DEFRA purposely misleads the public in the new Quarterly TB in Cattle Report

Last week DEFRA released their Quarterly TB in Cattle in Great Britain statistics in a manner that appears to be a deliberately misleading presentation of Welsh versus English bTB data.

The Welsh Government and Badger Trust have both individually been in conversation with the Office for Statistics Regulation regarding the manner in which DEFRA presents its quarterly data publication of bTB data for England, Wales and Scotland.

The DEFRA Statistics team have made changes to the presentation of this Quarter’s release of the data, but the changes do not go far enough, and appear to be a political move to continue a failing former policy in England at the cost of the more successful and honest policy in Wales.

The statistics fail to mention the following:

1. Wales uses at least ten times more interferon gamma testing in its ‘at risk’ animals than any region in England according to the latest releases from the Welsh Government, identifying more positive bTB cases than in England (This more accurate test results in many more actual positives than false positives).

2. Wales tests all of its cattle no less frequently than annually, whereas animals in the Low Risk Area (LRA) of England may only be tested once every four years, likely missing many more cases.

3. Wales has tested all of its higher risk cattle every six months for much longer than England has in its High Risk Area (HRA). Wales has therefore had twice the opportunity to identify bTB positive cattle for longer than England, resulting in a greater number of cases identified.

4. Table 1.6 is misleading as it does not clearly identify in the table the difference in the use of the gamma test between England and Wales, or that the data also includes inconclusive reactors culled for Wales only.  This distinction inflates the number of cows killed for Wales, as well as not highlighting the inadequacies of the tests used in England at addressing bTB.  This difference is highlighted in the notes section, but if the table was taken at first glance it appears that Wales is dealing with a much bigger problem than England.

5. Perhaps most worryingly of all, the explanatory note goes further to mislead the public by only drawing attention to the minimal risk of false positives possible from Gamma and staying entirely silent on the far greater proportion of false negatives known and recorded in the veterinary literature to be found from use of SICCT in its current formulation.

The politicisation of policy

Badger Trust objects to the gross politicisation of these figures to the detriment of the hard work and greater transparency offered by the Welsh government.  This appears to be an attempt to create a veneer of success over the policy in England which has been shown to be less effective.

It appears from this misrepresentation of the data that DEFRA Policy does not want England to mirror Wales and does not want it disclosed that Wales takes a tougher line on cattle testing. 

The Office for Statistics Regulation has published a recent article (9th September) on misleadingness, and their definition is as follows:

“We are concerned when, on a question of significant public interest, statistics are used to communicate a descriptive statement that the wider relevant statistical evidence would not support, despite otherwise being an accurate statement.”

We believe that this has been enacted in this statistics report.

Badger Trust would like to see corrections and an explanation as a matter of urgency. 

We encourage others with concerns over the presentation and misrepresentation of this data to make an official complaint to the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) at this address regulation@statistics.gov.uk.  

Doing so will help the OSR put more pressure on DEFRA to report accurately on the impact of bTB in cattle.