British writer George Monbiot has a warning for those of us trying to grasp the new political realities in the US and the UK.

“We have no hope of understanding what is coming until we understand how the dark money network operates”, he wrote in the Guardian.

Corporate America may have been slow to warm up to Donald Trump, but once Trump secured the nomination, “the big money began to recognize an unprecedented opportunity”, Monbiot wrote.

“His incoherence was not a liability, but an opening: his agenda could be shaped. And the dark money network already developed by some American corporations was perfectly positioned to shape it.”

This network, or dark money ATM as Mother Jones described it, refers to the vast amount of hard-to-trace money flowing from arch-conservative billionaires, such as Charles and David Koch and allies, and corporations into front groups that promote extreme free-market ideas – for example, fights against public schools, unions, environmental protection, climate change policies and science that threatens corporate profits.

Investigative writers Jane Mayer, Naomi Oreskes, Erik Conway and others have exposed how “the story of dark money and the story of climate change denial are the same story: two sides of the same coin”, as US Senator Sheldon Whitehouse described it last year in a speech.

The strategies of the “Koch-led, influence-buying operation” – including propaganda operations that spin science with no regard for the truth – “are probably the major reason we don’t have a comprehensive climate bill in Congress”, Whitehouse said.

While these strategies have been well-tracked in the climate sphere, less reported is the fact that the funders behind climate-science denial also bankroll a network of PR operatives who have built careers spinning science to deny the health risks of toxic chemicals in the food we eat and products we use every day.

The stakes are high for our nation’s health. Rates of childhood cancer are now 50% higher than when the ‘war on cancer’ began decades ago, and the best weapon is one we are hardly using: policies to limit exposure to cancer-causing chemicals.

“If we want to win the war on cancer, we need to start with the thousand physical and chemical agents evaluated as possible, probable or known human carcinogens by the International Agency for Research on Cancer of the World Health Organization”, wrote scientist and author Devra Lee Davis, PhD, MPH, in The Hill.

Reducing known agents of harm has had “less to do with science, and more to do with the power of highly profitable industries that rely on public relations to counteract scientific reports of risks”, Davis noted.

Chemical industry propagandists

When products important to the chemical and junk food industries run into trouble with science, a predictable cast of characters and groups appear on the scene, using well-worn media strategies to bail out corporations in need of a PR boost.

Their names and the tactics they use – lengthy adversarial articles, often framed by personal attacks – will be familiar to many scientists, journalists and consumer advocates who have raised concerns about toxic products over the past 15 years.

Public records requests by US Right to Know that have unearthed thousands of documents, along with recent reports by Greenpeace, The Intercept and others, are shining new light on this propaganda network.

Key players include Jon Entine, Trevor Butterworth, Henry I. Miller and groups connected with them: STATS, Center for Media and Public Affairs, Genetic Literacy Project, Sense About Science and the Hoover Institute.

Despite well-documented histories as PR operatives, Entine, Butterworth and Miller are presented as serious science sources on many media platforms, appearing in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, Philadelphia Enquirer, Harvard Business Review and, most often, Forbes – without disclosure of their funding sources or agenda to deregulate the polluting industries that promote them.

Their articles rank high in Google searches for many of the chemical and junk food industry’s top messaging priorities – pushing the narratives that GMOs, pesticides, plastic chemicals, sugar and sugar substitutes are safe, and anyone who says otherwise is ‘anti-science’.

In some cases, they are even gaining in influence as they align with establishment institutions such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Cornell University and the University of California, Davis.

Yet their funding sources trace back to the same ‘ultra free market’ ideologues from oil, pharmaceutical and chemical fortunes who are financing climate science denial – Searle Freedom Trust, Scaife Foundations, John Templeton Foundation and others identified as among the largest and most consistent funders of climate change-denial groups, according to a 2013 study by Drexel University sociologist Robert Brulle, PhD.

Those seeking to understand the dark money network’s policy goals for dismantling health protections for our food system would do well to keep an eye on these modern propagandists and their messaging.

Jon Entine – Genetic Literacy Project / STATS

Jon Entine, a former journalist, presents himself as an objective authority on science. Yet ample evidence suggests he is a longtime public relations operative with deep ties to chemical companies plagued with questions about health risks.

Over the years, Entine has attacked scientists, professors, funders, lawmakers and journalists who have raised concerns about fracking, nuclear power, pesticides and industrial chemicals used in baby bottles and children’s toys.

A 2012 Mother Jones story by Tom Philpott describes Entine as an “agribusiness apologist“, and Greenpeace details his history on their Polluter Watch website.

Entine is now director of the Genetic Literacy Project, a group that promotes genetically engineered foods and pesticides. The site claims to be neutral, but “it’s clearly designed to promote a pro-industry position and doesn’t try to look neutrally at the issues”, said Michael Hansen, PhD, senior scientist at Consumers Union.

“The message is that genetic engineering is good and anybody who criticizes it is a horrible ideologue, but that’s just not indicative of where the scientific debate actually is.”

Entine claims, for example, that the “scientific consensus on GMO safety is stronger than for global warming” – a claim contradicted by the World Health Organization, which states it is not possible to make general statements about GMO safety, and by hundreds of scientists who have said there is no scientific consensus on GMO safety.

The Genetic Literacy Project also has not been transparent about its connections to Monsanto. As one example, the site published several pro-GMO academic papers that emails later revealed were assigned to professors by a Monsanto executive who provided talking points for the papers and promised to pump them out all over the internet.

Another example: Genetic Literacy Project partners with Academics Review on the Biotechnology Literacy Project, pro-industry conferences that train scientists and journalists on how to “best engage the GMO debate with a skeptical public.”

Academics Review, which published a report in 2014 attacking the organic industry, presents itself as an independent group, but emails revealed it was set up with the help of a Monsanto executive who promised to find funding “while keeping Monsanto in the background so as not to harm the credibility of the information.” Emails also showed that Academics Review co-founder Bruce Chassy had been receiving undisclosed funds from Monsanto via the University of Illinois Foundation.

So who funds Genetic Literacy Project and Entine?

According to their website, the bulk of funding comes from two foundations – Searle and Templeton – identified in the Drexel study as leading funders of climate-science denial. The site also lists funding from the Winkler Family Foundation and “pass through support for University of California-Davis Biotech Literacy Bootcamp” from the Academics Review Charitable Association.

Previous funding sources also include climate science denial supporters and undisclosed pass-through funding.

The Genetic Literacy Project and Entine previously operated under the umbrella of Statistical Assessment Services (STATS), a group located at George Mason University, where Entine was a fellow at the Center for Health and Risk Communication from 2011-2014.

STATS was funded largely by the Scaife Foundation and Searle Freedom Trust between 2005 and 2014, according to a Greenpeace investigation of STATS funding.

Kimberly Dennis, the president and CEO of Searle Freedom Trust, is also chairman of the board of Donors Trust, the notorious Koch-connected dark money fund whose donors cannot be traced. Under Dennis’ leadership, Searle and Donors Trust sent a collective $290,000 to STATS in 2010, Greenpeace reported.

In 2012 and 2013, STATS received loans from its sister organization, the Center for Media and Public Affairs, which received donations during those years from the George Mason University Foundation, which does not disclose funding sources.

Entine has at times tried to distance himself and GLP from these groups; however, tax records show Entine was paid $173,100 by the Center for Media and Public Affairs for the year ending June 30, 2015.

By 2014, emails show, Entine was trying to find a new home for Genetic Literacy Project, and wanted to establish a “more formal relationship” with the University of California, Davis, World Food Center. He became a Senior Fellow at the school’s Institute for Food and Agricultural Literacy and now identifies as a former fellow. GLP is now under the umbrella of a group called the Science Literacy Project.

Entine said he would not respond to questions for this story.

Trevor Butterworth – Sense About Science USA / STATS

Trevor Butterworth has been a reliable industry messenger for many years, defending the safety of various risky products important to the chemical and junk food industries, such as phthalates, BPA, vinyl plastic, corn syrup, sugary sodas and artificial sweeteners.

From 2003 to 2014, Butterworth was an editor at STATS, funded largely by Scaife Foundation and Searle Freedom Trust. In 2014, he became the founding director of Sense About Science USA and folded STATS into that group.

A recent exposé by Liza Gross in The Intercept described Sense About Science, its director Tracey Brown, Butterworth, STATS and the founders of those groups as “self-appointed guardians of sound science” who “tip the scales toward industry.”

Sense About Science “purports to help the misinformed public sift through alarming claims about health and the environment” but “has a disturbing history of promoting experts who turn out to have ties to regulated industries”, Gross wrote.

“When journalists rightly ask who sponsors research into the risks of, say, asbestos, or synthetic chemicals, they’d be well advised to question the evidence Sense About Science presents in these debates as well.”

Sense About Science USA posted this response to the piece, and Butterworth said via email he was “disappointed with the Intercept’s misleading article, which lumped people and organizations with no connection to Sense About Science USA together.” He said his group takes no corporate funding and is legally independent from the UK Sense About Science.

He also said, “I have never been involved in industry messaging campaigns – in any capacity, paid or not.”

STATS ‘funded by public policy organizations that promote deregulation’

Some journalists have concluded otherwise. Reporters at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, The Atlantic and Consumer Reports portrayed Butterworth as a key player in the chemical industry’s aggressive PR efforts to defend the chemical BPA.

In 2009, journalists Susanne Rust and Meg Kissinger of the Journal Sentinel described Butterworth as BPA’s “most impassioned” defender, and an example of “chemical industry public relations writers” who do not disclose their affiliations.

STATS, they wrote, “claims to be an independent media watchdog” but “is funded by public policy organizations that promote deregulation.” Its sister organization, the Center for Media and Public Affairs, “has a history of working for corporations trying to deflect concerns about the safety of their products.” Butterworth said his reporting on BPA reflected the evidence at the time from authoritative sources, and STATS posted responses here and here to the critical reporting.

A more recent example of how Butterworth’s writings played a key role in corporate lobby efforts to discredit troublesome science can be seen in his work on the controversial artificial sweetener sucralose.

In 2012, Butterworth wrote a Forbes article criticizing a study that raised concerns about the cancer risk of sucralose. He described the researchers, Dr. Morando Soffritti and the Ramazzini Institute, as “something of a joke.”

