, one could say, from a Reganite rights perspective, that the logic of preventing badgers from suffering in their deaths is flawed for skipping over any respect for the lives of badgers in the first place.

Although the method of culling badgers with gas became outlawed because of concerns about the substances not killing badgers fast enough to avoid them suffering, it has since emerged that Defra have been commissioning new tests with nitrogen-filled foam and carbon monoxide (Carrington 2015b). This news emerged because of a freedom of information request, the government indicated that these substances could be used on the entrances to badger setts, as a “humane” method of culling (Defra, 2014c).

4.3 The Vaccine

The government began using the licensed injectable vaccine BCG (Bacille Calmett-Guerin) in July 2010, giving 50% of funding for becoming a licensed vaccinator (AHVLA, 2013). Celebrities like Brian May and Steve Backshall backed campaigns to vaccinate, and the method seems to be more popular among ecologists and non-farmers. However, it seems peculiar of them to cite the RBCT as “good science”, because in the trial there were many badgers killed to reach the conclusion that killing badgers would have no effect, or worsen the spread of TB.

Wiping out the entire badger population is not planned in the cull, even if the NFU or any other interested persons wanted that to happen. It would enrage many of the people living in the south-west and damage the public opinion about the Conservative party’s governance, and it would contravene the Bern Convention, an EU treaty obliging Britain to conserve its native wildlife since 1982. Such treaties are the reason for setting a limit of culling to 70%, allowing 30% of the population to survive, keeping the species at limited numbers, avoiding risks to the wider ecosystems that could take

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place if the badgers were made virtually extinct in the south-western parts of England.

Without this limit to culling, there would be consequences for the insects and small animals that are preyed upon by the badgers. Many ecologists from organizations like Natural England, The Badger Trust, Humane Society International UK and Care for the Wild, raised a complaint to the Secretariat of the Bern Convention, concerned for the knock-on effects on ground-nesting and song birds, small mammals and many other wild creatures. The complaint also re-iterated a call for a vaccine for cattle to be permitted for use.

4.4 Two “Holistic” Approaches

After the government funded research into culling and then vaccinating, a new word emerged from the epidemiology paradigm: “holistic”. Although there has been two completely different meanings behind this word for scientists and the government.

Ian Boyd, a chief scientific advisor for Defra, claimed that there needed to be a “holistic approach” to solving the TB problem, using a more well-rounded approach with cullings and defensive bio-security measures. This can be seen as a reaction to the other “holistic approach” of the scientists who have changed their understanding of the epidemiology of bTB from an outright targeting of wildlife “reservoirs”, to the “holistic” approach, which seeks to control the disease with increased bio-security, alongside more badger vaccination.

The need for bio-security is important to stem the spread of TB, as cow herds can get infected if they are in proximity to other farms which have a history of TB, or when they come into contact with any other carriers of the disease, including wild and domestic animals. Increased biosecurity would involve spending money on fencing and raised feeding troughs, preventing the contact between badgers and cattle.

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4.5 Classic “Stewardship” Critique of Science

The defence of statistics can sometimes represent a technological domination over nature. When the government publishes figures on bovine TB for instance, they begin to perceive the disease as something controllable and preventable. However, official numbers are not always supported by farmers, who create their own epistemology and produce data to refute the official finding that culling badgers would actually increase the spread of TB. The farmers’ methods are usually based on day-to-day observation, and Enticott (2001) writes critically of their methods, referring to it as naive inductivism. However, the farmers claim to have real expert knowledge about nature from their daily observations, and even without scientific credibility, many support their claims. They point to the badgers as a homogenous group, and a single major cause of bTB, and their solution is to control the “unnaturally high” badger population. Enticott argues that this is an ineligible source of information for governing nature, and he promotes a more ecologically sensible approach that would look at improving bio-security, stopping intensive farming and improve the nutrition of dairy cows. In doing so however, he rules out the animal rights position. He argues that governments should not privilege scientific methods and numerical approaches, and utilise a more sensible ecological stance, like the EFBG as a more moral approach to natural governance. However, such an organization would still promote anthropocentric thinking about badgers and cows:

‘They [badgers] play an important ecological role… if you do not like wasps, for example, you should certainly be a friend of badgers because they are extremely good and proficient at digging up wasps’ nests. They eat a lot of things and that causes an ecological function’

(Simon Lyster, Director General of the Wildlife Trusts, in SCA, 1999, p.537-8).

