Badger Day

I have to admit, it took me ages to get it. Several months ago, Mark had the idea of starting a series of public debates. Great; so far, so exciting. But then he announced the first topic: Badgers.
So it was a hot story line in The Archers a couple of years ago; David Archer shot a badger - a protected species - and was arrested, I think, for it. I listen rarely, but he's still around, so he can't have been banged up for life. But it did raise the issue of the causal relationship between badgers and TB, even if only among the rarefied Radio 4 audience. I know it's a major issue for farmers; all cattle are tested yearly, and if a reactor is found, the herd is shut up and any cows judged to have TB are slaughtered. Not only can it have a devastating effect on their income and livelihood, but it must be emotionally damaging too.
I know we're not really farmers, and have a rather soppy, anthropomorphic relationship with Sophie and Sylvia (lovely traditional Hereford ladies), but I can only imagine that the four days between the TB test and the result are even more hellish for proper herdsmen.
Still, it didn't seem to me like the kind of topic that was going to get the burgers of Devizes away from Thursday night telly in their hundreds, as Mark seemed confidently to expect. He'd booked the Assembly Rooms, grand and capacious, printed hundreds of posters, taken an ad in the local paper. But, by the morning of the debate, less than 70 tickets had sold - and thirty of those to Malcolm Clark of the Wiltshire Badger Group.
I bought Fair Trade biscuits, tea and coffee, and four litres of milk, which seemed like tonnes. Mark told me to get more (I had to give my friend Fev the money with which to buy the milk from Somerfields - all rules are there to be steered around).
We were still laying out cups and saucers when they started to arrive. First, three farmers - one with a prosthetic leg. Then a pair of perforated badger fanciers, a handful of pensioners, a couple of students. Soon it had turned into a flood of unfamiliar faces, and my money box was overflowing with £3s (£2 for concessions). Andrew, our farmer friend who had reacted so dramatically to the mere mention of Malcolm Clark, brought his wife and father, but fortunately not the promised rotten eggs.
Meurig Raymond, deputy Chairman of the NFU, swept in trailing hand maidens and took his seat as Proposer; Malcolm's entourage was rather more shambolic.
I was still at the door, selling standing room tickets for £1 when Mark, as Chair, introduced the opposing factions and announced the motion: 'This House believes it is becoming increasingly necessary and right to put the management of disease and needs of food production above the rights of wildlife.'
It turned into an evening worthy of the RGS. Meurig rose to the heights of Welsh oration as he expounded the central crisis in modern farming: world demand for food is soaring, while supply - embattled by climate change and mis-judged bio-fuel production - is shrinking. Having to slaughter whole herds that have become infected by TB is an impediment too far. Cull the badgers, and milk and beef supply, at least, can be secured.
Organic farmer Peter Gantlett, seconding the motion, expressed the farmers' desire to have healthy wildlife.
I was washing up teacups while the opposition spoke, but I caught the central argument: culls don't work. And I heard our habitually phlegmatic vet, Donal, rising from the floor, purple with passion, to rail against badgers. For a moment, I thought it might yet become a scuffle.
Tea and coffee during the interval calmed matters somewhat. And after that when, one by one, farmers rose to talk about their devastation at having to stop milk production, shut up their herds, slaughter their foundation stock, the audience by and large listened with respect and restraint.
I was swung. I probably entered the room listing slightly towards the badgers; what right have we to ride roughshod over the rights of silent wildlife? But the Welshman won me over. It might not be very green, but I went with the cows (and Mark later admitted that he would have done the same).
Surprisingly, the majority was not swayed. A tally of the vote on the way in showed them to have a marginal majority: by the end they had increased it by a handful. It was very close, but the badgers won by a nod.
As we left, an hour later than we had anticipated, groups of farmers were still talking to environmental scientists. All agreed that we needed healthy animals, both wild and domestic.
It was a rousing success. Mark was a dignified and generous chair (good practice for Westminster). Nearly two hundred people were obviously stimulated - inspired, enraged - by the debate. Hopefully they'll come to the next one.
The only problem is to find a subject half as interesting and apposite as badgers...