In 2016, a food industry front group featured Butterworth’s 2012 article and “something of a joke” critique in a press release attacking a new Soffritti “panic study” that raised concerns about sucralose. Reporters at The Independent, the Daily Mail, The Telegraph and Deseret News picked up Butterworth’s quotes discrediting the researchers, and identified him only as a reporter from Forbes.

Similarly, in 2011, Butterworth was a featured expert at the International Sweeteners Association Conference, and quoted in their press release claiming there is “no evidence of a risk to health” from sucralose, and identified him as a “journalist who regularly contributes to the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal.”

Emails obtained by USRTK show that Coca Cola VP Rhona Applebaum described Butterworth to the leaders of the Global Energy Balance Network – a Coca-Cola front group working to spin the science on obesity – as “our friend“ and a journalist who was “ready and able“ to work with them. Butterworth said he never worked with that group.

Butterworth is now affiliated with Cornell University as a visiting fellow at the Cornell Alliance for Science, a group launched in 2014 with a Gates Foundation grant to promote GMOs. The Gates-funded group now partners with Sense About Science USA on a workshop to teach young scientists to “Stand Up for Science“.

Sense About Science USA also runs public engagement workshops for scientists at such venues as the University of Washington, University of Pittsburg, Carnegie Melon, Rockefeller University, Caltech and University of Massachusetts, Boston.

Henry I. Miller – Hoover Institution

Henry I. Miller, MD, a fellow at the Hoover Institution, is one of the most prolific defenders of genetically engineered foods and fiercest opponents of labeling them. He has penned numerous attacks on the organic industry, including “The Colossal Hoax of Organic Agriculture” (Forbes), “Organic Farming is Not Sustainable” (Wall Street Journal) and “The Dirty Truth About Organic Produce” (Newsweek).

Miller has also written in defense of bee-harming pesticides, plastic chemicals and radiation from nuclear power plants, and has repeatedly argued for the reintroduction of DDT. He did not respond to requests to comment for this story.

Unlike Butterworth and Entine, Miller has a science background and government credentials: he is a medical doctor and was the founding director of the FDA’s office of biotechnology.

Like Butterworth and Entine, Miller’s funding comes from groups that finance climate science denial – the Hoover Institute’s top funder is the Sarah Scaife Foundation, and the group has also taken money from the Searle Freedom Trust, Exxon Mobil, American Chemistry Council, Charles Koch Foundation and Donors Trust.

Like the founders of STATS and Sense About Science, Miller also has ties to the tobacco industry PR campaigns. In a 1994 PR strategy memo for the tobacco company Phillip Morris, Miller was referred to as “a key supporter” of the global campaign to fight tobacco regulations. In 2012, Miller wrote that nicotine “is not particularly bad for you in the amounts delivered by cigarettes or smokeless products.”

Miller is also a member of the ‘scientific advisory board’ of the George C. Marshall Institute, which is famous for its oil and gas industry funded denials of climate change, and a former trustee of the American Council on Science and Health, which “depends heavily on funding from corporations that have a financial stake in the scientific debates it aims to shape”, according to Mother Jones.

The ‘evil empire’ of organic food

Perhaps recognizing that pontificating men aren’t the best sources to influence the women who buy food, Miller has recently been sharing bylines with female protégés who have joined his attacks on health advocates and organic farmers.

Examples include a co-authored piece with Kavin Senapathy, co-founder of a group that tries to disrupt speaking events of GMO critics, headlined “Screw the Activists“; and one with Julie Kelly, a cooking instructor whose husband is a lobbyist for the agribusiness giant ADM, describing organic agriculture as an “evil empire.”

Recent work by Kelly includes a piece in National Review casting doubt on climate science researchers, and an article in The Hill calling on Congress to defund the International Agency for Research on Cancer, which she accused of “cancer collusion” and “using shoddy science to promote a politically motivated agenda.”

As we enter the fifth decade of losing the war on cancer, and as climate instability threatens ecosystems and our food system, it’s time to unravel the network of science deniers who claim the mantle of science and expose them for what they are: propagandists who do the dirty work of industry.

Stacy Malkan is co-founder and co-director of the nonprofit public watchdog group US Right to Know. She is author of ‘Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry’, a co-founder of the national Campaign for Safe Cosmetics and a former newspaper publisher.

New rules coming into force today will make it virtually impossible to bring a public interest case – like ClientEarth’s air pollution challenge – to protect the environment.

The new rules weaken financial protection for people or organisations bringing a case against the government, meaning they risk having to pay the government’s full, unlimited legal costs in return for going to court to protect the environment.

The current rules cap the costs that individuals, community groups and environmental groups have to pay on losing a case against a public body. These caps are currently £5,000 for individuals and £10,000 in all other cases.

But under the new rules, claimants will have to provide the court with information about their personal finances when applying for Judicial Review. Even if judges decide to set a ‘cap’, or upper limit, on the costs that litigants could be held liable for during the proceedings, they will be able to increase the cap at any stage.

The change in rules therefore makes it impossible for public interest litigants to know how much a case will cost from the start. Individual campaigners and charities could therefore find themselves facing costs of tens or even hundreds of thousands of pounds for a High Court action.

Costs would only increase if they were to appeal an unfavourable initial judgment to higher courts. Even a High Court win could prove disastrous: if it were to be appealed by the government, they might be unable to afford to defend it given the enormous potential costs of litigation in the Court of Appeal, and the Supreme Court.

The could then be forced to abandon their case, and be held liable for the government’s costs to date, even if they were actually winning the case up to that point.

Legal proceedings launched against ‘unlawful’ rules

In response ClientEarth, Friends of the Earth and the RSPB have applied in the High Court for a judicial review against the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice to challenge what the organisations believe to be “unlawful” new costs rules for environmental cases.

The High Court will decide whether to grant permission to proceed with an application for JR in the coming months. In a joint statement, the three groups said:

“Charities and NGOs are the main way people can mount an effective challenge to government decisions. We represent lots of concerned individuals who have chosen to pool their resources with us so we can defend nature on their behalf. We are an alliance of thousands of individual citizens who would otherwise lack the means and resources to take an issue to court. Access to justice, on equal terms, is everyone’s right.”

Last week, the House of Lords statutory instruments committee, which reviewed the rules, concluded:

“Although the MoJ states that its policy intention is to introduce greater certainty into the regime, the strongly negative response to consultation and the submission received indicate the reverse outcome and that, as a result of the increased uncertainty introduced by these changes, people with a genuine complaint will be discouraged from pursuing it in the courts.” 

This finding supports the view of campaigners that government’s new rules will make it prohibitively difficult for individuals and environmental groups to bring environmental cases of wide public interest. This includes cases like ClientEarth’s challenge against the UK government over toxic air pollution.

Government violating international obligations

A UN committee charged with reviewing access to the court in the UK also criticised the new rules in a report released last Friday (24th February), saying the government “has not yet fulfilled the requirements” specified in an earlier decision as a signatory of the European ‘access to justice law’, the Aarhus Convention.

It also demands that the UK government, by 1st April 2017, report on “the outcomes of England and Wales cross-government review, together with any other actions it has by then taken, or proposes to take, to ensure that the allocation of costs in all court procedures … subject to article 9 is fair and equitable and not prohibitively expensive.”

This information can be used by the court or the defendant to argue that the costs cap can be increased – or even removed altogether – at any stage in the proceedings. “This makes it impossible for people to know how much a case will cost from the start and could force them to withdraw proceedings”, say the three groups, “but not before being exposed to very high costs.”

“Not only is this a huge disincentive to bringing a public interest environmental case. We also believe it breaches EU and international laws on access to justice to which the UK is Party.”

The post-Brexit situation is looking complex. The Aarhus Convention, to which the UK is signatory, is separate to the EU treaties from which Britain is to withdraw, and will continue to apply. However its enforcement mechanisms against miscreant states are weak.

Separate EU laws, enforceable through the European Court of Justice (ECJ), may become void post-Brexit if the domestic laws that reflect them are repealed. Even of they are not repealed, however, the ECJ will lose its final jurisdiction.

Oliver Tickell is contributing editor at The Ecologist.

Giant portions of public spending are now at risk of pouring down a nuclear power black hole as calls for the Government to make direct investments into new nuclear power plant intensify.

Ultimately the sums at risk would be much larger than the Government’s own estimates of the cost of the Trident nuclear weapons system.

Former Minister and House of Commons Energy Committee Chair Tim Yeo is the latest to call for the Government to take ‘minority’ equity shares in new nuclear projects.

There has been a flurry of such demands in the wake of the near bankruptcy of Toshiba, who spearhead the 3GW proposed plant at Moorside in Cumbria. The company now appears likely to seek Chapter 11 bankruptcy for its US nuclear subsidiary Westinghouse.

And of course these demands for limitless taxpayer cash were supported by all (but one, the Green) of the candidates in the recent by-election in the Copeland constituency where Moorside is due to be built, and their respective party leaders.

We can only hope that with that out of the way, a semblance of sanity might return. But we cannot count on it. The British government has long been fanatically pro-nuclear, even as evidence mounts of the massive problems facing the industry, and the mind-boggling cost of new nuclear build.

Meanwhile it has been deliberately strangling the growth of the UK’s renewable energy industries, aiming particular venom at the most competitive technologies, onshore wind and solar.

So why does nuclear need this monstrous taxpayer ‘investment’

Simple: because nuclear power is proving to be virtually undeliverable and ruinously expensive in western countries. Toshiba’s problems stem from the fact that they own Westinghouse who are responsible for the construction (so-far non-construction) of AP1000 reactors in South Carolina and Georgia in the USA, which are creating massive multi-billion dollar cost overruns and liabilities.

These plants are as costly as the failing French EPR design that is so disastrous in the cases of the Finnish and French reactors at Olkiluoto and Flamanville, something which is bankrupting the French nuclear industry and EDF.

Even lured by a promise of £92.50 per megawatt hour of electricity production (in 2012 pounds, so now worth close to £100), more that double current wholesale prices, and the promise of taxpayer guarantees on construction finance, EDF has been unable to summon up the vast capital sums needed to build the planned twin-EPR plant at Hinkley Point in Somerset. Hinkley C (3.2GW planned) will cost over £24 billion according to the European Commission.

