Assessing business impact and calculating growing cost of TB

Counting the cost of TB, there are things we know. We know how much cake we feed per cow and how much cake we feed per litre of milk. We know how much milk we produce from grass and forage and how much that costs to grow. All numbers you should know.

Unfortunately, numbers of costs exist that you don’t really want to know and are better off not knowing. I learned long ago that costs incurred on rugby trips were better kept to yourself. Far better to accumulate some cash to pay for your trip. If you used your credit card your wife could look at the statement and track your movements from restaurant to hotel, and around the world. More importantly, she could count the cost.

At a date fairly soon afterwards, something new would turn up in the house. It might be a new appliance, a piece of furniture or the decorators would appear. And you would say “how do you think we can afford that?” and the reply would be “but it only cost as much as you spent on your trip to Rome, and you seemed to find the money for that”. So, your trip to Rome would eventually cost you twice as much as you thought it would. I only made that mistake a couple of times.

True price of disease

I know TB is having an impact on our farm business. Things that were tight are getting tighter, but do I really want to know the true cost? Probably not. I have never done “depressed”, but knowing the cost of TB could easily be a start down that road.

The headline national figures are readily available. Since 2008, 227,835 cattle have been culled. How do you value them? At £1,000 apiece, it is £227,835,000. At a more conservative £750, it still comes to £170,876,250. Nearly 4,000 badgers have been culled between 2012 and 2015. It has apparently cost a staggering £6,775 a badger to affect a cull, totalling around £27 million.

The relevant figures are so high I have run them through my calculator a few times to make sure they are right. And these numbers take no account of the sort of overhead costs of testing and administration. Nowhere will you find a quantification of the heartache, stress and anguish – factors that all have a cost.

What of my costs? Obvious cash flow costs exist. We have slipped down a band on our milk collection bonus that is costing us 0.25p per litre. It doesn’t sound much, but it mounts up. All the retained calves have to be fed and looked after.

Biggest problem

Calves are our biggest problem. They were an important source of income and beef cross calves are a good trade, but we are getting full up with calves.

In desperation – and you have to be desperate – I took five to a TB-restricted market. I took some to the same market many years ago and vowed I would never do it again, but time passes and needs must. Ours came in last, which gave me a chance to watch what goes on. A lot of good big cattle were there, 400kg to more than 500kg, and seems to be what those people with TB-licensed premises want. They want something they can finish in three or four months when it will be worth as much as anything else.

As far as I could make out, these big cattle were making £120 to £150 a head less than £2 a kilo, which seems an okay sort of price among beef farmers. This is a clear profit opportunity for the buyer and plenty of buyers were there. But, at the end of the day, it is still the bovine equivalent of the scrap metal trade.

My calves were what we call weanlings, about four months old – three black and white calves made £75 each and two blue cross bull calves made £195. The blues would have made more than £300 at three weeks of age at a normal market, so there was a £100 TB cost and a £100 feeding cost. It’s all a bit marginal whether we should have killed them at birth, but that’s a no go area for us. We didn’t become farmers to slaughter and scrap healthy animals, and never will.

Weighing up options

I could start to add all these costs up, but I don’t want to know the answer. The answer I would like to know is, how will we fare at our next 60-day test. Will we lose another 14, 28 or more? It’s all very unsettling – it’s difficult to describe how unsettling it is. This morning, news comes in of a farm about 3 miles away having 19 reactors out of a head of 47. The 25 years they reckon it will take to clear the problem is appalling in its ambition.

Surely, it is not beyond the wit of man to shorten that timescale?

The vaccination option is largely discredited. It has been a spectacular failure in Wales, where TB breakdowns have increased. Other short-term trials have had similar results. Culling seems to be working, but I’ve never been an advocate of shooting. By its very nature it’s traumatic.

Far better, in my view, is to test if there is TB in a sett. By the very nature of how badgers live, if one badger in a sett gets TB, they all get it, and if they have TB in the sett, euthanise them with a painless gas. It would probably be a better death than the cattle have, it would be treating the badger the same as the cattle and, hopefully, be less emotive. There is bound to be an element of pain with shooting, the costs are ridiculous and it is important to do a distasteful job as painlessly as possible.

I can’t remember when the 25-year target started, but a portion of it is already wasted. It’s been wasted because politicians work to such short-term agendas. The TB agenda has been driven by politicians who are more worried about alienating public opinion than they are about addressing the cost and the waste of TB.

To quote Bill Oddie, a prominent anti-cull, animal rights person: “We must not be overruled by a misguided and arrogant minority.” I couldn’t have put it better myself.