Infectious disease, including TB

[llamedos]

Second pilot badger culls begin - NFU letter
Last updated: 09 Sep 2014
NFU President Meurig Raymond has written a letter to all NFU members stating that the second year of the pilot badger culls in the South West of England has started. Read the letter in full below:
I am writing to you today to confirm that the second year of the pilot badger culls in the South West of England has started.

In the South West - where bovine TB is endemic and herds are continually being reinfected despite farmers’ best efforts to protect them - controlling the disease in badgers has to be an essential part of any strategy to wipe this disease out.

Travelling round the country I’ve seen first-hand the total human misery this disease causes for farmers and their businesses. I’ve sat round farm kitchen tables with families who have been driven to despair after investing time and money building up their herds, only to see them devastated by bTB. I’ve spoken to grown men who’ve been reduced to tears as they load cow after cow, or calf after calf, onto lorries to be taken away for slaughter because of this disease. I also know from personal experience the emotional and economic impact this disease has because my own farm is currently under TB restrictions and I am determined to ensure that everything possible is done to tackle this disease.

No one would choose to kill badgers if there was an effective alternative in areas where TB is rife. But if we’re ever going to get on top of bTB in areas where the disease is endemic there is no other choice. The Chief Vet has said culling over a four-year period in both pilot areas will have an impact on disease control. I am confident that these pilot culls will help deliver a reduction in bTB in cattle and it is vital that they are allowed to be successfully completed so they can deliver the maximum benefits.

The Independent Expert Panel made recommendations to improve the delivery of the culls and both licensed companies have implemented these recommendations for this year. I know the people delivering the culls are focused on carrying them out as safely, humanely and effectively as possible so they provide the maximum benefit in the fight against bTB and I applaud their commitment and dedication to carrying out this job in often difficult circumstances.

While culling has to be an essential part of any strategy to control and eradicate bTB in areas where it is endemic, it is only one part of a much wider strategy to get rid of this terrible disease. And that is the ultimate goal - the eradication of a disease which resulted in more than 32,000 cattle being needlessly slaughtered in Great Britain last year and for which there is no cure. No one has ever said culling alone will wipe out bTB. Only by doing everything we can will we achieve what everybody wants – a TB free England.

Badger vaccination could have a role to play in areas that are clear of bTB to stop the disease spreading any further. I know farmers in some of these areas are already involved with local badger vaccination projects because they recognise how important stopping this disease is. Cattle vaccination is also a key element. It is unacceptable that a workable cattle vaccine is still ten years away and I can assure you the NFU will be doing everything it can to get this process speeded up.

It is vital that we keep TB out of the parts of the country where there are currently very few breakdowns. Cattle movement controls continue to be tightened where that is necessary, but it is important that these controls allow businesses to continue to operate viably as well as preventing the spread of the disease.

Bovine TB continues to devastate farming family businesses in large parts of the country. I can assure you that the NFU remains totally committed firstly to stopping the spread and ultimately to eradicating this disease and recognises that this will only be achieved by using every available option.

Meurig Raymond
NFU President

also listen to Meurig interview on BBC Cornwall last night from 19:24 http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p025gwmq

 

[topground]

The actions of the anti cull protestors are headline news on BBC Points West. Can anyone confirm if ITV has given the cull protestors the same precedence?
I seems to me that the BBC have always had an agenda to give the oxygen of publicity to the Badgerists and that any piece from Farmers affected is heavily edited to give the impression that this is just about money rather than the health aspects and the risk to the human population.
It also seems to me that the time has come for the risks to human health of an infected Badger population being allowed to flourish in our midst to be highlighted. I know we run the risk of another food scare but that could be managed if the public relations aspect is handled by professionals in the communications industry and not NFU amateurs.
Ebola grade 4 pathogen, international publicity, BTb Grade 3 pathogen in an identifiable wildlife reservoir and silly people are trying to prevent the infected animals being dealt with and are being supported by our national broadcaster.

 

[llamedos]

The actions of the anti cull protestors are headline news on BBC Points West. Can anyone confirm if ITV has given the cull protestors the same precedence?
I seems to me that the BBC have always had an agenda to give the oxygen of publicity to the Badgerists and that any piece from Farmers affected is heavily edited to give the impression that this is just about money rather than the health aspects and the risk to the human population.
It also seems to me that the time has come for the risks to human health of an infected Badger population being allowed to flourish in our midst to be highlighted. I know we run the risk of another food scare but that could be managed if the public relations aspect is handled by professionals in the communications industry and not NFU amateurs.
Ebola grade 4 pathogen, international publicity, BTb Grade 3 pathogen in an identifiable wildlife reservoir and silly people are trying to prevent the infected animals being dealt with and are being supported by our national broadcaster.

On the web pages they just seem to be quoting Liz Truss all areas coverage seems to be the same, dont watch TV so would not know if their broadcast programmes were similar.