Despite the manifest bankruptcy of the technology, rather than question whether it is right to continue with the new nuclear programme, its supporters are in effect wanting to bet the British economy on it.

If the Treasury are forced against their will to sanction ‘equity’ stakes in new nuclear reactors, the losses and, eventually, all the liabilities will fall on the UK Government. Nobody else will invest in the projects unless the Government guarantees the lot. The reactors at Moorside and Wylfa, assuming they cost similar amounts, would thus make the taxpayer responsible for around £50 billion of debt.

People will claim that the Government is ‘only’ taking a minority equity stake. That’s how it will start, and then would represent an enormous amount of state spending and liabilities. After all one quarter of £24 billion is still £6 billion. But it won’t end there, as sure as night follows day, not with the construction costs as well as the rest. It never does with nuclear power!

One rule for nuclear – other rules for everyone else!

Normally of course under the Government’s ‘low carbon’ programme, project raise their own finance and the project owners earns their money from premium price contracts (CfDs) awarded through the Government.

That is always the case with renewable energy projects. They find their own money. Electricity consumers pay a premium price to enable this on their bills. But now for nuclear to go ahead, so it is said, not only will the consumers have to pay a high premium price, but taxpayers will have to fund at least part of the construction as well.

This is money, please note, that will disappear from the Government’s coffers as the plant is built – draining billions of pounds of public money that could be paying for schools, hospitals, housing, social care and decaying public infrastructure. It is not something that will be shuffled onto future generations like decommissioning.

The fact that the Government is effectively financing the building will produce a conflict of interests with the Government negotiating with itself in setting the CfD price. No doubt a ‘lower’ CfD price will be set (that is less than the notorious Hinkley C price) when in fact it will be the taxpayer that will end up paying out countless billions for the projects.

Annual spending on primary education is around £26 billion. Hence building just Moorside will give the Government liabilities (which are likely to be paid by the Government) which will rival this spending.

But then to listen to some people, you’d think building Moorside was more important than closing down all primary schools for a year.

It isn’t.

David Toke is Reader in Energy Policy at the University of Aberdeen. He blogs at Dave Toke’s green energy blog where this article was originally published.

Additional reporting by The Ecologist.

Some sources:

‘Copeland by-election: opposing nuclear power, and voting Green, is the only rational choice‘

‘Keep UK taxpayers off the hook for Moorside nuclear black hole!‘

‘Endgame for Cumbria’s nuclear nightmare – Moorside or Doomrise?‘

‘Not just Toshiba – the global nuclear industry is in crisis everywhere‘

‘AP1000 reactor design is dangerous and not fit for purpose‘

BBC News

Daily Telegraph.

Submissions to Defra’s latest public consultation on badger culling closed on February 10th.

This time they were seeking opinions on their plans for ‘supplementary badger disease control’.

What they mean by that is that any badger cull which has completed its allotted four years could be licensed to simply go on killing badgers.

How many consultations have been held over this thorny issue? Three or four? Or more? I’ve lost count. What is clear is that not once have environment or farming ministers listened to (or perhaps even read) the responses, whether from ordinary members of the public or, importantly, from scientists, vets, ecologists and wildlife organisations.

In The Fate of the Badger author Dr Richard Meyer, a member of the Consultative Panel (CP) when the government was planning to cull badgers in the 1980s, quoted from a 2009 paper Intractable Policy Failure which said that one minister asserted that the CP: “plays a major role in allowing us to demonstrate that all shades of opinion on badgers have been taken into account before we kill them.”

Consultations are there as fig leaves. Opinions contrary to the government’s desired policies have never been taken into account.

Concerned organisations responded with science

With each consultation the barrage of science against badger culling gets stronger, as yet more studies are published (some of them government-led as in Northern Ireland) demonstrating that it is not badgers that are to blame for bovine TB in cattle, but poor testing, even poorer biosecurity and cattle management.

As before, Defra’s Consultation document is full of cherry-picked poor science, science that has been proven wrong by later (or even previous) studies and proposed actions based on fanciful assumptions presented as facts.

Defra still maintains, despite ongoing research to the contrary, that disease spread from badgers to cattle is an important cause of herd breakdowns. The Zoological Society of London (ZSL) is politely scathing about the way ‘evidence’ is presented:

“Such documents should equip the reader to provide informed comment on the government’s proposals … it misrepresents the level of certainty associated with the action proposed… there is thus far no evidence of any disease control benefits from industry-led culling and no evidence as to whether continued culling would prolong such anticipated benefits.”

Lack of evidence of any reduction in cattle Tb is an issue raised by several organisations. Using Defra’s own figures they point to the drop in new incidents before culling started, caused by the implementation of tougher testing and cattle movement controls.

Defra then added something else, the use of another bTB test (IFNy) which gave more accurate results and identified more infected cattle. This would lead to fewer new incidents of bTB. But the drop is being claimed as proof that the badger culling is working.

“Unfortunately, Defra has undermined its own ability to use this measure, by deciding to use the IFNy test on cattle only in areas where badger culling has been undertaken. Hence, ongoing attempts to estimate the impact of badger culling on cattle TB will be confounded by improvements in cattle testing in cull (but not comparison) areas.” ZSL

‘Evidence-based success’

This is Defra’s justification for continuous culling, but both the ‘evidence’ and the ‘success’ have been queried. Defra claims that the first two culls, in Somerset and Gloucester, “have now completed successfully their fourth and final year.” What do they mean by ‘success’?

“Even after four years of culling in Gloucestershire and Somerset, there is no evidence, or indeed any suggestion of any beneficial effect on TB in cattle.” HIS UK

The Badger Trust goes further and asks whether badger culling is actually legal:

“More specifically there is a fundamental omission from the licencing process that has existed from the beginning of the 2013 ‘pilot’ culls, namely that there is no requirement for licencees to produce any evidence of bTB infection in badgers or to establish any credible risk to known populations of cattle.

“That is to say there are no safeguards within the process to ensure that 10,2(a) of the Protection of Badgers Act, 1992 (… for the purpose of preventing the spread of disease …) is being met and thereby ensuring that any culling is actually legal under the Act.”

And they point out that “All criteria mentioned with regard to the ‘success’ (or failure) of culling, or the conditions needed to be met before renewing ‘supplementary licences’ refer only to numbers of badgers killed.”

The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) commented: “It appears the only criteria being applied to define success of the prior culls is number of badgers killed, not a visible reduction of bTB within cattle herds.”

‘Estimating’ badger populations without field surveys

One reason for disputing Defra’s idea of ‘success’ and its plans for the future is the inability to produce any believable badger population figures. ZSL has a lot to say about this. It had taken a lot of hard field work to produce the badger population figures for the first year of culling in Somerset and Gloucester, and even then it was wrong. But now, says ZSL:

“These concerns arise because Defra attempted to estimate badger numbers without conducting any field surveys in the cull zones… Without reliable estimates of initial population size any estimate of population size reduction is likewise unreliable. Unfortunately, now that culls have commenced in these areas the initial badger population size is unknowable.”

They conclude: “it is not at all clear how Natural England could be expected to set target numbers of badgers to be killed in follow-up culls …”

“There is no conclusive evidence that culls carried out to date have resulted in significant disease control benefits, nor that extending them will result in or prolong any such benefits.” Born Free Foundation (BFF)

And even Defra admits that there is no evidence on the effects of longer term badger control. The desired benefits are no more than an assumption.

Welfare is left to the killers

Defra wants to continue the use of ‘free’ or ‘controlled’ shooting, which was found to be inhumane by the Independent Expert Panel in the very first year of culling. Since then even the British Veterinary Association has condemned free shooting. Just about everyone has called for its ban.

Farmers want shooting for two reasons. Cage-trapping badgers is much more expensive, time consuming and involves physical labour. And – let’s be brutally honest here – shooting is much more fun, more macho.

The lack of monitoring, supposedly under the control of Natural England, which is the only way to prove the inhumaneness of shooting, is also called into question. “Wholly inadequate” was BFF’s response, based on Natural England’s own figures. Only 2% of the badgers shot in last year’s cull were observed by monitors, and only one badger was autopsied – out of a total of 8,639 dead badgers.

“Entirely inadequate”, echoed Humane Society International UK (HSI UK), adding: “The increased reliance on self-reporting by culling contractors is inappropriate and liable to lead to erroneous data; for example in 2016 contractors reported a level of missed shots one tenth of that observed by NE monitors.”

Both the Badger Trust and BFF said that Defra appeared to rely on the Chief Veterinary Officer’s belief that “the level of suffering in badgers is comparable with other forms of culling, currently accepted by society”. So that’s okay then. Hang on – I seem to remember several explosions of public rage over proposals to cull – beavers and buzzards to mention just two.

Defra’s ‘cost analysis’ doesn’t add up

“Plans to extend the culls in this way nullify the original cost benefit analysis.” IFAW

“Like every other government department, DEFRA and therefore Natural England, have been subject to continuous cuts in budgets and human resources so it is reasonable to assume that much of what is expected of it under the proposed scheme will be beyond its capacity to deliver.” Badger Trust.

“The proposal to issue supplementary licences, in the complete absence of any evidence that culls conducted over four years have yet resulted in any benefit and without any evidence from the RBCT or elsewhere that culling beyond four years is warranted is completely at odds with Government commitments to evidence-based policy making.” HSI UK.

“The Government claims to have shown that the culling policy will have a positive cost benefit. This is at odds with numerous independent economic analyses and relies on the reduction in TB in cattle shown by the RBCT, which is unlikely, and has not yet been demonstrated.” HSI UK

As the Badger Trust points out, TB eradication is being used as an excuse to slaughter badgers, not a reason.

“[I]t is possible for significant portions of the cull zones to be made up of land where no cattle exist and where any risk from badgers (diseased or otherwise) is non-existent. The process allows for landowner / farmer participation in the culling exercise to be based simply on their ‘desire’ to cull badgers regardless of whether they keep cattle or not.”

But will Defra listen?

I said that opinions contrary to the government’s desired policies have never been taken into account. So does it surprise you that, just 11 days after the consultation closed and before Defra has had any time to consider the large holes in their science (if indeed they would), Environment Secretary Andrea Leadsom told the NFU conference:

“Last summer we rolled out the cull to seven additional areas – all of which were successful. And this year, I want to extend that even further.”

