URGENT INVITE "Doing TB differently: Generating a workable TB policy during an acute episode within a chronic countryside conflict"

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This project aims to make a significant contribution to our understanding of the role that deliberative forums can play in solving intractable environmental policy problems, when informed by an understanding of how passionate interests are articulated and practiced. In particular, it explores and begins to work towards the remediation of the socio- political conflicts emerging around the issue of badger culling policy designed to control bovine tuberculosis in cattle. The government in England has already issued licenses for a pilot culling of badgers in West Gloucestershire and West Somerset, beginning imminently - in the late summer or early autumn of 2013. The licenses permit for up to 70% of the badger population in those regions to be culled in annual six-week periods in each location for a period of four years. Whilst this pilot scheme will be officially assessed only in terms of safety, humaneness and effectiveness of controlled shooting as a culling method, the feasibility of the broader roll out of culling policy clearly hinges upon the nature of social and political conflicts and whether they can be remediated. Even though the culls have yet to commence, public discourse is already highly divisive, with the debate being framed largely as a choice between badgers or farmers. Given that nearly 261,000 members of the public have signed the largest ever direct.gov e-petition against badger culling, it is anticipated that conflict between protesters, culling contractors, farmers and police will become acute. Our research plans to explore the nature of the conflict among a range of actors with an interest in the culling policy. We also seek to evaluate the potential for consensus among these actors, or, at the very least, to help find a workable compromise to help inform future policy on the management of bTB in cattle. The lessons learned from this case study will inform future environmental policy-making on countryside issues and beyond.Our research will be guided by three research questions:1) How does the character of the acute conflict (characterised, in this case, by controversial field culls combined with the deliberately narrow remit of an Independent Expert Panel) reveal key fracture points in the debate?2) What is the scope for reducing conflicts and overcoming fracture points through social science led forms of intervention?3) Can a social science-led intervention translate into broader policy change?These questions will be addressed from several angles. We will collect field observations and develop and analyse an archive of film evidence recording interactions between and among pro-and anti- culling groups, cull contractors, companies, farmers and police officers as culling is being undertaken. A sample of people from each of these groups will be approached for in-depth interviews. Data will also be generated from social- and mass-media. An online deliberative forum will be used to understand the types of argumentation deployed on all sides of the debate. This will inform a Q-set (a set of key arguments used in the debate) that will be used to test the views of participants in deliberative forums before and after they participate in two deliberative events. These professionally facilitated deliberative forums will seek to negotiate a workable compromise for future TB policy. Q-methodology will allow us to assess the extent to which social science-led deliberative forums have been able to reduce key fracture points in the conflict. Finally, we will run focus groups with key policy makers assessing the utility of our approach for informing policy and the possibility of our findings shaping TB policy.