Date
To whom it may concern
I write to you on the subject of the critical situation of TB in cattle (BTb).
Prior to the Badgers Act 1973, Tb in wildlife was kept under control with
corresponding benefits to the health of the national cattle herd. Scientific trials
from this period endorsed the method of culling badgers (the only
maintenance host for BTb i.e it can live with & carry the disease) by gassing
to keep numbers at a manageable level.
The Thornbury Trial conducted from1975–1981 was a proactive cull carried
out in a thorough manner over a large area which had a major impact on the
reduction of disease in cattle. That reduction was maintained for 25 years
after the ending of the trial. Further, whenever gassing conducted by MAFF
was applied to an area the number of reactor cattle dropped, & whenever
gassing was stopped, the number of reactor cattle increased.
In 1979 MAFF asked Lord Zuckerman to review the problem & make
recommendations. Zuckerman’s conclusions were that the high density &
close proximity of the cattle & badger populations in the SW of England
favoured the transmission of the disease from badgers to cattle & from one
infected group of badgers to another & that the disease had spread since
control measures were ceased in October 1979.
In the light of his findings he recommended that gassing operations be
resumed as soon as possible. In 2015 we now have high densities of badgers
throughout the UK.
Since that time we have seen the increasing influence of a frequently biased
and scientifically ill-informed media, together with the ‘celebrity wildlife
presenter’, manipulating an urban public. In addition, successive
Governments have been unwilling to invest political capital to achieve a
solution, and this has proved a disastrous mix for common sense and logic.
No other country allows such a disease to proliferate in this way. If there is a
problem with disease reservoirs in wildlife they tackle it straight away to try to
mitigate the effects. Here we allow vocal, minority pressure groups such as
the Badger Trust to dictate policy, and the wildlife source is allowed to go
about its business maintaining and spreading one of the most terrible and
insidious of diseases whilst culling of farm animals is carried out on an
industrial scale.
The limited trials recently sanctioned by ‘Natural England’ are proving to be
having a positive effect but at great financial cost & at much lower levels of
efficacy than gassing.
Over the last thirty years BTb has been allowed to march unhindered from its
final redoubt in the West Country until we are faced with the situation that half
of the country now resides under onerous cattle restrictions making the
keeping of cattle a highly stressful occupation where farmers live under
constant fear of the next BTb test. Generations of livestock breeding and the
resultant cattle bloodlines are being sacrificed as well as the farming families
who have nurtured them over the last 200 years.
The latest BTb figures are a disgrace. Cattle slaughtered in 2014 stood at
32,851 compared with 8,123 in 2000.
In the recently reported slight fall in new herd incidents no account is taken for
the number of registered holdings which have in the last twelve months finally
given in and ceased to keep cattle as a direct result of this disease. It is also
telling that despite the enormous sums spent inoculating badgers in Wales
(over £600 per badger caught per year) cattle numbers slaughtered over the
last 12 months have risen sharply.
Before one more farmer feels the need to end his own life, before one more
farming family is torn apart, before one more cattle herd falls prey to this
terrible disease will someone out there take responsibility for what is going on
in our countryside and do the right thing!, The farming community is waiting
for a Government to take firm and decisive action and get a grip on the wildlife
problem, as should have been happening over the last three decades.
Yours