Agricultural History Review, Volume 69 Part 1 (2021), p. 160

This book is a history of the science and policy behind Britain’s ongoing badger controversy. At last we have a full-length treatment of an important question at the intersection of society and nature: are badgers villains or victims in the spread of bovine tuberculosis (bTB)? On the one hand there is the discourse of farmers and fellow-travelling politicians with rural constituencies, who speak in effect about ‘bad’ badgers, and on the other there are ecologists and the general public, for whom badgers are an iconic species. The advantage of Dr Cassidy’s book is that she carefully peels back the layers and reveals the full complexity of a situation that seems to have little hope of immediate resolution.

By the time bTB was first discovered in badgers in 1971 there had already been a century of public debate about the disease. The early focus had been on its spread from cattle to humans through infected milk, but by 1960 this hazard had been largely controlled through pasteurization. In the 1970s the confirmation of a wildlife reservoir of bTB gave the disease a new manifestation in both the public and the scientific imaginations. The story has been told before but Dr Cassidy adds significant value. For instance, she discusses the actors rather than the organizations involved, using oral history and a close reading of official documents such as committee minutes to identify the key participants and their decisions, their motivations, and the constraints upon them. There are enlightening character sketches, highlighting, for instance, the irritability of Lord Zuckermann and his condescension towards pro-badger campaigners; and there are also in-depth discussions of enthusiasts such as Ernest Neal, Eileen Soper, and Eunice Overend, providing a background to the radical animal politics emerging from the 1960s onwards and its influence upon policy-makers.

The role of badgers in spreading bTB is just one of the knowledge controversies that have become embedded in Britain’s cattle economy in the last 50 years. Others include Foot and Mouth Disease and Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy. In the case of bTB in badgers, several epistemic communities – professional and popular – are involved. In recent times it has been particularly difficult to find a consensus for action, possibly due to a reduction in deference to authority and the greater in-depth exposure of the issues in the press and social media. Even the credibility of science has been undermined, first by the casual indifference of politicians to any expertise that does not fit their ideological preconceptions, second by the poor record of the tuberculin test for identifying the disease in cattle, and third (a point made in my A History of Uncertainty: Bovine Tuberculosis in Britain, 1850 to the Present [2016]) by the naivety of scientists with regard to the experimental frames that are practicable in a hostile rural setting.

There have been nine official reports on bTB, from Zuckerman in 1980 to Godfray in 2018. Dr Cassidy’s book is the most detailed summary of these and the many swings in policy, from the banning of snaring and gassing, to the re-introduction of extensive trapping and shooting, and, most recently, the expansion of the vaccination of badgers. She is particularly strong on the origins of the parallel views of badgers as either vermin or charismatic wildlife.

According to Dr Cassidy, the bTB infection of cattle and badgers has been framed in two ways. The first sees the problem as one of agricultural malaise, with farmers as victims of financial loss and emotional stress. Although they have some professional support in the shape of veterinarians, overall there is little sympathy for them amongst city dwellers. In the second framing the focus has been on environmental ethics, with an acknowledgement of animal suffering and an emphasis upon the need for ecologically based policies, such as vaccination rather than culling. Here the badger is seen as the scapegoat for a bTB problem that is principally the result of cattle-to-cattle transmission. The second frame has also deployed notions of care about badgers that are new in the last 50 years, making it difficult for civil servants and politicians to ignore arguments about the inhumane practices of culling.

The author does not shy away from making recommendations. Two that stand out are, first, the need for investment in better technologies (for instance to identify the disease in cattle and provide suitable vaccination strategies for badgers), and, second, a call for regular personal interactions between the competing interests at national and local level. The first is complex and expensive science that will yield results only in the long run, while the second should be achievable through diplomacy and an attempt at mutual understanding; and yet such consensus-building seems to be as far away as ever.

Dr Cassidy’s style is admirably clear, jargon-free and without artifice. While coming from a Science and Technology Studies viewpoint, her theoretical cloak is worn lightly and in a way that enables an impartial analysis of the arguments deployed by all of the combatants in the controversies she unpacks. In addition, there is thorough scholarship evidenced in over 900 endnotes, 45 pages of bibliography and a full index.

Whereas in the past I have complained in book reviews about the high prices placed upon monographs by commercial publishers, now I am pleased to report that researchers, students and general readers can download the text under review for free. This wholly admirable innovation is supported financially by the Wellcome Trust and forms part of the structural shift in academic publishing that is now taking place. If this trend is taken to its logical conclusion there will be less need for expensive hard copy library storage, though we readers will all require more hard disk space on our computers to store electronic books. Overall, it is not difficult to see where balance of cost and convenience lies.