Vermin…
There’s a badger sett on the edge of a farm. To the farmer it is a source of disease in his cattle, the cause of financial pressure and personal stress. For a nearby resident it is a source of joy and wonder. The farmer is convinced that the badgers are seriously infected with TB and would like them culled. The resident feeds them to encourage them to come out to play.
That embodies the often polarised views about badgers. For some they are dirty disease carrying vermin with no natural predators spreading out of control. For others they are a delightful part of God’s creation.
TB has been around for thousands of years. There is evidence of human infection in Egypt as early as 3,700BC. The earliest it is believed to have been found in animals is in elephants in India ‘some time before 2000 BC.’(1) The disease is nothing new. What is new is pasteurisation of milk and
vaccination of humans. Before milk was pasteurised, TB was a significant problem. In the 1930s in this country 2,000 human deaths a year were attributed to drinking unpasteurised milk. It is estimated that around 40% of dairy cattle had TB. A voluntary testing scheme was introduced in 1935. Cattle that were shown to have the disease were culled to prevent it spreading. Farmers were compensated for the loss of their livestock. This testing and slaughter programme was made compulsory in 1950. By the 1980s the levels of TB in cattle were low.
But ‘TB in Great Britain has been steadily increasing over the past twenty years… 6,568 cattle herds were under restrictions… at some time during 2007 in Great Britain, compared with 5,864 herds in 2006’ (2) In 2008 just under
40,000 cattle were slaughtered up from just under 28,000 in 2007. The NFU estimate the cost to the taxpayer as almost £100 million a year. What has caused the increase and what can be done to fight it?
Farmers point out that until the 1970s setts that were believed to carry infection were gassed. In the 1980s gassing was replaced with trapping and humane killing of badgers that appeared to be diseased, though diagnosis of a wild trapped badger is notoriously difficult. To protect badgers from baiting, it was made illegal to disturb badgers or their setts except under a Government licence. Trapping and killing stopped. Disease in cattle increased and farmers were quick to make a link to the increased badger population, from 300,000 to 400,000, in the 10 years to 1997 (the most recent figure). It is believed badger numbers continue to increase. As well as testing and slaughtering cattle, say farmers, the disease must be controlled in wildlife.
The contrary view is that controlling wildlife is ineffective in what is a disease of cattle. This argues that the solution is better biosecurity on farms, better testing of cattle and restricting movements of cattle that may be infected. This contention points to the increase of TB in cattle after the 2001 outbreak of Foot and Mouth. The vets were busy with Foot and Mouth so testing cattle for TB didn’t happen. The result was untested animals were moved. There were also many
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www.arthurrankcentre.org.uk
bovine TB
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