TB cull + PR

[Vader]

I been thinking about TB after we had our first case couple years ago.
closed herd, none other near by. TB strain was from down south they said.
They can not explain how we got it and not had it since.
All I could come up with is tree huggers moving badgers about country into areas where not many about.

So, there is much debate on if badgers should be culled or not to help stop TB.
Most public seem to be on the side of not killing them. (cute, wind in the willows characters..)
We seem to now pro and anti culling views and not much room between.

I may have missed it, but not really seen NFU or others really doing much to sell a proper solution to the public.
So here is mine:-

ALL cattle tested minimum for every 6 months for at least 5 years.
(if you were a clean herd and got unlucky and got it 1 month after a clear test, its got 4 years to spread before next test)
ALL known badger sets tested for TB every 6 months for at least 5 years.
(there seems to be a reliable test for it now. Also a vaccination)

So then all cattle with TB culled.
All badger sets with TB culled, sets without TB vaccinated.(badger groups already doing the vaccinations)
Now the PR sell to the public.
Show them pictures of badgers in final stages of TB when they suffering and on their last legs. I am sure that most public will be ok having a animal humanly put down instead of it ending up suffering.
Also I am sure many would see the sense of culling infected badgers at same time as infected cattle.
Its the simple cull all in an area they don't seem to like.
No badger group can offer a defence to not culling a infected animal that will die suffering, while being ok cattle being culled.
The key to me is to show the badger in the final diseased state to the public, so they understand.
We have to break the BBC brainwashing showing all badgers as nice sweet healthy badgers doing no harm.
The UK is a nation of animal lovers, they wont want any animal to suffer, that's the PR key.

As I said, I may have missed the NFU or some group pushing this message with pictures, but no-one else I know has seen any either. The anti meat lobby use full page ads in the newspapers, what's stopping the NFU doing the same with some hard facts to get the public on side?

 

[RushesToo]

I favour leaving bait with badger contraceptive in it. No more badgers and no killing to get to this point.

 

[Vader]

I favour leaving bait with badger contraceptive in it. No more badgers and no killing to get to this point.

average badger lives 6 years.
Some upto 14 years.
lot of TB spreading if they infected in that time.

 

[RushesToo]

I know this seems wrong, but I suspect that this will be quicker than politicians dealing with it.

 

[matthew]

I know this seems wrong, but I suspect that this will be quicker than politicians dealing with it.

... or scientists.

We pushed a parallel cattle / badger screen hard from decades ago, ending up with this:

http://bovinetb.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/we-cant-tell-which-badgers-are-infected.html

so it came as a shock when Liz Wellington's team emailed to say that that they did not want 'their' screen used to cull badgers.

Now we have a whole industry including vets and health schemes, advisers and universities all clamouring for cash to keep the gravy train rolling. Anything at all it seems, but these solutions have to leave the sacred badger, complete with its endemic grade 3 zoonotic pathogen, intact.

zoonotic TB is endemic in our badger population (PQs) and when they get over populated and fighting for territory, it bubbles up, often as in the Edge area, exposing slight variants in spoligotypes. Every new development which swallows up land may avoid their setts, but it doesn't avoid their feeding areas and territory.

 

[Alicecow]

http://www.bovinetb.info/ireland.php
Found this interesting.

 

[matthew]

http://www.bovinetb.info/ireland.php
Found this interesting.

When badgers have been counted - or an attempt has been made to count heads - it was found that a huge increase had taken place. This was to 1997 - up 77 per cent.

http://bovinetb.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/1-2-3-4-brocks.html

The new head count in 2013, put that figure to over 100 per cent increase.

http://bovinetb.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/falling-off-edge.html

Behind closed doors, the number of badgers in the SW of England in 1997 was said to be over a million. Factor in those increases reported above, and as cattle farmers, we would say too berluddy many.

 

[milkloss]

I been thinking about TB after we had our first case couple years ago.
closed herd, none other near by. TB strain was from down south they said.
They can not explain how we got it and not had it since.
All I could come up with is tree huggers moving badgers about country into areas where not many about.

So, there is much debate on if badgers should be culled or not to help stop TB.
Most public seem to be on the side of not killing them. (cute, wind in the willows characters..)
We seem to now pro and anti culling views and not much room between.

I may have missed it, but not really seen NFU or others really doing much to sell a proper solution to the public.
So here is mine:-

ALL cattle tested minimum for every 6 months for at least 5 years.
(if you were a clean herd and got unlucky and got it 1 month after a clear test, its got 4 years to spread before next test)
ALL known badger sets tested for TB every 6 months for at least 5 years.
(there seems to be a reliable test for it now. Also a vaccination)

So then all cattle with TB culled.
All badger sets with TB culled, sets without TB vaccinated.(badger groups already doing the vaccinations)
Now the PR sell to the public.
Show them pictures of badgers in final stages of TB when they suffering and on their last legs. I am sure that most public will be ok having a animal humanly put down instead of it ending up suffering.
Also I am sure many would see the sense of culling infected badgers at same time as infected cattle.
Its the simple cull all in an area they don't seem to like.
No badger group can offer a defence to not culling a infected animal that will die suffering, while being ok cattle being culled.
The key to me is to show the badger in the final diseased state to the public, so they understand.
We have to break the BBC brainwashing showing all badgers as nice sweet healthy badgers doing no harm.
The UK is a nation of animal lovers, they wont want any animal to suffer, that's the PR key.