7:33AM, TUE 9 SEP 2014 BADGER CULL RESUMES
Badger cull has resumed in Somerset
Last updated Tue 9 Sep 2014

• Politics
• Badger cull
• Somerset

This year's controversial badger cull in West Somerset is underway, the Government has announced.

The second year of a four-year scheme has started in the two counties in an attempt to prevent the spread of bovine TB in cattle.

We are pursuing a comprehensive strategy supported by leading vets which includes cattle movement controls, vaccinating badgers in edge areas and culling badgers where the disease is rife. This is vital for the future of our beef and dairy industries, and our nation's food security. At present we have the highest rates of bovine TB in Europe. Doing nothing is not an option and that is why we are taking a responsible approach to dealing with bovine TB.

– ELIZABETH TRUSS MP, ENVIRONMENT SECRETARY

 

[jade35]

@llamedos interview with Elizabeth Truss by Graeme Demianyk (Western Morning News) Monday 8th September is quite wide ranging and worth a read. Ignore the eye catching front page headline
Front page article http://www.westernmorningnews.co.uk...revival-food/story-22893117-detail/story.html
from pages 6-7 http://www.westernmorningnews.co.uk...ampion-ready/story-22889144-detail/story.html



Today's Opinion from WMN http://www.westernmorningnews.co.uk...-rural-story/story-22897122-detail/story.html


and finally for all those who have taken their blood pressure tablets http://www.westernmorningnews.co.uk/New-camp-stop-badger-cull/story-22896629-detail/story.html

 

[llamedos]

yes, saw those, chose to ignore I didnt think commenting on GBBO while rome burns was... erm apropriate somehow

 

[llamedos]

View of Rosie Woodroffe.

Badger cull: British government asked scientists for help and ignored their advice
0
BY ROSIE WOODROFFE AND CURATED FROM DESCRIER STAFF ON SEPTEMBER 9, 2014UK
Bovine tuberculosis (TB) is expected to cost British taxpayers nearly £100m in 2014. Scientific evidence is a vital weapon in the fight to protect cattle from TB. Why, then, has the government just fought and won a legal battle to avoid consulting independent scientists on its most high-profile TB control effort?

Wild badgers play a role in transmitting TB to cattle, and culling badgers seems an obvious solution. A new round of badger culls is about to start, but it is risky . A complex interaction between badger behaviour and TB transmission means that the results of culling could, depending on various factors, increase TB levels, instead of reducing them. To add to that, badger culling is expensive.

This is why, in 2013, the government started a pilot that it hoped would be give them a cheap and effective way to control cattle TB. Farmers, rather than government, would pay for the culling. And, rather than being cage-trapped, badgers would be shot in the wild.

This pilot was started in just two areas – and for good reason: the whole approach was untested, and the stakes were high. Marksmen shooting at night might endanger public safety. Shooting free-ranging badgers might cause suffering. And, worst of all for the aims of the approach, failing to kill enough badgers, fast enough, would worsen the cattle TB situation that the culls were intended to control.

In the face of such uncertainty, the government adopted a commonly used approach. It appointed an Independent Expert Panel to assess the safety, humaneness and effectiveness of the pilot project. The expectation was that this panel’s conclusions would reflect scientific evidence, whether or not they supported government policy.

Bring in the experts
The Independent Expert Panel found that farmer-led culling was far from effective. Tasked with killing at least 70% of the local badgers within a six-week period, cull teams only managed to kill between 28% and 48%. Culling periods were extended, but still the total kill rose to just 31-56%, according to government figures. Unless more badgers could be killed, and faster, farmer-led culling risked worsening the problem it was intended to solve.

The 2013 culls also failed to meet their targets for animal welfare. Between 7.4% and 22.8% of badgers were still alive five minutes after being shot and were assumed to have experienced “marked pain”.

Despite facing these failures, the government decided to repeat culls in the same areas in 2014. If effectiveness and humaneness could be improved sufficiently, culling might be extended to more areas in 2015. If not, the government might need to reconsider their policy. One would think, then, that measuring effectiveness and humaneness would be a central goal of 2014’s culls.

Then ignore their advice
The Independent Expert Panel, together with government scientists, selected the most accurate and precise ways to estimate the effectiveness and humaneness of the 2013 culls. Measuring effectiveness is challenging because – being nocturnal and shy – badgers are hard to count. The panel overcame this problem by using genetic “fingerprints” to identify badgers from hair snagged on barbed wire. They measured humaneness primarily through independent observers recording the time that shot badgers took to die.

The panel recommended that the same approaches be used for subsequent culls. But the government rejected thisrecommendation. This year there will be no attempt to count badgers in the cull areas, either before or after the culls. The time badgers take to die will not be recorded. There will be no oversight by independent scientists.

