EDITORIAL COMMENT: Badger cull is an act of barbarism (From South Wales Argus)

More Argus arrogance. Don't ask people what they think, tell them.

Not convinced? 54% drop in infection of cattle, uninfected cattle becoming infected by proximity to badgers? What else do you need? Decimation of Welsh cattle farming to prove a point, of course then it would be fault of ineffectual government policy to blame. Not the badgers. A vibrant industry, a sound rural economy or the death of disease ridden pests, that is the choice. I know which I and, I suspect, many others would vote for.

Oh really Argus? ..........and what do you know about the matter sitting in urban Newport??

nolongergullible wrote:
Not convinced? 54% drop in infection of cattle, uninfected cattle becoming infected by proximity to badgers? What else do you need? Decimation of Welsh cattle farming to prove a point, of course then it would be fault of ineffectual government policy to blame. Not the badgers. A vibrant industry, a sound rural economy or the death of disease ridden pests, that is the choice. I know which I and, I suspect, many others would vote for.

I wonder where you get your figures from?
54%? Absolute piffle
I expect you are a farmer who cuts corners and who has brought the misery of TB onto your own livestock.

"LIKE our readers, we are incensed at the Assembly’s badger cull."

I'm a reader, and am not incensed. Not in the slightest.

You see, life is short and there are far more important things to dedicate our emotions towards.

Okay, people at the SWA may have personal agendas as paid-up members of the Badgers Trust, but the rest of us...?

This is fox-hunting all over again, where the media try to stir up a minority subject into a polarised national story; where we are made to feel somehow flawed if we are neither adamantly for or against it.

To not care is not an option. But we don't care. We really don't.

SWA, if you are going to start another article with the words: "LIKE our readers, we are incensed at..." may I suggest following it with something that we are actually incensed over: such as jobs; prospects; crime; health; and the huge demographic changes in our communities without the additional financial support to make the transitions easier.

Finding a diseased badger carcass in Gloucestershire in 1971 wasn't proof of a link between badgers and bTB in cattle; it simply proved that sometimes badgers carry the disease and it also gave farmers and MAFF (as was then) a scapegoat. Science has since demonstrated that in TB hotspots especially cattle transmit the disease to badgers...so perhaps that badger was a victim, not a perpertrator. More recently 10 years of robust science has ended with the conclusion that a widespread badger cull would make no meaningful difference to the current epidemic. If you want to find the cause for today's epidemic look no further than the infrequent and inadequate testing regime which for decades farmers have accepted. The much used "live test" (shown this weekend on Countryfile) detects TB in a herd but it doesn't find all the diseased cattle. It misses as many as 25-30 in every 100. So disease continues to spread in herds even when the reactors that have been found are slaughtered. This was demonstrated all too vividly when farmers in hotspots sold cattle after foot and mouth restrictions were lifted. They exported the disease to previously clean areas of the north. Even the rabidly anti-badger NFU accepts that as a fact. What we saw then was a demonstration of what is happening all the while in TB hotspots in Wales and the south-west: cattle are infecting other cattle, and until all cattle are 1) subjected to dual testing (the live test and the more sensitive gamma interferon test), and 2) rigorously tested before being sold, then this highly infectious respiratory disease will rage on in herds. Not convinvced? Just look at the recent admissions coming out of the Welsh Assembly. By stepping up testing they have found dozens of infected herds which would otherwise not have been found until 2012. By that time those infected beasts would have worsened the epidemic. Badgers are the fall guys, a side issue. The Argus has got it right.

wovesvan: "There's none as blind as those who do not want to see". 54% is the scientific value found by Jenkins et al. You may not like it, but you can't deny it.

The Editorial says: "Tests have proved that there is no substantial evidence that badgers contaminate cattle with Bovine TB." Who told you that - the tooth fairy, while simultaneously assuring you that evil farmers were responsible for the whole epidemic?

Stick to pontificating about things you know about.

