Badger Cull

[MattBackHome]

(and here's Ben Goldacre with the science behind the culling, earlier this year

The problem with badger culls | Ben Goldacre | Comment is free | The Guardian

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

Go on then, explain how you are going to capture every single badger in the countryside. I'd love to know.

Agree. The NHS is stretched enough as it is.

 

[Commander]

In training for next month's World Hardest Creature.

Culling just winds him up even more.

Imagine if they had to try and cull the HONEY BADGER. How would they do it? Carpet bombing? Napalm? Nuclear weapons? All would prove fruitless.

2012 will be the year of the HONEY BADGER. This time it will not fail.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

As long as the Mail don't re-publish lies we should be alright

The working class badgers will be okay. They'll just take the jab. It's the ones with sniffy middle-class parents who will kick up a fuss.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

In training for next month's World Hardest Creature.

Culling just winds him up even more.

Looks like a little mole with a skull cap on.

 

[keaton]

Go on then, explain how you are going to capture every single badger in the countryside. I'd love to know.

I'm not going to. I imagine they'd get a whole team do it.

Why is easier to shoot every single badger than trap them?
I'm sure in lots of case they'll be trapping the badgers to kill them anyway

 

[Commander]

I'm not going to. I imagine they'd get a whole team do it.

Why is easier to shoot every single badger than trap them?
I'm sure in lots of case they'll be trapping the badgers to kill them anyway

Shoot, trap, poison etc.

Has to surely be a hell of a lot easier and more cost effective than taking hundreds of thousands of badgers alive. What are they going to do, negotiate a mass surrender with them?

People don't like it because they think of badgers as lovely cute cuddly creatures. They're actually not, they're f***ing horrible, vicious, nasty bastards. Probably even worse than foxes, and the countryside is overrun with them.

 

[MattBackHome]

How do the cows get TB from the badgers? What are they playing at?

 

[withdeanwombat]

How do the cows get TB from the badgers? What are they playing at?

Well,at this time of year with all that mistletoe about............

 

[Mutts Nuts]

Poll to follow.

[YT]EIyixC9NsLI[/YT]

Badger hams were once a very popular meat in this country and across europe, they should be reintroduced to the English diet .I think i will shoot a couple this weekend just to see what they taste like , probably very much like wild boar

 

[Mutts Nuts]

Shoot, trap, poison etc.

Has to surely be a hell of a lot easier and more cost effective than taking hundreds of thousands of badgers alive. What are they going to do, negotiate a mass surrender with them?

People don't like it because they think of badgers as lovely cute cuddly creatures. They're actually not, they're f***ing horrible, vicious, nasty bastards. Probably even worse than foxes, and the countryside is overrun with them.

If you corner one they always go for the throat they make a right mess of you

 

[NMH]

Living in the countryside, I never once got bothered by a badger.
Humans, on the other hand........

 

[1066gull]

BBC News - Sussex farmers in call for badger cull


My Dad has failed twice and cannot sell anything because of ONE animal being a reactor. He has so many stores on this farm, animals need shifting as its putting pressure on supplies and cash flow

 

[Huple]

You can make good shaving brushes out of their hairs. They wouldn`t go to waste.

 

[glasfryn]

heres a novel idea vaccinate the cattle
the government pay fortunes in compensation for culling the infected cattle so why not have a vaccination campaign besides the fact that the Badgers were most probably there before the farmers anyway.


can't you just tell I'm BACK

 

[perseus]

Angus with Horseradish Sauce, Yorkshire Puddings and two Veggie

Shoot, trap, poison etc.

Has to surely be a hell of a lot easier and more cost effective than taking hundreds of thousands of badgers alive. What are they going to do, negotiate a mass surrender with them?

People don't like it because they think of badgers as lovely cute cuddly creatures. They're actually not, they're f***ing horrible, vicious, nasty bastards. Probably even worse than foxes, and the countryside is overrun with them.

Cattle, especially Bulls are not very nice. Overgrazing, everlasting cow pats. I like Badgers better.

TB (Bovine Tuberculosis) - Diseases of Cattle from TheCattleSite

NFU TB Free England


Bovine TB in the UK, England, Ireland, Wales and New Zealand

Wildlifeonline - Badgers & Bovine Tuberculosis

Mycobacterium bovis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

My intuition and some knowledge would say that the whole cattle industry needs scrutiny and that the best reduction would be achieved by an alteration in the way in which the cattle industry operates. The Animal Rights Idealists would not like the idea of huge cattle factories though.

 

[perseus]

PS: Slaughtering badgers is not the answer to bovine TB | Patrick Barkham | Comment is free | The Guardian

 

[countryman]

Of course there should be a cull. You animal rights loving lefty bastards may be saying "think of the poor badgers" but what about the cows which get slaughtered due to getting TB from this rather irritating animal and think of the farmer who is stopped from trading his cattle? Farmers as it is do not earn much money. If they are stopped from trading they will earn less and go out of business. And as for the idea of vaccinating them, that would be far to expensive.

