Topic: Goodbye badgers

[shirlton]

The cull has started.  . I have never ever seen a badger except on the television

[RenishawPhil]

Its a very difficult situation

Having grown up in a farming area, i have seen the problems first hand caused by TB., but then i have really admired bagers, i think they are brilliant creatures.

But something has to be done,

[Digeroo]

I have seen one in the wildlife park.  We used to see them splatted on the roads occasionally but I think they have been might have culled here already.

Now there is no hunting we don't see foxes either, dead or alive.

[shirlton]

Why can they not vaccinate the cattle. They seem to pump them full of everything else antibiotics e.t.c.

[Unwashed]

It's wretched.

[claybasket]

 It shocking that they won't give the cattle vaccinations ,this cull never worked in the 80's why do they think it will now it make me sick!

[pumkinlover]

We are in Derbyshire Wildlife Trust and they are doing a vaccination trial of badgers to see how effective. They asked for donations to help fund the trial.
I think the problem with vaccinating the cattle is that the meat cannot be used for humans ( At least that's what they said about F & M) Odd though because they vaccinate us and they fill the cows with everything else imaginable.

[Digeroo]

I have been doing some reading, so now even more confused.

I am definitely pro badger, but wonder if we would change our minds if humans started getting bovine tb.

Farmers say they also want badgers, healthy badgers and not animals slowly dieing of tb.

In Ireland they have been culling badger and reduced the incidence of tb but the reduction does not seem big enough.

[shirlton]

You would be ok if you didn't eat beef. I would give up me beef to save the badgers. Dont eat much meat anyhow.Would rather eat me veg.

[Melbourne12]

I'm a bit puzzled by this.  Why do we love badgers, when we don't love rats or cockroaches?  We're quite happy to kill some vermin in their millions and billions, but apparently not others.

Is it just fond memories of "Wind in the Willows"?

It's the same with magpies, which have so devastated the small songbirds.  Why do we so love them, but not wrens, thrushes, and robins?

I hope it doesn't spread to plantlife, so that we get campaigns to preserve the beautiful innocent nettles and brambles, or else allotmenteering will get a lot more of a challenge!

[shirlton]

I try my best not to kill anything if I can avoid doing so

[galina]

The cull has started.  . I have never ever seen a badger except on the television

Dead ones by the side of the road are fairly common around our way - motorists seem to be killing them in great numbers too - sad!

[Unwashed]

I'm a bit puzzled by this.  Why do we love badgers, when we don't love rats or cockroaches?  We're quite happy to kill some vermin in their millions and billions, but apparently not others.

Is it just fond memories of "Wind in the Willows"?

It's the same with magpies, which have so devastated the small songbirds.  Why do we so love them, but not wrens, thrushes, and robins?

I hope it doesn't spread to plantlife, so that we get campaigns to preserve the beautiful innocent nettles and brambles, or else allotmenteering will get a lot more of a challenge!

I can't speak for others, but I also love rats, magpies, wrens, robins and thrushes, and while I wouldn't want cockroaches in my home, I love the beauty of their life too and wouldn't happily kill one.

[telboy]

One has to balance the purpose of a 'cull' with the consequencies of not doing so. The farming industry has suffered huge losses over the years due to bovine TB. The cull is a trial in a seriously affected region of the UK in an attempt to provide definitive evidence that badgers are, indeed, a serious indication to a link with this devastating infection with cattle.
Of course, there are alternative actions that can be taken, but please let a trial take place to, at least, answer some of the vital questions that need to be answered.
Am I an objector to a trial_______________No
Am I a farmer_________________________No
Do I live in the rural community___________Yes
Do I have an allegiance to a Partical Party___No
Have I studied the pros & cons of the proposed cull__Yes.
Nuff said!!!

[squeezyjohn]

The name bovine TB suggests that the disease comes from cows originally.

I haven't been able to find an answer to where the disease originates from, but I would hazard a guess that it's from thousands of years of keeping an animal from Asia (the cow) in artificially cramped circumstances (a farm) in order to benefit humans to exploit their meat and milk.

