Will cull stop TB in cattle?
THE badger debate has been reignited in Sevenoaks following news that culling is back on the agenda.
As the country attempts to control the spread of bovine tuberculosis, last year 25,000 cattle were slaughtered because of the disease, costing the taxpayer more than £63 million.
But badger-lovers in Kent say killing the creatures will do little to halt the problem.
Under the new proposals, which have gone out to consultation, groups of farmers in an area of at least 150 square kilometres with "high and persistent" levels of TB can apply to cull or vaccinate badgers in their area.
Dairy farmer Frederick Hamlyn, who owns Westwood Farm in Scabharbour Road, Weald, said: "Infected badgers are not really too much of a problem in Kent at the moment but that could easily change.
"I have a brother-in-law who owns a dairy farm in Devon and he has not been able to operate his farm for five years because he still has TB in his herd. I know of other farmers who haven't been able to sell for 15 years. It is devastating financially.
"My thoughts are if an animal is sick, they need to be treated or put down. It is a terrible problem and unfortunately badgers are a link in the chain.
"The taxpayer loses millions every year to cattle being slaughtered because they have TB. But to try to halt TB, badgers need to be slaughtered as well."
Mr Hamlyn added infected setts are easily identifiable, helping farmers to focus on areas of concern.
But West Kent Badger Trust trustee Joan Branton said: "They have been culling badgers in Ireland for 20 years and TB is on the increase.
"On the other hand, in Scotland they are completely TB free because they have stringent cattle tests.
"The point is there is evidence that random badger culling does not correlate to reducing TB.
"In fact, evidence suggests that a reactive cull – which is what is being proposed – increases the problem because animals are more likely to move to different areas, spreading the disease."
Her husband, Roger, who is also a trustee of the group, branded the plans "totally unacceptable" and vowed he would do all he could to oppose a badger cull in England.
"It seems amazing to me that they would put vast sums of money into a scheme which is unlikely to work," he said.
"TB is a very serious problem, but our concern is badgers are being used as a scapegoat.
"Any cull such as that proposed in England would be non-selective, with a predominance of healthy, disease-free badgers being culled.
"Bovine TB in badgers can only be reliably confirmed at post-mortem examinations and badgers with the disease breed normally and have no obvious clinical signs of the disease."
But Mr Hamlyn said: "There is always the occasional male that moves around to find a female, but generally badgers live together as setts and don't seem to wander off. They stay close to where they were born."
For more information go to www.defra.gov.uk/food-farm/animals/diseases/tb
3 Comments
by Wayne, Upper Halliford, Middlesex
Saturday, September 25 2010, 1:14PM
“"badger-lovers in Kent say killing the creatures will do little to halt the problem."
I'm wondering if you count scientists as badger lovers too? The science says that a cull won't work either.
The government and farmers alike want to blame badgers but let's look at it from another direction. Checks are made on the health of a farmer's cattle. A prized bull reacts to the tb test and is destroyed. The farmer blames the badgers and kills the badgers. The autopsy report comes back that the result was a false positive and the bull did NOT have bovine tb after all. The farmer has lost his bull and the badgers are dead, all because the test is flawed.
If the test itself is flawed, where's the logic in destroying a protected species?”
by Theo Hopkins, Devon
Friday, September 24 2010, 9:20PM
“The farmer is quite wrong when he says infected setts can be identified.
In the FAQ sheet that the government has issued along with the badger cull proposals is this:
16. Is it possible to identify TB infected badgers on the basis of appearance and behaviour?
No. M. bovis is a chronic, slowly progressing disease that causes clinical signs in only the final stages of infection. The signs that a badger would typically show at this stage (emaciation and sometimes changes in behaviour) would not be specific enough to be sure that it had TB rather than another disease.
From the Badger Trust in Devon.”
by Michael, Kenilworth, Warwickshire
Friday, September 24 2010, 1:42PM
“Farmer Frederick Hamlyn is sadly mistaken. It is NOT possible to identify infected setts. The Government's current consultation paper admits that. It has often been claimed by pro-cull factions (notably the NFU) and by the 'Tory Party (in the run-up to the general election) that infected setts and infected badgers could be identified and targetted. That claim, an attempt to say that healthy badgers would not be killed, relied on the possibility of a DNA technique, the polymerase chain reaction, being used. At best it was a dodgy assertion and has now been dropped. So, if this futile, unscientific blunderbuss scheme goes through, thousands of healthy badgers will die and it's likely many will be badly wounded as untrained farmers take potshots at them. Anyone who cares about wildlife should object to this futile ill-conceived and unjustifiable proposal.”