# Badger Cull



## Drayvan (Jul 7, 2010)

So, postponed for another year :2thumb: how do people feel about that? Is this the last we'll hear of the idea or do you think it will come back?


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## vgorst (Sep 27, 2011)

If the authorities actually pay attention to the results from the pilot tests hopefully they'll just call it off. I read recently that there's a new diagnostic test where they can differentiate between infected and vaccinated animals - hopefully that'll be the first port of call before an indiscriminate cull.


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## NickBenger (Nov 18, 2010)

Drayvan said:


> So, postponed for another year :2thumb: how do people feel about that? Is this the last we'll hear of the idea or do you think it will come back?


Great :2thumb: Hopefully the idea will be scrapped but I think it will come back next year and we'll have this whole fiasco again.


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## Drayvan (Jul 7, 2010)

Hopefully they give up on it now, and introduce a vaccination programme for the badgers! Although I was watching the news yesterday and they said they were putting it off for another year to look at the scientific evidence and take it from there.... now to me, that's an admission of diving headfirst into the cull without even looking at the results of the pilot tests and how ineffective it was!


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## Kuja (Dec 14, 2011)

Dunno how they could even consider it tbh no basis at all they need to give vaccination a good run instead of simply killing things.

Heck, it would be like me getting bird flu(examples sake) and them putting a bullet in my head so it does not spread instead of actually treating me and others, or trying too.


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## vgorst (Sep 27, 2011)

The problem previously was that they had no way of telling if an animal testing positive for TB was from the vaccination or an infection - what I don't understand was their reason for indiscriminate culling. They also seemed to completely ignore the fact that other wildlife carries TB - deer, cats, rodents and other livestock including horses.

I was talking to the founder of the wildlife rescue I volunteer at. In the 20+ years and the 300+ animals she has dealt with and tested, none have been infected with TB.

I don't think it's the last we'll hear of this, not by a long shot.


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## LiamRatSnake (Jul 3, 2007)

I don't think many who aren't involved in the farming industry realize the panic and seriousness of TB.
It's a tricky one. If it worked I'd be all for it. It's not the badgers fault and it is sad but us losing all our beef herds is much more worrying for me than a few dead badgers. BUT I don't think it will work so I'm glad it's been called off. No animal should be killed unnecessarily.


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## Drayvan (Jul 7, 2010)

LiamRatSnake said:


> I don't think many who aren't involved in the farming industry realize the panic and seriousness of TB.
> It's a tricky one. If it worked I'd be all for it. It's not the badgers fault and it is sad but us losing all our beef herds is much more worrying for me than a few dead badgers. BUT I don't think it will work so I'm glad it's been called off. No animal should be killed unnecessarily.


Very true, I feel very sorry for the farmers that have to lose their herds, after all that's their income. But TB has been around a very long time, and first came from cattle (hence the 'bovine tb') obviously. So I firmly believe that rather than remove 70%+ of badgers, there needs to be stricter bio security in farms, not just when there's an outbreak of a disease such as foot and mouth, BSE, scrapie etc but all the time, livestock should also be better protected from contact with wildlife, and farmers should be helped financially to do so, after all, farmers are providing us with our food!! Not just doing it for the good of their health :lol2: but the way things are theres no way farmers can afford to effectively combat the issues they have, if people had stepped in a decade ago to help eradicate this disease then we most certainly wouldn't be where we are now.


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## vgorst (Sep 27, 2011)

LiamRatSnake said:


> I don't think many who aren't involved in the farming industry realize the panic and seriousness of TB.
> It's a tricky one. If it worked I'd be all for it. It's not the badgers fault and it is sad but us losing all our beef herds is much more worrying for me than a few dead badgers. BUT I don't think it will work so I'm glad it's been called off. No animal should be killed unnecessarily.





Drayvan said:


> Very true, I feel very sorry for the farmers that have to lose their herds, after all that's their income. But TB has been around a very long time, and first came from cattle (hence the 'bovine tb') obviously. So I firmly believe that rather than remove 70%+ of badgers, there needs to be stricter bio security in farms, not just when there's an outbreak of a disease such as foot and mouth, BSE, scrapie etc but all the time, livestock should also be better protected from contact with wildlife, and farmers should be helped financially to do so, after all, farmers are providing us with our food!! Not just doing it for the good of their health :lol2: but the way things are theres no way farmers can afford to effectively combat the issues they have, if people had stepped in a decade ago to help eradicate this disease then we most certainly wouldn't be where we are now.


I have to agree, we as the general public don't really know (or think about) the impact of TB on cattle and farmers (and I'd hate to think of a world without lasagne!!).

Biosecurity is good in theory, trying to implement it is something different. There are suggestions of raising troughs etc to prevent badgers from using them, but what about other wildlife? Also, imagine trying to stop rats getting into farms!! Virtually impossible in my mind, those sneaky little watsits  not to mention the amount of money needed to modify facilities (bet the public wouldn't happily pay for it all).

I wish more farmers felt the same as LiamRatSnake. Last year we had a debate over the badger cull, one girl (from a farming background) supported the cull. After realising that badgers may not actually be the problem and culling may not help, she still wanted 'death to all badgers' - I think, for some farmers, it's just habit/nature to blame them.


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## Mynki (Mar 24, 2010)

vgorst said:


> The problem previously was that they had no way of telling if an animal testing positive for TB was from the vaccination or an infection - what I don't understand was their reason for indiscriminate culling. They also seemed to completely ignore the fact that other wildlife carries TB - deer, cats, rodents and other livestock including horses.
> 
> I was talking to the founder of the wildlife rescue I volunteer at. In the 20+ years and the 300+ animals she has dealt with and tested, none have been infected with TB.
> 
> I don't think it's the last we'll hear of this, not by a long shot.


This is true, however you'll find that TB is extremely rare in UK deer. Every time we cull one, we inspect it for TB, blue tongue, foot and mouth and even anthrax before placing it into the human food chain. In years of doing this we've never come across a single infected animal. As for the other species you mention, cats and rodents can you advise how many instances of TB have been spread from them to cattle in the UK over say, the last ten years?


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## vgorst (Sep 27, 2011)

Mynki said:


> This is true, however you'll find that TB is extremely rare in UK deer. Every time we cull one, we inspect it for TB, blue tongue, foot and mouth and even anthrax before placing it into the human food chain. In years of doing this we've never come across a single infected animal. As for the other species you mention, cats and rodents can you advise how many instances of TB have been spread from them to cattle in the UK over say, the last ten years?


I think, as with badgers, there are areas of higher incidence than others (as with anything). I also think that it depends on whether you're talking about farmed or wild deer. I could find very few figures relating to deer (or indeed many other wildlife) but from 2010 DEFRA tested 46 farmed/wild deer (a very small amount I know), only 1 farm deer tested positive whereas 21 wild deer tested positive.

When you also take into account that wild deer aren't actively tested unless they have symptoms of TB, many asymptomatic individuals carry on undetected, potentially infecting others.

To be honest, I have found absolutely no figures of TB passing from cat/rat to cattle, I intended to use those as examples to show that a huge variety of animals can potentially carry TB (not trying to frame them  ). If you have found any figures I'd be grateful if you could direct me to them, maybe I'm not looking in the right places  . I'll admit that chances are the amount of TB spread from cats/rats to cattle is negligible (if non-existant), but I wonder if studies have actually been done that focus on other animals to prove their 'innocence' as it were.

Obviously put me straight if any of this is wrong (I'm still learning). I'm not arguing that badgers are or aren't the main culprit, I was meaning to argue about the way the cull was being carried out. : victory:


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