Instead, the effectiveness of the culls which start tonight will be judged using a method so utterly inadequate it was barely considered in 2013. Key data will be collected by marksmen themselves: people with a vested interest in the cull being designated “effective” and “humane”, who in 2013 collected data so unreliable it was considered unusable by the panel. Available information suggests that any future claim that the 2014 culls have reduced badger numbers sufficiently to control TB will be completely baseless.

Why the change in approach? Government cites cost, and hired some expensive lawyers to defend its position when the Badger Trust sought, and eventually lost, a judicial review of the decision to scrap independent scientific oversight of this year’s culls. Yet the cost of pushing forward with an ineffective culling policy would far outweigh the cost of properly assessing effectiveness and humaneness.

Government has repeatedly referred to its programme of badger culling as “science-led”. One would expect a science-led policy to entail gathering reliable information on management outcomes, and using this and other evidence to inform future decisions. Choosing – against formal expert advice – to collect inconsistent, inadequate and potentially biased data is an insult to evidence-based policymaking. When ineffective culling can make a bad situation worse, failing to collect the evidence needed to evaluate future policy fails farmers, taxpayers and wildlife.

By Rosie Woodroffe, Institute of Zoology

Rosie Woodroffe gratefully acknowledges research funding from Defra.

 

[jade35]

yes, saw those, chose to ignore I didnt think commenting on GBBO while rome burns was... erm apropriate somehow

towards the end of the main article on pages 6-7
Understanding food would help better understand the reasons behind badger culling. Ms Truss makes clear, though, it is part of a “comprehensive strategy”, including vaccination and improved security on farms. In any case, she suggests culling would not be necessary if Labour had not allowed bovine TB to increase nine-fold on their watch.

“All the examples of where bovine TB has been successfully eradicated – like Australia – culling has taken place. There have been significant reductions as well in New Zealand and Ireland where that strategy has been used as part of a broader approach. What we know is we have to use all of the elements.”

Why not focus efforts on vaccination, as Labour and animal welfare groups demand? “The reality is you can’t vaccinate a badger that already has the disease. We now have a situation where the disease is rife, and it is unfortunately the only way to deal with it.”

Two pilot culls – one in Somerset, the other in Gloucestershire – began last year but the failure to meet targets led to a postponement of rolling it out further in the South West.

Natural England, the quango licensing the culls, two weeks ago published expected targets for the number of badgers to be killed this year. The minimum 316 target for Somerset this year could mean as little as just over 40% of the local badger population – much lower than the 70% broadly quoted.

“Counting a wildlife population is difficult. The badger is a shy animal. What we have done is have experts, vets on the ground, doing that work. That’s the best assessment. Of course, as the cull progresses we’ll need to see whether or not that proves to be the case, and there should be some flexibility in the way we view that target.”

Will it be rolled-out in 2015? “We’re very clear that given the information we have it’s the right thing to do. My job is to show that it works so we can make further process in due course.”

 

[jade35]

I would like to have seen matthews face as he read the Rosie Woodroffe article

 

[roscoe erf]

Cattle vaccine was 10 years away 10 years ago

 

[joe soapy]

I would like to have seen matthews face as he read the Rosie Woodroffe article

I have sat through an address by her, Its a scandal that public money is pushed in her direction.
DEFRA in its previous guises has enormous experience of successfully ridding the countryside of TB
yet chooses to spend money on quack doctors instead

 

[llamedos]

Whatever happened to The Badger Group expert 'Farmer' steve jones

 

[Sid]

Heard Meurig Raymond on radio 2 news at one, didn't come across very well at all IMO .

 

[roscoe erf]

Whatever happened to The Badger Group expert 'Farmer' steve jones

Hoisted by his own petard

 

[jade35]

Heard Meurig Raymond on radio 2 news at one, didn't come across very well at all IMO .

@Sid Trouble with the BBC cutting up an interview to get a sound bite Listen to the original interview and see what you think. Llamedos has put the link at the top of the page

 

[jade35]

Whatever happened to The Badger Group expert 'Farmer' steve jones

Nothing lately it would seem when I checked just now. Because he always blamed cattle movements as being the main problem I Googled and found this analysis of cattle movements 2001 - 2003. Scroll to page 271 for analysis of movements within the different regions.

http://www.bovinetb.info/docs/chara...of-records-from-the-cattle-tracing-system.pdf

Once birth and death records are removed there is a surprisingly small number of cattle moved annually especially between the regions, certainly not the 13 million that is regularly quoted.

 

[matthew]

Nothing lately it would seem when I checked just now. Because he always blamed cattle movements as being the main problem I Googled and found this analysis of cattle movements 2001 - 2003. Scroll to page 271 for analysis of movements within the different regions.

http://www.bovinetb.info/docs/chara...of-records-from-the-cattle-tracing-system.pdf

Once birth and death records are removed there is a surprisingly small number of cattle moved annually especially between the regions, certainly not the 13 million that is regularly quoted.