Badgers on the other hand are a native species to the UK.  And it is their misfortune that they are able to contract bovine TB and act as a vector for the disease (i.e. they can contract and pass on the disease back to cattle without dying straight away)

If a cull of badgers or other species that can keep a pool of the disease in the wild (deer in America for example) had ever been proven to cure the problem so that this cull would be a one-off event that would both see the eradication of bovine TB and allow the badger population to re-establish to natural levels, then as a meat eater, milk drinker, and realist - I would be in favour.

But ... and it's a big but too ... no culling of a wild vector animal has ever managed to eradicate bovine TB in the past and all scientific studies, including the one my friend Andy conducted at Oxford University show that it is simply a thing that will be needed to be enacted over and over again in order to keep the disease levels low in cattle.

Put simply it means that our basic human greed for lots of cheap food - and the pressure that puts on farmers to raise cattle for milk and meat means that a badger cull - possibly indefinitely - is on the cards and the market driven Tory government is happy to take a stab in the dark and try and get it through any way possible ... and we have let them succeed.

My view ... the badgers were here first - we gave them bovine TB by farming intensively in their home territory ... the least we could do is try to sort it out by vaccinating the cattle.  But although the technology exists to do that - it won't be done because EU testing for infected animals can't distinguish between an animal that has been vaccinated and one that has contracted the disease.  Basically it's a red-tape exercise!

That's what I think ... If I have any of the facts wrong - please tell me and let me know how I can verify if it's true as so many lies are zipping around the subject at the matter it's hard to tell ... and I'm a scientist by training.

[shirlton]

Thanks John. I never knew that bovine TB. originated in the cattle. So many different opinions on this subject.

[squeezyjohn]

As I said before - I'm certain that I'm not in possession of all the facts ... and despite trying to do a bit of investigating online it seems that finding impartial information on the subject is very hard indeed.

I'm sure that TB probably ended up in cattle via some other animal a long time ago.  But having the prefix "bovine" means "of the cow" - and I'm pretty sure that in this case it's been transmitted to the badger population from the farms.

[squeezyjohn]

Another thing to bear in mind is that in the UK, all 6 species of deer, squirrels, rats and foxes also have been proven to carry TB in the wild ... like the badgers - the disease doesn't affect these species as badly as it does with cattle but the disease can be transmitted back to cows.

So when the 70% cull of badgers fails to tackle the problem as it surely will given the evidence based on similar culls in other countries - don't be surprised if other animals are targeted by the farmers and supportive right-wing MPs.

It is going to end in a ludicrous attempt to eradicate rats and mice if they take it to it's logical conclusion. 

Our herds have probably always had TB - in 1930 40% of all cows in the UK carried the bacteria - and back then it was routinely passed on to humans through milk consumption and a massive health issue.  Nowadays there is pasteurisation and there are far more checks in place - the incidence of the disease in cattle is much smaller ... and all that without a cull of badgers. 

I totally understand that in a world where dairy farmers are making almost nothing from selling their milk to the aggressive and predatory supermarket chains - they would like to keep more of their herd alive (and at present infected cattle have to be culled).  But spending loads of public money to carry out something that is scientifically proven to be likely to fail rather than helping the farmers by legislating against the exploitative power of the supermarkets ... that is just despicable.

[Ellen K]

The ISG results suggest that four years of intensive culling could cut bovine TB by 12 to 16 per cent after nine years.

No-one is really questioning these numbers – the argument is about whether they amount to a good result or not. Professor Sir John Krebs, who led the research, calls it a “modest” reduction and doubts whether it would be value for money.

The Environment Secretary, Owen Paterson, says: “We have to use every tool in the box because TB is so difficult to eradicate and it is spreading rapidly.”

From: http://blogs.channel4.com/factcheck/factcheck-badger-cull/14232

Nuff said!!!

[Robert_Brenchley]

The science underlying the cull is dodgy, to say the least. It may even make the situation worse by scattering distressed, infected badgers all over the place. The government doesn't want to vaccinate, which would be a far better idea, and a cull is a sop to the farming lobby.