What price the life of a badger?
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Thank you for downloading More or Less from the BBC. This is the version of the programme first broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Here's Tim Harford.
Hello and welcome to a brand new series of More or Less, the programme which strikes fear into the heart of statistical vagabonds across the galaxy. This week, are clumsy or uncaring staff in English hospitals really killing thousands of patients? We'll ask how many people are being driven to flee their home country by climate change. And always down with the cool kids, we'll talk about this buzz phrase, big data. But first, badgers. The lovable little rogues have, alas, been firmly implicated in playing some sort of role in infecting cows with tuberculosis, which is expensive for farmers and not much fun for the cows either, who are put down if they get TB. One possible approach is to kill a bunch of badgers in the hope of reducing bovine TB.
Harsh on the badgers, but then they are much less delicious than cows. Cue strong feelings on both sides of the debate. The anti-cull protesters are even able to count the Queen guitarist Brian May among their number.
Now, Owen Paterson, who's the Secretary of State in charge of killing badgers, and who also runs DEFRA, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, has backed a cull of badgers being carried out by farmers in Somerset and Gloucestershire. But he reckoned without Evan Davis of the Today programme, who floored him with this question. Just out of interest, in the cost-benefit, which I know you have done at DEFRA, what price is put on the life of a badger? I'm not putting a price on a badger. I'm probably the only person listening to this programme that had pet badgers as a child. Well, the minister seemed not quite to grasp what Evan was driving at. Many people don't quite grasp what Evan was driving at.
But one man who does is Chris Cook of the Financial Times.
So Evan's question was undoubtedly a bit bizarre, but actually spoke to an incredibly fundamental question in public policy, which is, When you do a cost benefit analysis, you have to make sure that you include as many of the relevant costs and benefits when you do that. Now, some of those costs and benefit can be relatively easily ascertained. So we know what the cost of a head of cattle is. For example, we just go down to an auction, listen in and find out what people are willing to pay for a cow. It's much harder to work out what's the value of the life of a badger. It's actually something of a philosophical question. But they do undoubtedly have a value. And we can tell that because people really care when you shoot badgers.
And now it is very peculiar that in the government's cost benefit analysis, it's the cost of the bullets that's really the limitation on how many badgers you kill. It's nothing about the badger. It's not enthusiasm for the badger. There is no care for the badger in the cost benefit analysis.
And do you think that must be wrong then, you think? I mean, it's a hard question to answer, but you are claiming that the answer can't possibly be zero.
I think the fact that there are people that care about the badger enough, like Brian May, to devote large amounts of their time to campaigning for its survival suggests that the average valuation of a badger's life is probably something above zero. It's probably not a million pounds a badger, right? We're not saying they are terribly important. We're not saying also that you could never justify killing a badger.
How did the government justify a badger cull and did they price a badger's life?
I live in zone one in London. I'm really the last person to be telling other people what they should be doing with their badges. But it seems very, very unlikely that the correct evaluation of a badger's life is zero.
Chris Cook. The value of the marginal badger isn't the only question on the table here. Another big issue for those in the know is how many badgers are actually going to be killed? The government's aim is to kill 70% of badgers in the pilot zones. Now, this stipulation has had protesters reaching for the small print of the Berne Convention, the Council of Europe's Treaty on Wildlife Protection.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–3:28
2
How did the government justify a badger cull and did they price a badger's life?
3:28–10:31
3
Why is valuing a badger philosophically and economically difficult?
10:31–20:24
4
How reliable are the government's badger population estimates in the cull zones?
20:24–28:07