That's data, 'On' and 'Off' postcards not hooves
Bless 'em they never miss an opportunity to get it wrong.

I thought we'd nailed that in 2006, but obviously not.
http://bovinetb.blogspot.co.uk/2006/02/mistake-mischievious-or-misleading.html

Cattle vaccine was 10 years away 10 years ago

I feel old. Try 30 years ago.

I would like to have seen matthews face as he read the Rosie Woodroffe article

Lightweight crap. I didn't read it. She was a leading part of this charade, which passes these days for 'science'.

http://bovinetb.blogspot.co.uk/2007/09/this-is-answer.html

 

[roscoe erf]

Can anyone explain why it costs £400 per badger to vaccinate

 

[llamedos]

Meurig Raymond comment in The Telegraph

By Meurig Raymond

6:10AM BST 10 Sep 2014

1 Comment


Some of this country’s most iconic rural scenes feature cattle grazing in the south and west of England. But many of the family farms responsible face an uncertain future because of a disease that is creeping across the country, and for which there is no cure – bovine TB.

The badger culls that have just started again in Gloucestershire and Somerset are just one part of a much wider strategy to stop this terrible disease, which is devastating farming businesses across large parts of the country. At the end of last year, more than 6,500 cattle herds across Great Britain were under movement restrictions because of it. These aren’t simply figures on a page. They represent the businesses of real people who have devoted their working lives to raising and caring for their animals – and producing the wonderful, high-quality British beef and milk that so many of you enjoy. They are ordinary working people doing the best they can for themselves and their families while looking after some of the most beautiful parts of the countryside.

The emotional and economic impact of this disease is huge – and as a dairy and beef farmer, I know that from personal experience. We’ve lost 40 cattle to bovine TB on our farm in Pembrokeshire over the past 18 months and have experienced the human misery the disease causes.

Once you have a positive TB test on your farm, you face at least 120 days when you can’t buy or sell any cattle. Your whole herd has to have two consecutive clear tests, 60 days apart, before the restrictions placed on your farm are lifted.

Suddenly finding you can’t operate your business normally for at least four months can have huge knock-on effects for future planning – and can threaten the very existence of your farm. The stress and strain it places on you, your family and employees can be almost unbearable.

Facing up to the fact that cattle you may have bred and reared – and were expecting to have long, full and productive lives – are going to be taken away for slaughter is soul-destroying. When you’ve done everything you can to keep these cattle safe and free from this disease and they’ve been infected anyway, you feel like you’ve failed them.

Yes, we are farmers. But we’re also human beings who feel great responsibility for our animals. Their health and welfare is of paramount importance and the helplessness and distress you and your family feel when you discover they have tested positive for bovine TB is devastating.

Travelling round the country, I’ve met countless farmers who have suffered similar experiences. I’ve sat round farm kitchen tables with families who have been driven to despair after investing time and money building up their herds, only to see them devastated by bovine TB. I’ve spoken to grown men who have been reduced to tears as they load cow after cow, calf after calf, onto lorries to be taken away for slaughter.

Bovine TB doesn’t discriminate – it can affect all cattle: organic, rare breeds, dairy, beef, calves, pregnant cows. None are safe. Valuable lines can be destroyed, often meaning the loss of generations of hard work and careful breeding to produce some of the best and most valuable animals in the world.

We have to beat this disease and we have to use every available option. No one has ever said that culling badgers alone will eradicate bovine TB. Culling is only a part of a comprehensive Government plan to get rid of this disease. And that is the ultimate goal – the eradication of a disease that resulted in more than 32,000 cattle being needlessly slaughtered in Britain last year.

We still have time. Much of England is still free of TB, and it is vital that we keep those areas so. Badger vaccination could have a role to play in stopping the disease spreading, and the NFU has always supported its use in those areas. I know farmers are already involved with vaccination projects because they recognise how important it is to stop this disease. The development and deployment of a cattle vaccine is also a key element and something I want to see progressed as a matter of urgency.

No one would choose to kill badgers if there was an effective alternative in areas where TB is rife. But if we’re ever going to get on top of the disease there, there is no other choice. The country’s chief vet has said culling over a four-year period in both pilot areas will have an impact on disease control and I am confident that these culls will help reduce bovine TB in cattle. Ultimately, we want healthy badgers, healthy cattle and a TB-free England.



Meurig Raymond is the president of the National Farmers Union

 

[llamedos]

Can anyone explain why it costs £400 per badger to vaccinate

A £5 for the vaccine, £100 for a cage, £295 labour costs..............

 

[roscoe erf]

A £5 for the vaccine, £100 for a cage, £295 labour costs..............

When can I start