 

[glasfryn]

Of course there should be a cull. You animal rights loving lefty bastards may be saying "think of the poor badgers" but what about the cows which get slaughtered due to getting TB from this rather irritating animal and think of the farmer who is stopped from trading his cattle? Farmers as it is do not earn much money. If they are stopped from trading they will earn less and go out of business. And as for the idea of vaccinating them, that would be far to expensive.

I take that is a bit of tongue in the cheek
poor farmers you are having a laugh they get compensation for about everything that goes wrong inoculation of the cattle must save them and the government money in the long run but no thats just to easy its much better to whinge and complain about TB than to try and find some other way than shooting the badgers and its no good anyone saying its done humanely because who is going to be there to ensure its done with some dignity.
they have tried to rid the fields with cattle of Badgers and where they have to cattle still get TB so whats the answer maybe huge dairy farms like they have in the USA where all the cattle are kept indoors.

 

[PILTDOWN MAN]

Vaccination of cattle
Cattle vaccination is not 100% effective

The following extract taken from a document1 compiled in 2008 gives some detail.

Experimental evidence indicates that cattle are most responsive to BCG when the vaccine is administered to neonates (calves less than 6 weeks old). Vaccination early in life also reduces the chance of prior sensitisation to environmental mycobacteria which could affect responsiveness to vaccination. Likewise vaccination is not expected to have any beneficial effect in already infected cattle so earlier vaccination reduces the likelihood of the animal already being infected.

It is unlikely that a cattle vaccine will be developed in the short to medium term (i.e. within the next 5 years) that confers over 80% protection against bTB in the vast majority of cattle although this is currently a longterm research aim.

In the short to medium term what is more probable, is that a BCG vaccine is available that confers full protection against M. bovis infection to 50% of vaccinated animals. Of the 50% that remain susceptible to infection, over half will be partially protected and have a much reduced capability of transmitting M. bovis should they become infected. The benefits of vaccination are likely to last for at least 12 months. 1

After the BCG vaccine is administered, detection of infected animals becomes more difficult

The following extracts give some detail. The first extract came from a document5 dated September 2010 and the second extract came from a document6 compiled in 2008.

The BCG vaccine sensitizes cattle to the mandatory tuberculin skin test for some time after vaccination and can lead to a positive result when an animal is not infected with M. bovis (a false positive). Therefore Defra is also developing a diagnostic test to differentiate infected from vaccinated animals (known as a DIVA test) that could be used alongside the tuberculin skin test, where necessary, to confirm whether the animal is indeed infected. DIVA is an acronym formed from "Differentiating Infected from Vaccinated Animals". 5

The DIVA test will be based on the same biological assay as the current 'gamma interferon (IFN-?) test' which is currently used alongside the skin test to improve specificity in certain prescribed circumstances. Experimental evidence suggests that the BCG vaccine is most effective in animals under six weeks therefore the DIVA test will also need to be effective at this age. Although the test will function effectively below this age there may result in some drop-off in accuracy (sensitivity or specificity) compared to older animals. It may therefore be necessary to identify a 'compromise' target age range for vaccination where the vaccine and the diagnostic test are both sufficiently effective. 6

Reference 6 points out however that the desensitation to the skin test will subside over a certain period post-vaccination and the animals will then be tuberculin test negative. This time period has to be defined, but current evidence suggests that the majority of animals, greater than 90% will revert to test-negative status within 1 year.

Legislation will need to be changed to allow the trade in live and dairy exports to continue.

The following is an extract from Reference 6.

The use of the tuberculin skin test to define OTF status in trade legislation creates difficulties when using 'sensitising vaccines' such as BCG which give skin test false positives. EU legislation will need to be amended to allow use of a vaccine which sensitises cattle to the tuberculin skin test without trade restrictions being imposed on live animals i.e. through the recognition of a new test which is capable of distinguishing between infected and vaccinated animals, with consequential amendments to domestic legislation.

Milk from animals sensitised to the skin test could not be consumed under current legislation. Changes to EU trade legislation will need to be appropriately worded to ensure that the prohibition in the EU hygiene legislation does not apply to vaccinated but not infected animals.

Reference 8 states that if legislation was not changed this would have a significant impact on the UK Agri-Food Sector and the economy as a whole as this trade is annually worth around £1.06 billion.

In Reference 9, DEFRA state that breaking EU law by vaccinating domestic cattle could include
reputational damage,
loss of EU funding for the UK's TB eradication programme(€27m in 2010),
loss of exports to the EU in both live cattle (negligible) and cattle products (£375m in 2010),
infraction proceedings for which the minimum penalty is now set at €10m.
In response to the following follow-up enquiry to DEFRA

Would you by any chance be able to give any insight into whether or not the loss of EU trade in cattle products is likely to be partial or 100%?

the response was

Intra-Community trade of bovine animals and products is harmonized across the European Union, so we could expect any ban to apply to trade with all other Member states.10

Why is it necessary to spend money addressing bovine TB when bovine TB is currently considered to be a very small risk to human health?

Prof Christl Donnelly replied to this on the BBC's Farming Live program on 28th July 2011 as follows.

If there was no control of the animal health disease then bovine TB would increase dramatically and then it would be a huge occupational health risk. Also any failure of systems could then have potential for public health risks.