Lesley Docksey is a freelance writer who writes for The Ecologist and other media on the badger cull and other environmental topics, and on political issues for UK and international websites.

Will you join the badger patrols this year? Why not contact your local badger group and find out if they run training days. Many badger patrol groups have their own pages on Facebook.

UK cancer patients may no longer be able to receive radiotherapy after Brexit, according to today’s Financial Times.

Or at least, to be able to import the crucial Molybdenum 99 isotope used for 80% of radiation treatments, the UK will have to negotiate new arrangements to replace EURATOM, the treaty that underpins nuclear regulation and cooperation across Europe.

The potential risk to cancer sufferers is just one small piece of the fallout from the UK’s decision to leave EURATOM as part of the Brexit process to leave the European Union.

The surprise decision was announced in a footnote to the Parliamentary Bill published on 26th January to authorise Brexit. Up until that point this was a grey area with disagreements over whether Brexit meant the UK would also have to leave EURATOM.

The balance of opinion seemed to confirm that, although EURATOM is legally distinct from the European Union, the UK would have leave both once Article 50 was triggered. (I wrote about this in November 2016 in Nuclear News No. 89.)

This was confirmed at a meeting I attended at the Scottish Government last September when most of the nuclear industry representatives and regulators appeared to be resigned to leaving EURATOM.

On the other hand, the European nuclear lobby group – Foratom – thought the UK could decide to negotiate to remain a member (or agree some form of associate membership). The EU has numerous association agreements with other countries. For instance Switzerland is an associate member of EURATOM and the Ukraine has joined the EURATOM Research and Training Programme.

A blog on the Euractiv website goes even further saying that the idea that EURATOM is included in the exit clause of the Lisbon Treaties is false. [2]

The decision has wide-ranging implications for Britain’s nuclear industry, research, access to fissile materials and the status of approximately 20 nuclear co-operation agreements that it has with other countries around the world.

The UK is going to have to strike new international agreements with all these countries to maintain access to nuclear power technology – crucially with the US because several of the UK’s existing and planned nuclear reactors use US technology or fuel.

A new bilateral agreement will also be needed with the International Atomic Energy Agency. Nuclear co-operation agreements can take considerable time to agree and ratify. It may not be possible to complete them before Britain leaves the EU in 2019.

New reactors in jeopardy?

The concern now in the UK nuclear industry is that leaving EURATOM will complicate and delay the UK’s plans to build a new generation of nuclear power stations.

“The new wave of British nuclear power stations was in jeopardy” said the Times. Withdrawal could cause “major disruption” according to the Nuclear Industry Association (NIA) particularly for Horizon and Nugen, which are developing plans for reactors on Anglesey and in Cumbria because their plans involve co-operation with US nuclear companies.

Former Labour MP Tom Greatrex, now chief executive of the NIA, said: “The UK nuclear industry has made it crystal clear to the government before and since the referendum that our preferred position is to maintain membership of EURATOM.” [3] Although Horizon, whose reactors would use US nuclear fuel, says it is reassured by the government’s commitment to put new regulatory arrangements in place quickly. [4]

The Hinkley Point C station in Somerset could also face renewed problems. EDF has warned that Brexit could increase “the costs of essential new infrastructure developments and could delay their delivery”. EDF, which also operates Britain’s existing nuclear plants, has said it would prefer if the UK stayed within EURATOM and that if not it would be “essential that the UK establishes equivalent safeguards arrangements”.

“However, if the UK ceases to be part of EURATOM, then it is vital the government agree transitional arrangements, to give the UK time to negotiate and complete new agreements with EU member states and third countries including the US, Japan and Canada who have nuclear co-operation agreements within the EURATOM framework.”

EDF is also worried that Brexit will affect the movement of people and delay the delivery of Hinkley Point C [5]. It could also impact upon its costs. For the reactor builders, being outside the nuclear common market as well as the single market and having no freedom of movement may lead to higher prices if tariffs and customs checks are introduced or if restrictions are imposed on foreign nuclear scientists and engineers. [6]

Nuclear safeguards – the implications

Leaving EURATOM is also likely to add to the workload of the UK’s nuclear regulator, the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR), which is busy assessing designs for new nuclear reactors including the Chinese Hualong One design.

And as nuclear engineering consultant John Large points out, “The main burden of the UK leaving EURATOM will be the need for it to cover its nuclear non-proliferation safeguards commitment and for this it will have to either set up a separate, independent agency or bring these treaty responsibilities into the Office for Nuclear Regulation.”

The Green Party’s only UK MP Caroline Lucas raised the safeguards issue in Parliament last August when she asked the business and energy secretary “what steps would be needed to replace EU Atomic Energy Community safeguards inspectors with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Inspectors to implement safeguards provisions.”

The reply did not address the fact that currently international inspections of UK nuclear plants and materials to ensure there is no diversion of materials to military misuse is verified by EURATOM on behalf of the IAEA. [7]

A quarter of all time spent on nuclear inspections throughout the EU is carried out in Britain, due to the scale of nuclear fuel fabrication and waste management facilities, such as Sellafield. Without EURATOM ONR will need to undertake many more inspections to meet IAEA requirements.

The Government will have to find extra cash, but it will also struggle to hire and train the necessary new staff especially when ONR is already struggling to keep up with the assessment of several new reactors designs (EPR, AP1000, ABWR and Hualong One). [8]

As proliferation expert Dr David Lowry puts it: “It is now time energy and foreign ministers and their advisors turn their attention to what they are going to do to ensure nuclear safeguards continuity in the UK post Brexit to avoid the UK becoming a nuclear rogue state.” [9]

Fusion – nuclear research scientists angry

Membership of EURATOM is also a condition for Britain hosting what is currently the largest nuclear fusion experiment in the world. Based at the Culham centre in south Oxfordshire, the Joint European Torus project involves some 350 scientists exploring the potential of fusion power, backed by funding from almost 40 countries in the EUROfusion consortium.

According to Nature, scientists are shocked and angry about the EURATOM exit. Depending on whether and how the UK negotiates a way back in to the organization, the move could endanger British participation in the world’s largest fusion experiment, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) in southern France.

It could also curtail operations at the Joint European Torus (JET), a nuclear-fusion facility in Culham. The facility is a half-sized version of ITER which currently receives around €56 million annually from EURATOM. Steven Cowley, a theoretical physicist at the University of Oxford who until last year was director of the Culham Centre described the decision to leave EURATOM as “bonkers”. [10]

According to the Trade Union representing nuclear scientists, the Culham Centre signed a €283m contract in 2014 for running the Joint European Torus facility until 2018, with similar contracts expected in the future.

This sum accounts for more than a quarter of the overall European Fusion Programme budget over the same period – a budget funded in part by the EURATOM Horizon 2020 programme. The UKAEA also brings EURATOM money directly to the region and UK industry by winning ITER (global fusion project) contracts. [11]

Wider impact in Europe

The political impact in the EU remains equally unclear. Britain has been one of Europe’s most active supporters of nuclear power. Brexit could tip the balance of member states towards an anti-nuclear majority.

And what then? Just as the International Whaling Commission has become an essentially anti-whaling UN agency, might EURATOM states seek to use the treaty to block, not support, the construction of new nuclear power stations in Europe. Its main role would then be to supervise the sector’s long term decline.

The complications around the UK withdrawal from EURATOM could also put a spotlight onto the EURATOM Treaty itself, whose legal status and many of its functions are out of step with the modern EU and may once again lead to calls for it to be abolished. [12]

EURATOM Mark II?

The UK secretary of state for exiting the European Union, David Davis, told parliament on 31 January 2017 that the UK will seek an alternative agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) if it fails to negotiate “some sort of relationship” with the European Atomic Energy Community (EURATOM) during Brexit negotiations. [13]

The idea of a new pan-European nuclear group is also being floated, according to former conservative MP Tim Yeo who chairs the trade group New Nuclear Watch Europe.

The successor group is envisaged as a wider Europe-based pro-nuclear club including the 27 European Union member states as well as countries outside the bloc that are also developing new nuclear power plants. As well as the UK the group could include Turkey, Ukraine, Belarus and potentially Russia. [14]

Time for reform – or abolition

The UK nuclear establishment is going to have its work cut out to make sure that Brexatom does not add to the delays in its proposed new nuclear reactor programme already in prospect as a result of financial problems at EDF, Areva, Toshiba, Engie and Hitachi.

There will be widespread support for efforts to avoid any hiatus in the safeguarding of the huge quantity of fissile material in the UK. But as Hans-Josef Fell, president of the Energy Watch Group and a former member of the German parliament for the Greens points out the UK’s exit from EURATOM should be seen as an opportunity.

It’s a clear sign that it is possible for anti-nuclear countries like Austria, Ireland and Germany to unilaterally leave the Treaty – even a unique chance to dissolve Euratom. He says the core task of EURATOM is to support the nuclear industry. After Chernobyl and Fukushima ending that support is long overdue. [15]

The UK Nuclear Free Local Authorities (NFLA) recently pointed out that it sees “the EURATOM Treaty as one of the most direct ways the nuclear industry has promoted nuclear power in Europe over the past 60 years. It has often been the inside track from which pro-nuclear governments have ensured support for nuclear power within the European Commission.” [16]

For instance, in 2014 the European Union’s Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager had less leeway in evaluating the UK’s Hinkley Point C financial support scheme than it would have done for a non-nuclear project because of the EURATOM Treaty, which is meant to support and encourage investment in nuclear projects where needed.

“This means that if member states choose to invest in nuclear energy, the EURATOM’s objective to facilitate that investment becomes an objective of common interest that the Commission should take into account in its state aid assessment”, she said. [17]

So the Commission approved the UK Government’s plans to subsidise Hinkley Point C despite the fact that even the UK government itself expects solar and wind power to be cheaper than new nuclear power by the time Hinkley Point C is completed. [18]

Not surprising then that the NFLA sees this as “an ideal time for a major and all encompassing reform of the EURATOM Treaty to take account of the changed energy market in the EU, where renewable energy is rapidly expanding and nuclear power is in decline.” [19]

Pete Roche is editor of the No2NuclearPower website which produces a free daily nuclear news service.

Sign up to receive No2NuclearPower Bulletin by e-mail here.

