I'm in the War Zone of the Badger Cull in Somerset with the wounded badger patrols.
Talking to the farmer who has given his land over to Camp Badger. He says "The cull is a waste of time and everybody down here knows it." He says "We do not own these lands - we are custodians, and it's our duty to protect wildlife - not kill it." This farmer also says the NFU doesn't represent the farming community. They're just trying to make a name for themselves.
Moving around fields here in the cull zone astonishing how few cows there are. However there are pheasant farms everywhere - real motives ?
Meeting the wounded badger patrol guys and sabs - what a wonderful bunch of decent people. I'm reminded that the likes of the Daily Mail have long deliberately blackened reputations of peaceful people dedicated to animal protection. Down here in Somerset in bloody badger cull zone, going out into the night, a kind of miracle is happening. Dozens of small groups appearing. In cull zone, I'm overwhelmed - good folks from far and wide give up their nights just to walk the footpaths. Their presence stops shooters
Today one found dead badger was collected by the RSPCA as we arrived. Not known yet how it died. It's brutal - and the secrecy is sinister. A dead badger found yesterday had crawled off to die. DEFRA said it was miles outside the cull zone, But the man who shot it said within zone.
Obviously DEFRA and NFU have a lot to hide here. Or else why all the secrecy ? Is this really England in 2013 ?
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On seeing this, I do wonder at the people involved. The object of the exercise here is to get rid of the somewhat mis-named bovine tuberculosis (named because it was first seen in cows). Tuberculosis seems to be that most pernicious of pathogens a zoonotic; it is capable of infecting not just bovines but primates, carnivores, mustelids and even camelids.
bTB comes in different sub-varieties called spoligotypes, which seem to be stable so the bacteria don't suddenly change spoligotype if they want to. The pattern of bTB infection in Britain is really quite peculiar; bTB spoligotypes are geographically distinct and known-clean animals such as llamas or uninfected cows tend, when brought into an area, to catch the local spoligotype.
This is completely at odds with what you'd expect if bTB spread was mostly cow-to-cow, at cattle markets (especially the spread to llamas and alpacas, which are never traded at cattle markets). Were the spread cow to cow, you'd expect an ever-changing mosaic of spoligotypes over time; you do not. What we see is a very, very geographically distinct formation.
The only explanation here is that there is a reservoir of bTB infection somewhere in the UK countryside. That was the conclusion the Ministry of Agriculture vets came to forty-odd years ago, when the first bTB eradication campaign was waged. Cattle testing and controls clobbered most of the bTB endemic in British herds, but some kept on being infected and re-infected even when the cow herds were completely culled, the farm kept cow-free for six months then re-stocked with known-clean cows.
In these cases, the cows tended to catch the local bTB spoligotype, not a random one.
So, the hunt was on for the wildlife reservoir, and it was found in badgers. Gassing all the setts around a bTB outbreak was found to be most effective in getting rid of bTB in that outbreaks didn't recur much afterwards.
This is the current state of bTB research: we know what the reservoir host is. We know how to get rid of bTB from the country. We also know (courtesy of recent DEFRA research) that vaccinating badgers doesn't even begin to approach the 95% immune level needed for theoretical vaccine-based control; badgers do not have the appropriate immune response to prevent bTB infection. All that vaccinating them does is slow the rate that bTB kills them.
So, Dr Brian May and his merry band are really missing the point: there is NO argument about how to get rid of bTB; we need to get rid of as many bTB-susceptible badgers from the hot zones as we can, and we want to do this in as cost-effective a way as possible without causing great suffering.
Vaccination looks like a non-starter, especially where vaccinating cows is concerned; that doesn't address the reservoir issue (and remember, bTB ain't fussy what it infects; it'll infect humans, cats, dogs and so on) and doesn't give us any way to stop badgers suffering.
This last part is the bit I really do not understand. Badgers die an equally miserable death as anything infected with tuberculosis does, so why oppose ridding the badger population of such a terrible disease?
No, the only argument is about how to cull badgers as cleanly and effectively as possible; treatment won't work, vaccination won't and leaving the problem to fester will only get the government kicked by both the EU and court action from aggrieved farmers. All Dr May can really complain of is shooting badgers by night.
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