Spectrum wrote:
Finding a diseased badger carcass in Gloucestershire in 1971 wasn't proof of a link between badgers and bTB in cattle; it simply proved that sometimes badgers carry the disease and it also gave farmers and MAFF (as was then) a scapegoat. Science has since demonstrated that in TB hotspots especially cattle transmit the disease to badgers...so perhaps that badger was a victim, not a perpertrator. More recently 10 years of robust science has ended with the conclusion that a widespread badger cull would make no meaningful difference to the current epidemic. If you want to find the cause for today's epidemic look no further than the infrequent and inadequate testing regime which for decades farmers have accepted. The much used "live test" (shown this weekend on Countryfile) detects TB in a herd but it doesn't find all the diseased cattle. It misses as many as 25-30 in every 100. So disease continues to spread in herds even when the reactors that have been found are slaughtered. This was demonstrated all too vividly when farmers in hotspots sold cattle after foot and mouth restrictions were lifted. They exported the disease to previously clean areas of the north. Even the rabidly anti-badger NFU accepts that as a fact. What we saw then was a demonstration of what is happening all the while in TB hotspots in Wales and the south-west: cattle are infecting other cattle, and until all cattle are 1) subjected to dual testing (the live test and the more sensitive gamma interferon test), and 2) rigorously tested before being sold, then this highly infectious respiratory disease will rage on in herds. Not convinvced? Just look at the recent admissions coming out of the Welsh Assembly. By stepping up testing they have found dozens of infected herds which would otherwise not have been found until 2012. By that time those infected beasts would have worsened the epidemic. Badgers are the fall guys, a side issue. The Argus has got it right.

So why did the skin test succeed in reducing bTB incidences from 40% to more or less zero in the mid 1980s (630 or so cases in 1986 compared with 40,000 now)? Why does the currently used test work in all other countries in the EU that don't have infected badgers or other bTB sources?

Before the Irish Four Counties trial and the English results you might have been able to claim that badgers are the fall guys and farmers were looking for excuses, but now the evidence is there, 100%, no scientific ambiguity at all - and it shows badgers are the biggest problem.

Of course cattle movements can and do spread bTB - that's common sense, but if it was as much of a vector as you claim bTB would be everywhere - including in Scotland which is now officially bTB free. The truth is that 85-90% of incidences occur in bTB hot spots like Pembrokeshire where incidences in badgers have been proven to be extremely high. Yes, cattle give the disease to badgers, and vice versa, so killing cattle over and over again is pointless as it does not break the cycle.

Such unscientific comments would be more appropriate on a creationist website.

Islwyn18 misses the crux of the issue:the epidemic he refers to was the tailend of one that started in the 30s and was almost resolved by the late 60s early 70s without killing one badger. The Government set up up and area by area (diseased cattle) eradication plan and initiated a programme of repeated "live" tests and a ban on cattle movements. Gradually that did the trick. Unfortunately with only a small pocket of TB remaining in south-west herds they brought the controls to an end. They left enough undetected TB for cattle movements (once again) to restart the disease spread. Badgers rarely travel more than a mile and a half from their setts; cattle are taken hundreds of miles...hence the countrywide spread. The Scots solved the TB problem because they had the sense to insist that only pre-tested beasts could be allowed into Scotland. Contrast that with the deliberate avoidance in England of tests (look at Defra's long list of overdue tests) often by cattle dealers. As for Ireland, the figures I've seen demonstrate quite clearly that TB has continued to rise despite their disgraceful badger trapping/slaughterin
g policy (of mostly healthy badgers).

Islwyn18 wrote:
wovesvan: "There's none as blind as those who do not want to see". 54% is the scientific value found by Jenkins et al. You may not like it, but you can't deny it.

The Editorial says: "Tests have proved that there is no substantial evidence that badgers contaminate cattle with Bovine TB." Who told you that - the tooth fairy, while simultaneously assuring you that evil farmers were responsible for the whole epidemic?

Stick to pontificating about things you know about.

sillywyn or whatever you want to call yourself, you are clearly out of your depth and fail to acknowledge that the same study led to the Parliament that counts (and that is much more representative of democracy than the Welsh Assembly)finding that a cull was not an answer.