This article was originally published in Nuclear Monitor #838 and is reproduced here by kind permission of the author. This version includes some updates by The Ecologist.

References

1. FT 26th January 2017 https://www.ft.com/content/fe3b50a4-e3e1-11e6-8405-9e5580d6e5fb

2. Euractiv 16th June 2016 http://democracy.blogactiv.eu/2016/06/16/euratom-after-brexit-votes-uk-will-remain-a-community-member-for-nuclear-non-proliferation/

3. The Times 27th Jan 2017 http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/business/britain-quits-european-nuclear-body-pgmq9m9fc

4. FT 26th January 2017 https://www.ft.com/content/fe3b50a4-e3e1-11e6-8405-9e5580d6e5fb

5. Guardian 27th Jan 2017 https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jan/27/uk-exit-eu-atomic-treaty-brexit-euratom-hinkley-point-c

6. Antony Froggatt in The Conversation 30th Jan 2017 http://theconversation.com/brexatom-the-uk-will-now-leave-europes-nuclear-energy-authority-72136

7. David Lowry’s Blog 27th Jan 2017 http://drdavidlowry.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/how-brexit-britain-could-become.html

8. Antony Froggatt in The Conversation 30th Jan 2017 http://theconversation.com/brexatom-the-uk-will-now-leave-europes-nuclear-energy-authority-72136

9. David Lowry’s Blog 27th Jan 2017 http://drdavidlowry.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/how-brexit-britain-could-become.html

10. Nature 27th Jan 2017 http://www.nature.com/news/researchers-shocked-at-uk-s-plan-to-exit-eu-nuclear-agency-1.21388

11. FT 5th Feb 2017 https://www.ft.com/content/d3d780bc-e7b5-11e6-893c-082c54a7f539

12. Antony Froggatt in The Conversation 30th Jan 2017 http://theconversation.com/brexatom-the-uk-will-now-leave-europes-nuclear-energy-authority-72136

13. Nucnet 2nd Feb 2017 http://www.nucnet.org/all-the-news/2017/02/02/uk-could-seek-alternative-agreement-to-euratom-with-iaea-after-bexit

14. Telegraph 4th February 2017 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/02/04/britain-proposing-wider-europe-based-pro-nuclear-club-article/

15. Energy Post 5th July 2016 http://energypost.eu/brexit-offers-chance-finally-put-end-euratom-treaty/

16. NFLA Press Release 30th Jan 2017 http://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/nfla-uk-decision-withdraw-euratom-could-halt-new-nuclear/

17. Politico 11th January 2017 http://www.politico.eu/article/hungary-nuclear-approval-expected-thanks-to-uk-and-france-precedent/

18. Guardian 11th August 2016 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/11/solar-and-windcheaper-than-new-nuclear-by-the-time-hinkley-is-built

19. NFLA Press Release 30th Jan 2017 http://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/nfla-uk-decision-withdraw-euratom-could-halt-new-nuclear/

Giant portions of public spending are now at risk of pouring down a nuclear power black hole as calls for the Government to make direct investments into new nuclear power plant intensify.

Ultimately the sums at risk would be much larger than the Government’s own estimates of the cost of the Trident nuclear weapons system.

Former Minister and House of Commons Energy Committee Chair Tim Yeo is the latest to call for the Government to take ‘minority’ equity shares in new nuclear projects.

There has been a flurry of such demands in the wake of the near bankruptcy of Toshiba, who spearhead the 3GW proposed plant at Moorside in Cumbria. The company now appears likely to seek Chapter 11 bankruptcy for its US nuclear subsidiary Westinghouse.

And of course these demands for limitless taxpayer cash were supported by all (but one, the Green) of the candidates in the recent by-election in the Copeland constituency where Moorside is due to be built, and their respective party leaders.

We can only hope that with that out of the way, a semblance of sanity might return. But we cannot count on it. The British government has long been fanatically pro-nuclear, even as evidence mounts of the massive problems facing the industry, and the mind-boggling cost of new nuclear build.

Meanwhile it has been deliberately strangling the growth of the UK’s renewable energy industries, aiming particular venom at the most competitive technologies, onshore wind and solar.

So why does nuclear need this monstrous taxpayer ‘investment’

Simple: because nuclear power is proving to be virtually undeliverable and ruinously expensive in western countries. Toshiba’s problems stem from the fact that they own Westinghouse who are responsible for the construction (so-far non-construction) of AP1000 reactors in South Carolina and Georgia in the USA, which are creating massive multi-billion dollar cost overruns and liabilities.

These plants are as costly as the failing French EPR design that is so disastrous in the cases of the Finnish and French reactors at Olkiluoto and Flamanville, something which is bankrupting the French nuclear industry and EDF.

Even lured by a promise of £92.50 per megawatt hour of electricity production (in 2012 pounds, so now worth close to £100), more that double current wholesale prices, and the promise of taxpayer guarantees on construction finance, EDF has been unable to summon up the vast capital sums needed to build the planned twin-EPR plant at Hinkley Point in Somerset. Hinkley C (3.2GW planned) will cost over £24 billion according to the European Commission.

Despite the manifest bankruptcy of the technology, rather than question whether it is right to continue with the new nuclear programme, its supporters are in effect wanting to bet the British economy on it.

If the Treasury are forced against their will to sanction ‘equity’ stakes in new nuclear reactors, the losses and, eventually, all the liabilities will fall on the UK Government. Nobody else will invest in the projects unless the Government guarantees the lot. The reactors at Moorside and Wylfa, assuming they cost similar amounts, would thus make the taxpayer responsible for around £50 billion of debt.

People will claim that the Government is ‘only’ taking a minority equity stake. That’s how it will start, and then would represent an enormous amount of state spending and liabilities. After all one quarter of £24 billion is still £6 billion. But it won’t end there, as sure as night follows day, not with the construction costs as well as the rest. It never does with nuclear power!

One rule for nuclear – other rules for everyone else!

Normally of course under the Government’s ‘low carbon’ programme, project raise their own finance and the project owners earns their money from premium price contracts (CfDs) awarded through the Government.

That is always the case with renewable energy projects. They find their own money. Electricity consumers pay a premium price to enable this on their bills. But now for nuclear to go ahead, so it is said, not only will the consumers have to pay a high premium price, but taxpayers will have to fund at least part of the construction as well.

This is money, please note, that will disappear from the Government’s coffers as the plant is built – draining billions of pounds of public money that could be paying for schools, hospitals, housing, social care and decaying public infrastructure. It is not something that will be shuffled onto future generations like decommissioning.

The fact that the Government is effectively financing the building will produce a conflict of interests with the Government negotiating with itself in setting the CfD price. No doubt a ‘lower’ CfD price will be set (that is less than the notorious Hinkley C price) when in fact it will be the taxpayer that will end up paying out countless billions for the projects.

Annual spending on primary education is around £26 billion. Hence building just Moorside will give the Government liabilities (which are likely to be paid by the Government) which will rival this spending.

But then to listen to some people, you’d think building Moorside was more important than closing down all primary schools for a year.

It isn’t.

David Toke is Reader in Energy Policy at the University of Aberdeen. He blogs at Dave Toke’s green energy blog where this article was originally published.

Additional reporting by The Ecologist.

Some sources:

‘Copeland by-election: opposing nuclear power, and voting Green, is the only rational choice‘

‘Keep UK taxpayers off the hook for Moorside nuclear black hole!‘

‘Endgame for Cumbria’s nuclear nightmare – Moorside or Doomrise?‘

‘Not just Toshiba – the global nuclear industry is in crisis everywhere‘

‘AP1000 reactor design is dangerous and not fit for purpose‘

BBC News

Daily Telegraph.

Submissions to Defra’s latest public consultation on badger culling closed on February 10th.

This time they were seeking opinions on their plans for ‘supplementary badger disease control’.

What they mean by that is that any badger cull which has completed its allotted four years could be licensed to simply go on killing badgers.

How many consultations have been held over this thorny issue? Three or four? Or more? I’ve lost count. What is clear is that not once have environment or farming ministers listened to (or perhaps even read) the responses, whether from ordinary members of the public or, importantly, from scientists, vets, ecologists and wildlife organisations.

In The Fate of the Badger author Dr Richard Meyer, a member of the Consultative Panel (CP) when the government was planning to cull badgers in the 1980s, quoted from a 2009 paper Intractable Policy Failure which said that one minister asserted that the CP: “plays a major role in allowing us to demonstrate that all shades of opinion on badgers have been taken into account before we kill them.”

Consultations are there as fig leaves. Opinions contrary to the government’s desired policies have never been taken into account.

Concerned organisations responded with science

With each consultation the barrage of science against badger culling gets stronger, as yet more studies are published (some of them government-led as in Northern Ireland) demonstrating that it is not badgers that are to blame for bovine TB in cattle, but poor testing, even poorer biosecurity and cattle management.

As before, Defra’s Consultation document is full of cherry-picked poor science, science that has been proven wrong by later (or even previous) studies and proposed actions based on fanciful assumptions presented as facts.

Defra still maintains, despite ongoing research to the contrary, that disease spread from badgers to cattle is an important cause of herd breakdowns. The Zoological Society of London (ZSL) is politely scathing about the way ‘evidence’ is presented:

“Such documents should equip the reader to provide informed comment on the government’s proposals … it misrepresents the level of certainty associated with the action proposed… there is thus far no evidence of any disease control benefits from industry-led culling and no evidence as to whether continued culling would prolong such anticipated benefits.”

Lack of evidence of any reduction in cattle Tb is an issue raised by several organisations. Using Defra’s own figures they point to the drop in new incidents before culling started, caused by the implementation of tougher testing and cattle movement controls.

Defra then added something else, the use of another bTB test (IFNy) which gave more accurate results and identified more infected cattle. This would lead to fewer new incidents of bTB. But the drop is being claimed as proof that the badger culling is working.

“Unfortunately, Defra has undermined its own ability to use this measure, by deciding to use the IFNy test on cattle only in areas where badger culling has been undertaken. Hence, ongoing attempts to estimate the impact of badger culling on cattle TB will be confounded by improvements in cattle testing in cull (but not comparison) areas.” ZSL

‘Evidence-based success’

This is Defra’s justification for continuous culling, but both the ‘evidence’ and the ‘success’ have been queried. Defra claims that the first two culls, in Somerset and Gloucester, “have now completed successfully their fourth and final year.” What do they mean by ‘success’?