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This is the method way of thinking that convinced Barkham (2013) as he concludes that the best way to stem the problem is to allow farmers to do the culling and have “stewardship” of the land. If we were to allow for this farmers’ vigilante patrol of the countryside, the laws protecting badgers would need to be changed. Some have speculated that the badgers are being demonised and persecuted by farmers.

Illegal badger killings have taken place in Yorkshire and elsewhere. With or without knowing that the badgers are a protected species, there are people shooting badgers, blocking or poisoning setts. One possible explanation, other than it being the typical barbarism referred to in chapter one, of the kind of rural “sport” that exists of hunting and baiting; there may be an increase in people perceiving badgers as pests which are spreading TB. One such report of incident in Derbyshire of a badger being beaten with a spade and left mutilated is particularly gruesome (BBC, 2015), but sadly not uncommon. Dominic Dyer, CEO of the Badger Trust, believes the badger cull has been increasing cases of illegal persecution of badgers across the country. With increased attention surrounding the badger cull, there does not seem to be an increased awareness of the actual disease. Talk of land and animal “stewardship” may surely be on the rise because of the scientific debate around the cull and its real and perceived failings. This could prove dangerous not just for the animals being targetted and killed, but for the risk it has in further worsening the spread of bTB, as research from the Queen’s University Belfast has found (Bovine Veterinarian, 2015).

4.6 The Animal Rights Critique

The arrogance of believing that the cull can control the natural spread of disease is as fallible as constantly controlling the lives of cows for indefinite food production. In calling for an end to the cull, those advocating a vaccine must carefully consider their wording and arguments. The ethical

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consequences of demanding a vaccine for TB should be perceived as a matter of rights. Otherwise, vaccination of badgers and cattle can still be used as a way to protect the agricultural interests in dairy production. There needs to be what Brian May called a “common decency” towards animals, but May’s lobby does not inspire others to have the “common decency” to boycott dairy and other animal products, even if many in the anti-cull movement would choose to do so. Rather than continuing to implore the government to end the cull because of scientific evidence, the anti-cull movement should call to an end of animal cruelty, both wild and farmed. Without this, the government reaches the conclusion of a “holistic approach” and the farmers rebel against the government’s experiments with their own persecution of badgers.

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5.0 Implications of a Failed Movement

This chapter concludes the argument for an end to the badger cull on an animal rights basis with an analysis of current events surrounding the issue. There are four separate parts to the chapter: the first part looks at the current extent of bovine TB and how the government plans to appease unhappy farmers. The second part explains how the cull is being carried out, and what legal challenges are set to be led by Brian May’s Save Me organization. The third part looks deeply at the conditions of licensing the cull and the definitions of “humane” culling. Finally, the fourth part forecasts an expansion of government culling to take place in years to come.

5.1 Over Spilled Milk

In July and August 2015, dairy farmers in England began staging demonstrations in supermarkets across the country, protesting against the low prices being charged for the milk that they produce. During their demonstrations they led herds of cows down the aisles and took all the milk out of the fridges and abandoned shopping trolleys full of milk at the check-out tills (Farmers for Action, 2015). Their actions aimed to showcase the insecurity of working in the dairy industry were criticised by anti-cull groups online as unsafely moving cattle without biosecurity measures in place and putting the cows at risk in an environment they might be fearful of. Retailers reacted by declaring fairer price increases to satisfy to dairy farmers. As a national campaign, it may not have just reflected the actions of dairy farmers residing in the culling-zones from the south-west of England, but anti-cull groups were right to criticise the thoughtlessness of the farmer’s actions.