As I said, I may have missed the NFU or some group pushing this message with pictures, but no-one else I know has seen any either. The anti meat lobby use full page ads in the newspapers, what's stopping the NFU doing the same with some hard facts to get the public on side?

Good post. This idea had been discussed on here when they were talking about badger culls ages ago. Without the ability (or trust from the scientific community) in the pcr test on badger setts it was never going to be a runner though.

 

[matthew]

Wellington and Dick Sibley are using qPCR in 'the environment' - aka cattle pastures etc.
It was Defra who scuppered it in the blinded trial, and Wellington's lot at Warwick who want to hang on to the intellectual copyright.

 

[Henery]

How long will we have to wait for some convincing evidence from the current cull areas that culling works....... which it does. But as long as the numbers are vague the pro Badger brigade will wail that the cull is not successful.
Personally I don’t think that opposition to the cull is all that great, it amounts to a small number of media savvy obsessives with time to make a lot of noise and keep the issue in the (uninterested) public’s eye.
Reality is overwhelming majority have better and more pressing issues to think about.
The arguments for the cull and the need for it has been woefully put by our side, perhaps the new beef farming NFU president will change that.

 

[exmoor dave]

Don't think there's any evidence that vaccinating badgers is anything other than a a complete waste of time and money..... Oh and a waste of a drug that is already in short supply & used as a treatment for human conditions (other than TB).

If vaccinating badgers actually worked, we'd also have both a effective vaccine for cattle and humans already.

I mean if we can't produce a vaccine to stop millions of people dying of tb then there's not a chance of there being a magic jab for a badger!

Sorry this really grinds my gears!!!!

 

[matthew]

Don't think there's any evidence that vaccinating badgers is anything other than a a complete waste of time and money..... Oh and a waste of a drug that is already in short supply & used as a treatment for human conditions (other than TB).

If vaccinating badgers actually worked, we'd also have both a effective vaccine for cattle and humans already.

I mean if we can't produce a vaccine to stop millions of people dying of tb then there's not a chance of there being a magic jab for a badger!

Sorry this really grinds my gears!!!!

Mine too.

There was a smidgeon of light, we’ll hidden in a paper released last year on the success of the original culls.

http://bovinetb.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/hiding-in-plain-sight.html

And vaccination?
We call it ‘honouring the lie’.

Latest from Ireland.

http://bovinetb.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/infectivity-of-vaccinated-badgers.html

 

[Alicecow]

Don't think there's any evidence that vaccinating badgers is anything other than a a complete waste of time and money..... Oh and a waste of a drug that is already in short supply & used as a treatment for human conditions (other than TB).

If vaccinating badgers actually worked, we'd also have both a effective vaccine for cattle and humans already.

I mean if we can't produce a vaccine to stop millions of people dying of tb then there's not a chance of there being a magic jab for a badger!

Sorry this really grinds my gears!!!!

Plus, badgers require many times the human dose. Can't remember the actual amount but even at x10 that's 10 humans not getting vaxd because of one badger

 

[matthew]

Plus, badgers require many times the human dose. Can't remember the actual amount but even at x10 that's 10 humans not getting vaxd because of one badger

Human say, 1ml
Human baby half that.
Badger, as you say, 10x the adult human dose, and 20 x a neonatal baby.

And it doesn’t work.

 

[exmoor dave]

Plus, badgers require many times the human dose. Can't remember the actual amount but even at x10 that's 10 humans not getting vaxd because of one badger

Yep it's absolutely fudging criminal!

 

[RushesToo]

I refer you back to contraceptives - for the badgers that is [although now I mention it....]

 

[matthew]

I refer you back to contraceptives - for the badgers that is [although now I mention it....]

This was explored in 1995 by Stephen Harris and
Piran White and their conclusion was that contraception would take 20 - 60 years to get the badger population down to sensible levels, where zTB could be said to be under any sort of control. It certainly was not a quick fix.

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/eabc/3fa8a26ed0abafc6c9436a2556b8a93913bd.pdf

 

[RushesToo]

This was explored in 1995 ago by Stephen Harris and
Piran White and their conclusion was that contraception would take 20 - 60 years to get the badger population down to sensible levels, where zTB could be said to be under any sort of control. It certainly was not a quick fix.

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/eabc/3fa8a26ed0abafc6c9436a2556b8a93913bd.pdf

This might still, sadly, be quicker

 

[matthew]

This might still, sadly, be quicker

As the moratorium on Section 10: 2 (a) [culling badgers to prevent the spread of disease] came in two years after this paper in 1997, you may well be right.

That population growth, plus endemic disease while roaming on a decreasing amount of land, over two decades has changed the dynamics. So while the chatterati continue their protectionism and try to convince cattle farmers that they can make a difference, my personal experiences have changed my outlook.

Facts do not win votes and emotions rule.
And dead badgers do not continue to spread zoonotic tuberculosis.

 

[Princess Pooper]

This surely justifies a complaint from the NFU!!!!
Derbyshire Police & Crime Commissioner....
“Badgers are a protected species under the 1992 Badger Protection Act and evidence shows that shooting badgers is not a viable solution to the spread of bovine TB. If this is the case, then it doesn’t make sense to pursue an expensive culling programme at the cost of the taxpayer.

“I am urging the Government to reconsider its position and to continue to invest in the vaccination programme in this county and beyond to protect what remains a threatened species for future generations.”
https://www.derbyshire-pcc.gov.uk/News-and-Events-Meetings/News-Archive/2018/PR-647.aspx