“Even after four years of culling in Gloucestershire and Somerset, there is no evidence, or indeed any suggestion of any beneficial effect on TB in cattle.” HIS UK

The Badger Trust goes further and asks whether badger culling is actually legal:

“More specifically there is a fundamental omission from the licencing process that has existed from the beginning of the 2013 ‘pilot’ culls, namely that there is no requirement for licencees to produce any evidence of bTB infection in badgers or to establish any credible risk to known populations of cattle.

“That is to say there are no safeguards within the process to ensure that 10,2(a) of the Protection of Badgers Act, 1992 (… for the purpose of preventing the spread of disease …) is being met and thereby ensuring that any culling is actually legal under the Act.”

And they point out that “All criteria mentioned with regard to the ‘success’ (or failure) of culling, or the conditions needed to be met before renewing ‘supplementary licences’ refer only to numbers of badgers killed.”

The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) commented: “It appears the only criteria being applied to define success of the prior culls is number of badgers killed, not a visible reduction of bTB within cattle herds.”

‘Estimating’ badger populations without field surveys

One reason for disputing Defra’s idea of ‘success’ and its plans for the future is the inability to produce any believable badger population figures. ZSL has a lot to say about this. It had taken a lot of hard field work to produce the badger population figures for the first year of culling in Somerset and Gloucester, and even then it was wrong. But now, says ZSL:

“These concerns arise because Defra attempted to estimate badger numbers without conducting any field surveys in the cull zones… Without reliable estimates of initial population size any estimate of population size reduction is likewise unreliable. Unfortunately, now that culls have commenced in these areas the initial badger population size is unknowable.”

They conclude: “it is not at all clear how Natural England could be expected to set target numbers of badgers to be killed in follow-up culls …”

“There is no conclusive evidence that culls carried out to date have resulted in significant disease control benefits, nor that extending them will result in or prolong any such benefits.” Born Free Foundation (BFF)

And even Defra admits that there is no evidence on the effects of longer term badger control. The desired benefits are no more than an assumption.

Welfare is left to the killers

Defra wants to continue the use of ‘free’ or ‘controlled’ shooting, which was found to be inhumane by the Independent Expert Panel in the very first year of culling. Since then even the British Veterinary Association has condemned free shooting. Just about everyone has called for its ban.

Farmers want shooting for two reasons. Cage-trapping badgers is much more expensive, time consuming and involves physical labour. And – let’s be brutally honest here – shooting is much more fun, more macho.

The lack of monitoring, supposedly under the control of Natural England, which is the only way to prove the inhumaneness of shooting, is also called into question. “Wholly inadequate” was BFF’s response, based on Natural England’s own figures. Only 2% of the badgers shot in last year’s cull were observed by monitors, and only one badger was autopsied – out of a total of 8,639 dead badgers.

“Entirely inadequate”, echoed Humane Society International UK (HSI UK), adding: “The increased reliance on self-reporting by culling contractors is inappropriate and liable to lead to erroneous data; for example in 2016 contractors reported a level of missed shots one tenth of that observed by NE monitors.”

Both the Badger Trust and BFF said that Defra appeared to rely on the Chief Veterinary Officer’s belief that “the level of suffering in badgers is comparable with other forms of culling, currently accepted by society”. So that’s okay then. Hang on – I seem to remember several explosions of public rage over proposals to cull – beavers and buzzards to mention just two.

Defra’s ‘cost analysis’ doesn’t add up

“Plans to extend the culls in this way nullify the original cost benefit analysis.” IFAW

“Like every other government department, DEFRA and therefore Natural England, have been subject to continuous cuts in budgets and human resources so it is reasonable to assume that much of what is expected of it under the proposed scheme will be beyond its capacity to deliver.” Badger Trust.

“The proposal to issue supplementary licences, in the complete absence of any evidence that culls conducted over four years have yet resulted in any benefit and without any evidence from the RBCT or elsewhere that culling beyond four years is warranted is completely at odds with Government commitments to evidence-based policy making.” HSI UK.

“The Government claims to have shown that the culling policy will have a positive cost benefit. This is at odds with numerous independent economic analyses and relies on the reduction in TB in cattle shown by the RBCT, which is unlikely, and has not yet been demonstrated.” HSI UK

As the Badger Trust points out, TB eradication is being used as an excuse to slaughter badgers, not a reason.

“[I]t is possible for significant portions of the cull zones to be made up of land where no cattle exist and where any risk from badgers (diseased or otherwise) is non-existent. The process allows for landowner / farmer participation in the culling exercise to be based simply on their ‘desire’ to cull badgers regardless of whether they keep cattle or not.”

But will Defra listen?

I said that opinions contrary to the government’s desired policies have never been taken into account. So does it surprise you that, just 11 days after the consultation closed and before Defra has had any time to consider the large holes in their science (if indeed they would), Environment Secretary Andrea Leadsom told the NFU conference:

“Last summer we rolled out the cull to seven additional areas – all of which were successful. And this year, I want to extend that even further.”

Lesley Docksey is a freelance writer who writes for The Ecologist and other media on the badger cull and other environmental topics, and on political issues for UK and international websites.

Will you join the badger patrols this year? Why not contact your local badger group and find out if they run training days. Many badger patrol groups have their own pages on Facebook.

UK cancer patients may no longer be able to receive radiotherapy after Brexit, according to today’s Financial Times.

Or at least, to be able to import the crucial Molybdenum 99 isotope used for 80% of radiation treatments, the UK will have to negotiate new arrangements to replace EURATOM, the treaty that underpins nuclear regulation and cooperation across Europe.

The potential risk to cancer sufferers is just one small piece of the fallout from the UK’s decision to leave EURATOM as part of the Brexit process to leave the European Union.

The surprise decision was announced in a footnote to the Parliamentary Bill published on 26th January to authorise Brexit. Up until that point this was a grey area with disagreements over whether Brexit meant the UK would also have to leave EURATOM.

The balance of opinion seemed to confirm that, although EURATOM is legally distinct from the European Union, the UK would have leave both once Article 50 was triggered. (I wrote about this in November 2016 in Nuclear News No. 89.)

This was confirmed at a meeting I attended at the Scottish Government last September when most of the nuclear industry representatives and regulators appeared to be resigned to leaving EURATOM.

On the other hand, the European nuclear lobby group – Foratom – thought the UK could decide to negotiate to remain a member (or agree some form of associate membership). The EU has numerous association agreements with other countries. For instance Switzerland is an associate member of EURATOM and the Ukraine has joined the EURATOM Research and Training Programme.

A blog on the Euractiv website goes even further saying that the idea that EURATOM is included in the exit clause of the Lisbon Treaties is false. [2]

The decision has wide-ranging implications for Britain’s nuclear industry, research, access to fissile materials and the status of approximately 20 nuclear co-operation agreements that it has with other countries around the world.

The UK is going to have to strike new international agreements with all these countries to maintain access to nuclear power technology – crucially with the US because several of the UK’s existing and planned nuclear reactors use US technology or fuel.

A new bilateral agreement will also be needed with the International Atomic Energy Agency. Nuclear co-operation agreements can take considerable time to agree and ratify. It may not be possible to complete them before Britain leaves the EU in 2019.

New reactors in jeopardy?

The concern now in the UK nuclear industry is that leaving EURATOM will complicate and delay the UK’s plans to build a new generation of nuclear power stations.

“The new wave of British nuclear power stations was in jeopardy” said the Times. Withdrawal could cause “major disruption” according to the Nuclear Industry Association (NIA) particularly for Horizon and Nugen, which are developing plans for reactors on Anglesey and in Cumbria because their plans involve co-operation with US nuclear companies.

Former Labour MP Tom Greatrex, now chief executive of the NIA, said: “The UK nuclear industry has made it crystal clear to the government before and since the referendum that our preferred position is to maintain membership of EURATOM.” [3] Although Horizon, whose reactors would use US nuclear fuel, says it is reassured by the government’s commitment to put new regulatory arrangements in place quickly. [4]

The Hinkley Point C station in Somerset could also face renewed problems. EDF has warned that Brexit could increase “the costs of essential new infrastructure developments and could delay their delivery”. EDF, which also operates Britain’s existing nuclear plants, has said it would prefer if the UK stayed within EURATOM and that if not it would be “essential that the UK establishes equivalent safeguards arrangements”.

“However, if the UK ceases to be part of EURATOM, then it is vital the government agree transitional arrangements, to give the UK time to negotiate and complete new agreements with EU member states and third countries including the US, Japan and Canada who have nuclear co-operation agreements within the EURATOM framework.”

EDF is also worried that Brexit will affect the movement of people and delay the delivery of Hinkley Point C [5]. It could also impact upon its costs. For the reactor builders, being outside the nuclear common market as well as the single market and having no freedom of movement may lead to higher prices if tariffs and customs checks are introduced or if restrictions are imposed on foreign nuclear scientists and engineers. [6]

Nuclear safeguards – the implications

Leaving EURATOM is also likely to add to the workload of the UK’s nuclear regulator, the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR), which is busy assessing designs for new nuclear reactors including the Chinese Hualong One design.

And as nuclear engineering consultant John Large points out, “The main burden of the UK leaving EURATOM will be the need for it to cover its nuclear non-proliferation safeguards commitment and for this it will have to either set up a separate, independent agency or bring these treaty responsibilities into the Office for Nuclear Regulation.”

The Green Party’s only UK MP Caroline Lucas raised the safeguards issue in Parliament last August when she asked the business and energy secretary “what steps would be needed to replace EU Atomic Energy Community safeguards inspectors with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Inspectors to implement safeguards provisions.”

The reply did not address the fact that currently international inspections of UK nuclear plants and materials to ensure there is no diversion of materials to military misuse is verified by EURATOM on behalf of the IAEA. [7]

A quarter of all time spent on nuclear inspections throughout the EU is carried out in Britain, due to the scale of nuclear fuel fabrication and waste management facilities, such as Sellafield. Without EURATOM ONR will need to undertake many more inspections to meet IAEA requirements.