Nevertheless, such a protest can be compared with the demonstrations which anti-cull groups held in May 2015 against the coffee chain Cafe Nero. The protests called for the company to stop sourcing their milk from farms within the cull-zone, in order to boycott the farmers killing badgers. Fearful of

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losing customers willing to join the boycott against them, Cafe Nero, for a brief period, did source their milk from farmers outside of the culling-zone (Elliot, Mohammad, 2015). However, this decision was soon reversed. During this episode, there seemed to be little criticism made against these anti-cullers, who were satisfied that the coffee chain had changed its source of milk, but they were not asking them to completely stop using milk. They may not have done this because they thought that it would be impossible to ever happen; that a coffee chain would suddenly stop serving dairy, but in compromising, they serve little purpose apart from gaining the attention of the media.

5.2 Government Measures for an OTF Goal

The criticism of the farmers actions to lead herds down supermarket aisles as unsafe for biosecurity leads this chapter into analysing what measures the government has placed on farmers’ cattle herds to curb the disease. Whilst this has already been briefly looked at in chapter three, this section goes into more detail.

Whilst Scotland currently has an OTF status, meaning that M. Bovis outbreaks have not gone above a rate of 0.1%, and that at least 99.9% of herds within Scotland have been free from bTB for at least six years, England still has regular outbreaks of the disease in certain areas and the government has plans to reach the same OTF status as Scotland (Defra 2015). All EU member states are all required to have bTB eradication plans in place (Defra 2015), even though one could criticise this stance as running contradictory to the European Bern Convention on protecting native wildlife, as one controversial measure to combat the disease in focus would cull England’s protected badgers. Despite this, other European countries have not made any criticisms of UK wanting to cull badgers.

The national statistics of bTB incidents in cattle herds are published monthly by Defra, and refer to three different types of epidemiological areas

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in England: low risk, edge areas, and high risk. Each of these categories are given different disease control strategies. The low risk areas, least at risk of bovine TB, such as East England, North and South East, will have cattle herds routinely tested every four years and less restriction on movement. Whenever there is a herd infection in low risk areas, it is usually blamed on movements of undetected or infected cattle, coming in from other areas of England where the disease is more prevalent. The edge risk areas have varying rates of bTB outbreaks. Areas such as Derbyshire, Cheshire, Warwickshire and Hampshire may occasionally have restrictions on movement and more frequent testing and slaughtering of infected cattle. Finally, the high risk areas, including in the West Midlands and South-West England, which have had more prevalent rates of infection, will conduct regular tuberculin testing and slaughtering of infected cattle. Defra’s statistical analysis also points to local wildlife as a reservoir source of the disease, and advises annual culling followed by more regular herd testing.

When an animal in a herd tests positive for bTB, the whole herd is put under movement restrictions until the remaining animals are repeatedly tested with negative results. The UK government is concerned about this because it can mean restrictions to trade with cattle in Europe as well as stress for the local economy.

5.3 We Have All Been Sett Up

As the cull is due to take place again for a third year in Somerset and Gloucestershire, Natural England have announced that it has licensed an expansion of the cull to Dorset. On 22 June 2015, unnamed individuals from Dorset applied for a licence to trap and kill badgers for the purpose of preventing the spread of bovine Tuberculosis. This was accepted on 28 August 2015 in a letter which was published on the same day in a redacted form (Natural England, 2015). Badger lobby groups reacted immediately,

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outraged and criticising the decision, particularly because the number of new bTB outbreaks in cattle herds in Dorset fell from 74 to 59 between 2014 and 2015.

There are different approaches that the government are taking to curb the spread of bTB; Culling is going to be implemented in the “high risk” areas and vaccination is supported in the “edge” areas of low-risk. Somerset will have a cull with a very wide-ranging minimum and maximum number of badgers to kill, between 55 and 524, Gloucestershire will have between 265 and 679 badgers killed (Defra, 2015).

