in the number of badgers, which is an equation often made by the myth makers. What is clear is that changes to farming practices are not helping matters. The intensification of farming means that we have ever bigger herds, and all the evidence says that the bigger the herd, the faster the disease will spread within it once it takes root. Husbandry is another issue that we cannot dismiss. Yesterday in the Lobby we had a visit from Steve Jones , who is a dairy farmer in the Forest of Dean . He described eloquently the often less than ideal conditions in which cows were -- and still are in some instances -- kept, along with the increasingly intensive regimes to which the animals are subjected. For example, water troughs are often said to rarely be cleaned out. Over time, they can become reservoirs of the disease as the stagnating water collects various bacteria, typically over the winter months. He also talked about the practice of some farmers -- not all of them by any means -- who, even now, collect the slurry deposited during the course of a farming day, spread it over the land and immediately let some of their cattle to feed off those fields. I cannot believe that the hon. Lady believes that farmers who have had the disease and who have been testing their cattle every 60 days do not clean their water troughs. If she had suffered the same pain as a farmer, she