The Government will have to find extra cash, but it will also struggle to hire and train the necessary new staff especially when ONR is already struggling to keep up with the assessment of several new reactors designs (EPR, AP1000, ABWR and Hualong One). [8]

As proliferation expert Dr David Lowry puts it: “It is now time energy and foreign ministers and their advisors turn their attention to what they are going to do to ensure nuclear safeguards continuity in the UK post Brexit to avoid the UK becoming a nuclear rogue state.” [9]

Fusion – nuclear research scientists angry

Membership of EURATOM is also a condition for Britain hosting what is currently the largest nuclear fusion experiment in the world. Based at the Culham centre in south Oxfordshire, the Joint European Torus project involves some 350 scientists exploring the potential of fusion power, backed by funding from almost 40 countries in the EUROfusion consortium.

According to Nature, scientists are shocked and angry about the EURATOM exit. Depending on whether and how the UK negotiates a way back in to the organization, the move could endanger British participation in the world’s largest fusion experiment, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) in southern France.

It could also curtail operations at the Joint European Torus (JET), a nuclear-fusion facility in Culham. The facility is a half-sized version of ITER which currently receives around €56 million annually from EURATOM. Steven Cowley, a theoretical physicist at the University of Oxford who until last year was director of the Culham Centre described the decision to leave EURATOM as “bonkers”. [10]

According to the Trade Union representing nuclear scientists, the Culham Centre signed a €283m contract in 2014 for running the Joint European Torus facility until 2018, with similar contracts expected in the future.

This sum accounts for more than a quarter of the overall European Fusion Programme budget over the same period – a budget funded in part by the EURATOM Horizon 2020 programme. The UKAEA also brings EURATOM money directly to the region and UK industry by winning ITER (global fusion project) contracts. [11]

Wider impact in Europe

The political impact in the EU remains equally unclear. Britain has been one of Europe’s most active supporters of nuclear power. Brexit could tip the balance of member states towards an anti-nuclear majority.

And what then? Just as the International Whaling Commission has become an essentially anti-whaling UN agency, might EURATOM states seek to use the treaty to block, not support, the construction of new nuclear power stations in Europe. Its main role would then be to supervise the sector’s long term decline.

The complications around the UK withdrawal from EURATOM could also put a spotlight onto the EURATOM Treaty itself, whose legal status and many of its functions are out of step with the modern EU and may once again lead to calls for it to be abolished. [12]

EURATOM Mark II?

The UK secretary of state for exiting the European Union, David Davis, told parliament on 31 January 2017 that the UK will seek an alternative agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) if it fails to negotiate “some sort of relationship” with the European Atomic Energy Community (EURATOM) during Brexit negotiations. [13]

The idea of a new pan-European nuclear group is also being floated, according to former conservative MP Tim Yeo who chairs the trade group New Nuclear Watch Europe.

The successor group is envisaged as a wider Europe-based pro-nuclear club including the 27 European Union member states as well as countries outside the bloc that are also developing new nuclear power plants. As well as the UK the group could include Turkey, Ukraine, Belarus and potentially Russia. [14]

Time for reform – or abolition

The UK nuclear establishment is going to have its work cut out to make sure that Brexatom does not add to the delays in its proposed new nuclear reactor programme already in prospect as a result of financial problems at EDF, Areva, Toshiba, Engie and Hitachi.

There will be widespread support for efforts to avoid any hiatus in the safeguarding of the huge quantity of fissile material in the UK. But as Hans-Josef Fell, president of the Energy Watch Group and a former member of the German parliament for the Greens points out the UK’s exit from EURATOM should be seen as an opportunity.

It’s a clear sign that it is possible for anti-nuclear countries like Austria, Ireland and Germany to unilaterally leave the Treaty – even a unique chance to dissolve Euratom. He says the core task of EURATOM is to support the nuclear industry. After Chernobyl and Fukushima ending that support is long overdue. [15]

The UK Nuclear Free Local Authorities (NFLA) recently pointed out that it sees “the EURATOM Treaty as one of the most direct ways the nuclear industry has promoted nuclear power in Europe over the past 60 years. It has often been the inside track from which pro-nuclear governments have ensured support for nuclear power within the European Commission.” [16]

For instance, in 2014 the European Union’s Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager had less leeway in evaluating the UK’s Hinkley Point C financial support scheme than it would have done for a non-nuclear project because of the EURATOM Treaty, which is meant to support and encourage investment in nuclear projects where needed.

“This means that if member states choose to invest in nuclear energy, the EURATOM’s objective to facilitate that investment becomes an objective of common interest that the Commission should take into account in its state aid assessment”, she said. [17]

So the Commission approved the UK Government’s plans to subsidise Hinkley Point C despite the fact that even the UK government itself expects solar and wind power to be cheaper than new nuclear power by the time Hinkley Point C is completed. [18]

Not surprising then that the NFLA sees this as “an ideal time for a major and all encompassing reform of the EURATOM Treaty to take account of the changed energy market in the EU, where renewable energy is rapidly expanding and nuclear power is in decline.” [19]

Pete Roche is editor of the No2NuclearPower website which produces a free daily nuclear news service.

Sign up to receive No2NuclearPower Bulletin by e-mail here.

This article was originally published in Nuclear Monitor #838 and is reproduced here by kind permission of the author. This version includes some updates by The Ecologist.

References

1. FT 26th January 2017 https://www.ft.com/content/fe3b50a4-e3e1-11e6-8405-9e5580d6e5fb

2. Euractiv 16th June 2016 http://democracy.blogactiv.eu/2016/06/16/euratom-after-brexit-votes-uk-will-remain-a-community-member-for-nuclear-non-proliferation/

3. The Times 27th Jan 2017 http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/business/britain-quits-european-nuclear-body-pgmq9m9fc

4. FT 26th January 2017 https://www.ft.com/content/fe3b50a4-e3e1-11e6-8405-9e5580d6e5fb

5. Guardian 27th Jan 2017 https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jan/27/uk-exit-eu-atomic-treaty-brexit-euratom-hinkley-point-c

6. Antony Froggatt in The Conversation 30th Jan 2017 http://theconversation.com/brexatom-the-uk-will-now-leave-europes-nuclear-energy-authority-72136

7. David Lowry’s Blog 27th Jan 2017 http://drdavidlowry.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/how-brexit-britain-could-become.html

8. Antony Froggatt in The Conversation 30th Jan 2017 http://theconversation.com/brexatom-the-uk-will-now-leave-europes-nuclear-energy-authority-72136

9. David Lowry’s Blog 27th Jan 2017 http://drdavidlowry.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/how-brexit-britain-could-become.html

10. Nature 27th Jan 2017 http://www.nature.com/news/researchers-shocked-at-uk-s-plan-to-exit-eu-nuclear-agency-1.21388

11. FT 5th Feb 2017 https://www.ft.com/content/d3d780bc-e7b5-11e6-893c-082c54a7f539

12. Antony Froggatt in The Conversation 30th Jan 2017 http://theconversation.com/brexatom-the-uk-will-now-leave-europes-nuclear-energy-authority-72136

13. Nucnet 2nd Feb 2017 http://www.nucnet.org/all-the-news/2017/02/02/uk-could-seek-alternative-agreement-to-euratom-with-iaea-after-bexit

14. Telegraph 4th February 2017 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/02/04/britain-proposing-wider-europe-based-pro-nuclear-club-article/

15. Energy Post 5th July 2016 http://energypost.eu/brexit-offers-chance-finally-put-end-euratom-treaty/

16. NFLA Press Release 30th Jan 2017 http://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/nfla-uk-decision-withdraw-euratom-could-halt-new-nuclear/

17. Politico 11th January 2017 http://www.politico.eu/article/hungary-nuclear-approval-expected-thanks-to-uk-and-france-precedent/

18. Guardian 11th August 2016 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/11/solar-and-windcheaper-than-new-nuclear-by-the-time-hinkley-is-built

19. NFLA Press Release 30th Jan 2017 http://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/nfla-uk-decision-withdraw-euratom-could-halt-new-nuclear/

Giant portions of public spending are now at risk of pouring down a nuclear power black hole as calls for the Government to make direct investments into new nuclear power plant intensify.

Ultimately the sums at risk would be much larger than the Government’s own estimates of the cost of the Trident nuclear weapons system.

Former Minister and House of Commons Energy Committee Chair Tim Yeo is the latest to call for the Government to take ‘minority’ equity shares in new nuclear projects.

There has been a flurry of such demands in the wake of the near bankruptcy of Toshiba, who spearhead the 3GW proposed plant at Moorside in Cumbria. The company now appears likely to seek Chapter 11 bankruptcy for its US nuclear subsidiary Westinghouse.

And of course these demands for limitless taxpayer cash were supported by all (but one, the Green) of the candidates in the recent by-election in the Copeland constituency where Moorside is due to be built, and their respective party leaders.

We can only hope that with that out of the way, a semblance of sanity might return. But we cannot count on it. The British government has long been fanatically pro-nuclear, even as evidence mounts of the massive problems facing the industry, and the mind-boggling cost of new nuclear build.

Meanwhile it has been deliberately strangling the growth of the UK’s renewable energy industries, aiming particular venom at the most competitive technologies, onshore wind and solar.

So why does nuclear need this monstrous taxpayer ‘investment’

Simple: because nuclear power is proving to be virtually undeliverable and ruinously expensive in western countries. Toshiba’s problems stem from the fact that they own Westinghouse who are responsible for the construction (so-far non-construction) of AP1000 reactors in South Carolina and Georgia in the USA, which are creating massive multi-billion dollar cost overruns and liabilities.

These plants are as costly as the failing French EPR design that is so disastrous in the cases of the Finnish and French reactors at Olkiluoto and Flamanville, something which is bankrupting the French nuclear industry and EDF.

Even lured by a promise of £92.50 per megawatt hour of electricity production (in 2012 pounds, so now worth close to £100), more that double current wholesale prices, and the promise of taxpayer guarantees on construction finance, EDF has been unable to summon up the vast capital sums needed to build the planned twin-EPR plant at Hinkley Point in Somerset. Hinkley C (3.2GW planned) will cost over £24 billion according to the European Commission.

Despite the manifest bankruptcy of the technology, rather than question whether it is right to continue with the new nuclear programme, its supporters are in effect wanting to bet the British economy on it.