Understanding the limits of badgers’ protected legal status, as was looked at in chapter one, has been important to evaluate the legality of the cull. Challenging the legality of the cull by using the Protection of Badgers Act of 1992 is currently the strategy being used by Brian May and his Save Me trust. Just before the 2015 cull was confirmed, Save Me announced that they would to take Defra and Natural England to the High Court for granting licences to kill badgers, despite having no basis of actually preventing the spread of disease, which the legislation protecting badgers allows for. In an online statement for Save Me, Anne Brummer explained that: "To continue the culling of badgers is unlawful as it does not rationally serve the statutory purpose which permits the killing of badgers only to achieve the aim of preventing the spread of disease" (Save Me Trust, 2015). This is a good point to prevent the cull, by showing that it would be breaking the law by killing badgers without actually preventing the spread of any disease, however, two issues can be found in this position: firstly, the interpretation of the legislation may allow for any attempted prevention of disease, rather than any actual halting of the disease. They may simply allow the cull to proceed despite scientific evidence. Secondly, as chapter four has already explained, Save Me’s argument itself, is focused too much on the aspect of the disease, and not on the rights of the badgers not to be killed. Although Save Me's actions were commended by vets in England, who agree that the cull is

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inhumanely shooting badgers at great expense, but if they were to lose their case in court, it may be a disservice to the badgers (McGill et. al. 2015).

5.4 Conditions of Humaneness

Licences in each county have been approved on the grounds of having sufficient funds to complete the cull, having specific dates over a period of six weeks (the specific dates were not announced publicly), and that there is access to cull at least 70% of the total land area. A minimum number of badgers to be killed in Dorset is 615, and the maximum reaches 835 (Natural England, 2015). The method and time of killing permitted in the Dorset cull is live-capture cage trapping and humane dispatch of trapped badgers by shooting between 1 June - 30 November, as well as the free range shooting of badgers between 1 June - 31 January each year. The licence published gives the end date of 30 November 2018, but Dorset cullers are only allowed to shot between those autumn and winter months. In the licence’s general conditions, rule 6 states that “all reasonable precautions must be taken to ensure that no badger is subjected to unnecessary suffering”.

Traps set overnight must be checked as soon as possible after dawn and before midday. Once captured, “all reasonable steps must be taken to ensure that such animals are dispatched swiftly and humanely”, according to condition 13 of the licence. The licence is written with the clinical word “dispatch”, which they use to take the blood out of the concept of killing the animal, and the description of the specific bullets used is “reduced hazard”. Should a licensee fail to comply with the conditions of the licence, he (the licence published is addressed only to Sirs) would be committing an offence under the Protection of Badgers Act of 1992. Breaking the conditions could therefore mean a £5000 fine and a six month custodial sentence, as is the

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maximum punishment on a normal basis without the licence. This is the extent to humaneness that badgers are given.

The British Veterinary Association has said that the UK government should ban free shooting of badgers at night, judging that it would be more humane to trap them before shooting them, and that if you are going to trap them, you may as well vaccinate them, as the Welsh administration is doing (Barkham, 2015). Although the BVA acknowledge that they may as well vaccinate if it would be more humane to cage the badgers before shooting them, this does not mean that they are recognising that death is a harm. As Regan says, ’It is sometimes said that so long as animals are put to death painlessly, so long as they do not suffer as they die, we should have no moral objection […] It assumes that the only harm we can do to animals is to cause them to suffer’ (Regan 2004, pp.99-100). Indeed we should have a moral objection. Regan is right for saying that death is the ultimate and irreversible harm, and the BVA are not making an animal rights statement with their recommendations, merely a welfarist one.

5.5 The Cull at Warp Speed

To achieve an OTF status, the UK government has a 25 year plan to eradicate bTB from England, as chapter three and four mentioned. Defra announced simultaneously alongside the confirmation of the 2015 culls, that there would be consultations into allowing the compulsory testing of all cattle entering even the low-risk areas, reducing the minimum area required to start a cull, and a call to “control” more wild, non-bovine animals carrying the disease, such as deer, pigs and goats (Defra 2015).