You are probably too young to remember greedy farmers moving livestock to ensure that their livestock got foot and mouth and would therefore qualify for compensation.

Poor husbandry and hygiene on the behalf of the farmers has led to this crisis and it is neanderthals like yourself with your kill. kill, kill philosophy who condone it.

Time to return the powers of devolvement back to Parliament.

Guess you had better stick to printing Newspares with News in, something that you may know more about

Hopefully, the new modified form of the BCG vaccine will help matters. Incidentally, the Independent Scientific Group on Cattle TB recommended against a large-scale cull of badgers. It said "A cull would do little to curb TB and might lead to more cases of the disease by driving infected badgers into regions where the disease had yet to surface."

My thoughts are if we have had to modify the human BCG vaccine to work against bovine TB then obviously it is species specific. With 10 different Mycobacterium bovis strains responsible for 88% (ISG) of Bovine TB the theory that badgers pass on TB to cows overcoming the problem of species specific infection is an interesting one. Mycobacterium bovis is also naturally resident in soil and is also resident in white-tailed deer which are numerous in countries that export cattle to the UK.

Other options such as more stringent controls being placed on the movement of animals nationally and those imported to Britain and avoiding keeping cattle in confined spaces would cost farmers money.

Spectrum wrote:
Islwyn18 misses the crux of the issue:the epidemic he refers to was the tailend of one that started in the 30s and was almost resolved by the late 60s early 70s without killing one badger. The Government set up up and area by area (diseased cattle) eradication plan and initiated a programme of repeated "live" tests and a ban on cattle movements. Gradually that did the trick. Unfortunately with only a small pocket of TB remaining in south-west herds they brought the controls to an end. They left enough undetected TB for cattle movements (once again) to restart the disease spread. Badgers rarely travel more than a mile and a half from their setts; cattle are taken hundreds of miles...hence the countrywide spread. The Scots solved the TB problem because they had the sense to insist that only pre-tested beasts could be allowed into Scotland. Contrast that with the deliberate avoidance in England of tests (look at Defra's long list of overdue tests) often by cattle dealers. As for Ireland, the figures I've seen demonstrate quite clearly that TB has continued to rise despite their disgraceful badger trapping/slaughterin

g policy (of mostly healthy badgers).

No, it is you, Spectrum who misses the crux. Yes the disease was almost wiped out by the 60s and 70s. In fact the remaining pockets of infection you refer to were areas where there were lots of badgers - eg parts of Gloucestershire. At that time badger numbers were far lower elsewhere, so the skin test worked, and TB was eradicated. Since then Badgers have become a protected species, and numbers have gone through the roof in most areas of England and Wales (this is well documented), and the problems experienced in the south west during the 60s and 70s (the skin test not succeeding in tackling bTB because of a significant wildlife reservoir) are now being seen all over the country.
The Scots did not 'solve the problem' by introducing pre-movement testing - that measure was not introduced in Scotland until recently, by which time the epidemic was well underway in the rest of the UK. The Scots do not have a significant problem because they do not have high densities of badgers and only one bTB infected badger has ever been found in Scotland, compared with thousands that have been found in Wales and England (around 14-16% infected). No diseased badgers = no problem, so the Scot's priority was to keep disease out, hence the introduction of pre-movement testing a few years ago.

Wolvesfan:

A couple of rudimentary points: Firstly, Parliament is the House of Commons and the House of Lords, and is different from Government. The Parliament's Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs supported a cull by saying "We have recommended that the culling of badgers in high risk areas should in principle be licensed under the Protection of Badgers Act to counter the spread of cattle TB" Government means the people elected to Parliament that have formed a Government, and it was Government (not Parliament) which ruled out culling. That decision was NOT based on but that was not based on the same study (54%) study. In fact it was based on the ISG report, which was published some 12 months before the 54% study. Your rudimentary knowledge of the scientific background and inability to differentiate between Parliament and Government show that it is you who is out of your depth, and your ‘silly’ joke about a common Welsh forename hints at why this might be the case.