If the Treasury are forced against their will to sanction ‘equity’ stakes in new nuclear reactors, the losses and, eventually, all the liabilities will fall on the UK Government. Nobody else will invest in the projects unless the Government guarantees the lot. The reactors at Moorside and Wylfa, assuming they cost similar amounts, would thus make the taxpayer responsible for around £50 billion of debt.

People will claim that the Government is ‘only’ taking a minority equity stake. That’s how it will start, and then would represent an enormous amount of state spending and liabilities. After all one quarter of £24 billion is still £6 billion. But it won’t end there, as sure as night follows day, not with the construction costs as well as the rest. It never does with nuclear power!

One rule for nuclear – other rules for everyone else!

Normally of course under the Government’s ‘low carbon’ programme, project raise their own finance and the project owners earns their money from premium price contracts (CfDs) awarded through the Government.

That is always the case with renewable energy projects. They find their own money. Electricity consumers pay a premium price to enable this on their bills. But now for nuclear to go ahead, so it is said, not only will the consumers have to pay a high premium price, but taxpayers will have to fund at least part of the construction as well.

This is money, please note, that will disappear from the Government’s coffers as the plant is built – draining billions of pounds of public money that could be paying for schools, hospitals, housing, social care and decaying public infrastructure. It is not something that will be shuffled onto future generations like decommissioning.

The fact that the Government is effectively financing the building will produce a conflict of interests with the Government negotiating with itself in setting the CfD price. No doubt a ‘lower’ CfD price will be set (that is less than the notorious Hinkley C price) when in fact it will be the taxpayer that will end up paying out countless billions for the projects.

Annual spending on primary education is around £26 billion. Hence building just Moorside will give the Government liabilities (which are likely to be paid by the Government) which will rival this spending.

But then to listen to some people, you’d think building Moorside was more important than closing down all primary schools for a year.

It isn’t.

David Toke is Reader in Energy Policy at the University of Aberdeen. He blogs at Dave Toke’s green energy blog where this article was originally published.

Additional reporting by The Ecologist.

Some sources:

‘Copeland by-election: opposing nuclear power, and voting Green, is the only rational choice‘

‘Keep UK taxpayers off the hook for Moorside nuclear black hole!‘

‘Endgame for Cumbria’s nuclear nightmare – Moorside or Doomrise?‘

‘Not just Toshiba – the global nuclear industry is in crisis everywhere‘

‘AP1000 reactor design is dangerous and not fit for purpose‘

BBC News

Daily Telegraph.

Submissions to Defra’s latest public consultation on badger culling closed on February 10th.

This time they were seeking opinions on their plans for ‘supplementary badger disease control’.

What they mean by that is that any badger cull which has completed its allotted four years could be licensed to simply go on killing badgers.

How many consultations have been held over this thorny issue? Three or four? Or more? I’ve lost count. What is clear is that not once have environment or farming ministers listened to (or perhaps even read) the responses, whether from ordinary members of the public or, importantly, from scientists, vets, ecologists and wildlife organisations.

In The Fate of the Badger author Dr Richard Meyer, a member of the Consultative Panel (CP) when the government was planning to cull badgers in the 1980s, quoted from a 2009 paper Intractable Policy Failure which said that one minister asserted that the CP: “plays a major role in allowing us to demonstrate that all shades of opinion on badgers have been taken into account before we kill them.”

Consultations are there as fig leaves. Opinions contrary to the government’s desired policies have never been taken into account.

Concerned organisations responded with science

With each consultation the barrage of science against badger culling gets stronger, as yet more studies are published (some of them government-led as in Northern Ireland) demonstrating that it is not badgers that are to blame for bovine TB in cattle, but poor testing, even poorer biosecurity and cattle management.

As before, Defra’s Consultation document is full of cherry-picked poor science, science that has been proven wrong by later (or even previous) studies and proposed actions based on fanciful assumptions presented as facts.

Defra still maintains, despite ongoing research to the contrary, that disease spread from badgers to cattle is an important cause of herd breakdowns. The Zoological Society of London (ZSL) is politely scathing about the way ‘evidence’ is presented:

“Such documents should equip the reader to provide informed comment on the government’s proposals … it misrepresents the level of certainty associated with the action proposed… there is thus far no evidence of any disease control benefits from industry-led culling and no evidence as to whether continued culling would prolong such anticipated benefits.”

Lack of evidence of any reduction in cattle Tb is an issue raised by several organisations. Using Defra’s own figures they point to the drop in new incidents before culling started, caused by the implementation of tougher testing and cattle movement controls.

Defra then added something else, the use of another bTB test (IFNy) which gave more accurate results and identified more infected cattle. This would lead to fewer new incidents of bTB. But the drop is being claimed as proof that the badger culling is working.

“Unfortunately, Defra has undermined its own ability to use this measure, by deciding to use the IFNy test on cattle only in areas where badger culling has been undertaken. Hence, ongoing attempts to estimate the impact of badger culling on cattle TB will be confounded by improvements in cattle testing in cull (but not comparison) areas.” ZSL

‘Evidence-based success’

This is Defra’s justification for continuous culling, but both the ‘evidence’ and the ‘success’ have been queried. Defra claims that the first two culls, in Somerset and Gloucester, “have now completed successfully their fourth and final year.” What do they mean by ‘success’?

“Even after four years of culling in Gloucestershire and Somerset, there is no evidence, or indeed any suggestion of any beneficial effect on TB in cattle.” HIS UK

The Badger Trust goes further and asks whether badger culling is actually legal:

“More specifically there is a fundamental omission from the licencing process that has existed from the beginning of the 2013 ‘pilot’ culls, namely that there is no requirement for licencees to produce any evidence of bTB infection in badgers or to establish any credible risk to known populations of cattle.

“That is to say there are no safeguards within the process to ensure that 10,2(a) of the Protection of Badgers Act, 1992 (… for the purpose of preventing the spread of disease …) is being met and thereby ensuring that any culling is actually legal under the Act.”

And they point out that “All criteria mentioned with regard to the ‘success’ (or failure) of culling, or the conditions needed to be met before renewing ‘supplementary licences’ refer only to numbers of badgers killed.”

The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) commented: “It appears the only criteria being applied to define success of the prior culls is number of badgers killed, not a visible reduction of bTB within cattle herds.”

‘Estimating’ badger populations without field surveys

One reason for disputing Defra’s idea of ‘success’ and its plans for the future is the inability to produce any believable badger population figures. ZSL has a lot to say about this. It had taken a lot of hard field work to produce the badger population figures for the first year of culling in Somerset and Gloucester, and even then it was wrong. But now, says ZSL:

“These concerns arise because Defra attempted to estimate badger numbers without conducting any field surveys in the cull zones… Without reliable estimates of initial population size any estimate of population size reduction is likewise unreliable. Unfortunately, now that culls have commenced in these areas the initial badger population size is unknowable.”

They conclude: “it is not at all clear how Natural England could be expected to set target numbers of badgers to be killed in follow-up culls …”

“There is no conclusive evidence that culls carried out to date have resulted in significant disease control benefits, nor that extending them will result in or prolong any such benefits.” Born Free Foundation (BFF)

And even Defra admits that there is no evidence on the effects of longer term badger control. The desired benefits are no more than an assumption.

Welfare is left to the killers

Defra wants to continue the use of ‘free’ or ‘controlled’ shooting, which was found to be inhumane by the Independent Expert Panel in the very first year of culling. Since then even the British Veterinary Association has condemned free shooting. Just about everyone has called for its ban.

Farmers want shooting for two reasons. Cage-trapping badgers is much more expensive, time consuming and involves physical labour. And – let’s be brutally honest here – shooting is much more fun, more macho.

The lack of monitoring, supposedly under the control of Natural England, which is the only way to prove the inhumaneness of shooting, is also called into question. “Wholly inadequate” was BFF’s response, based on Natural England’s own figures. Only 2% of the badgers shot in last year’s cull were observed by monitors, and only one badger was autopsied – out of a total of 8,639 dead badgers.

“Entirely inadequate”, echoed Humane Society International UK (HSI UK), adding: “The increased reliance on self-reporting by culling contractors is inappropriate and liable to lead to erroneous data; for example in 2016 contractors reported a level of missed shots one tenth of that observed by NE monitors.”

Both the Badger Trust and BFF said that Defra appeared to rely on the Chief Veterinary Officer’s belief that “the level of suffering in badgers is comparable with other forms of culling, currently accepted by society”. So that’s okay then. Hang on – I seem to remember several explosions of public rage over proposals to cull – beavers and buzzards to mention just two.

Defra’s ‘cost analysis’ doesn’t add up

“Plans to extend the culls in this way nullify the original cost benefit analysis.” IFAW

“Like every other government department, DEFRA and therefore Natural England, have been subject to continuous cuts in budgets and human resources so it is reasonable to assume that much of what is expected of it under the proposed scheme will be beyond its capacity to deliver.” Badger Trust.

“The proposal to issue supplementary licences, in the complete absence of any evidence that culls conducted over four years have yet resulted in any benefit and without any evidence from the RBCT or elsewhere that culling beyond four years is warranted is completely at odds with Government commitments to evidence-based policy making.” HSI UK.

“The Government claims to have shown that the culling policy will have a positive cost benefit. This is at odds with numerous independent economic analyses and relies on the reduction in TB in cattle shown by the RBCT, which is unlikely, and has not yet been demonstrated.” HSI UK

As the Badger Trust points out, TB eradication is being used as an excuse to slaughter badgers, not a reason.

“[I]t is possible for significant portions of the cull zones to be made up of land where no cattle exist and where any risk from badgers (diseased or otherwise) is non-existent. The process allows for landowner / farmer participation in the culling exercise to be based simply on their ‘desire’ to cull badgers regardless of whether they keep cattle or not.”

But will Defra listen?

I said that opinions contrary to the government’s desired policies have never been taken into account. So does it surprise you that, just 11 days after the consultation closed and before Defra has had any time to consider the large holes in their science (if indeed they would), Environment Secretary Andrea Leadsom told the NFU conference:

“Last summer we rolled out the cull to seven additional areas – all of which were successful. And this year, I want to extend that even further.”

Lesley Docksey is a freelance writer who writes for The Ecologist and other media on the badger cull and other environmental topics, and on political issues for UK and international websites.

Will you join the badger patrols this year? Why not contact your local badger group and find out if they run training days. Many badger patrol groups have their own pages on Facebook.