In support of a more robust and strong cull, like the one described above, the farming minister, George Eustice, said that: “England has the highest incidence of TB in Europe and that is why we are taking strong action to deliver our 25-year strategy to eradicate the disease and protect the

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future of our dairy and beef industries” (Defra 2015). This rhetoric is unfortunately expected as chapter three has shown, because protecting the so-called “rural economy”, instead of animals, is not only considered beneficial to farmers, but it has also been made a top priority on behalf of “consumers” in the wider market, or wider society.

As well as reinforcing a stronger cull, the government are taking softer measures to help the farmers make wiser investments when buying new cattle. Defra has published an online mapping tool, helping to show where bTB incidents have occurred over the last five years, and this could prevent farmers losing money. It can also be thought of as preventing farmers from being deterred from the volatile farming industry, where the cows they buy may become destroyed and where supermarket prices of their commodities have fallen below a comfortable level of profit.

5.6 Conclusion

This chapter has drawn together ideas from chapters one to four to reveal connections of law making, philosophy, political economy and epistemology that surround the issue of the badger cull. The first part compared the demonstrations of farmers in supermarkets over the unfair prices of milk, with the anti-cull boycotts, criticising both for their advocation of dairy consumption.

The second part explained government’s plans of eradicating bTB, and the third explained the legal challenged proposed against these plans by one of the biggest anti-cull lobbies, Save Me. The lobby plans to stop the cull by challenging the cull on the grounds that it would be breaking the law due to a lack of evidence to show that culling would prevent the spread of bTB. This was found problematic, as the outcome of a lost legal challenge may cement opportunities for future cullings to take place. Fourthly, conditions of reassuring the culls would take place in a “humane” fashion were discredited

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on the basis that killing is a harm. Changing killing language to euphemisms like “dispatching” was seen as a way of appearing to comply with a legacy of welfarist legal standards, which have been criticised throughout this dissertation. The fifth part showed how meanwhile, the culls are proposed to be carried out in a faster and more widespread way.

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Conclusion

What has been conveyed in this dissertation is a need to revise the anti-badger cull movement, to bring it closer to a theory of animal rights that would respect the rights of badgers and all other nonhumans, in the same way as the rights of humans should be respected. Recognising that all individual animals have rights, whether they happen to live protected in the wild, or live currently in captivity to be reared for food, will come at the same time as realising the necessity for veganism and anti-speciesism. This has been the desired effect of chapters one to five, which will be summarised here.

In chapter one, the progression of welfare laws showed categorisation between different animals, such as wild, domestic and farmed animals, and discussed them as an issue of discriminating and sometimes contradictory consideration of animals. Speciesist bias for the interests of humans over animals when they come into conflict with one another was identified as the cause of limited animal protections.

Chapter two expanded upon how limits to legal protections became established because of the philosophical roots of animal rights. In comparing the philosophies of Singer, Ryder and Regan, Regan’s philosophy of inherent value, respecting individuals, human or nonhuman, was favoured, above the utilitarianism of Singer and the Painism of Ryder.

Chapter three criticised the immorality of placing the rural economy above the rights of animal “subjects of a life”. Defra and the NFU were in focus for their economic arguments in favour of culling. Defra, lead public awareness and education, misinforming them completely. The NFU concern themselves with preserving the profit making of their industry, but misrepresent themselves as speaking on behalf of all English farmers.

Chapter four showcased how both sides of the culling debate claimed to have the right and reason of science. This is the crucial flaw in the anti-cull movement’s actions and public message.

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Finally, the fifth chapter on the current implications of a failed anti-badger cull movement did not place all blame on the lobbyists and popular protest movements, it also depicted the real balancing of performative politics of a government wanting to give vested interest parties an illusion of taking action against TB. Farmers, angered at their lowering incomes are also pressuring the government to take stronger action against “reservoirs” of TB, in order to protect their investments in livestock.

In conclusion, a revised theoretical understanding of the status of badgers should be the new goal of the anti-cull movement, in order to boldly stand against speciesism. Without this, science, economics and practical arguments will all fall through to the side of culling badgers, and pave the way for persecution of other animals.

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