Brock can come out again

[jennysmate]

The goverment have abandoned their killing of badgers. They wont say it was a complete failure, but obvously it was. I read that Ireland is 5 years away from an oral vaccine, maybe the britich gov. could spend the money it reserved for further killings on helping them.

[splodger]

imho badger cull was a huge waste of time and money - and poorly executed (pun intended)

[oldclaypaws]

Several years ago when I was Chair of a fundraising group for a well known wildlife centre, we paid for a pioneering study to monitor rehabilitated injured badgers on their release. They had radio collars attached and their movements were monitored by us as they searched for new sets. The results surprised us, they almost did a tour of the Southern half of the county. Obviously these badgers had been tested and were clear of TB, but had they instead been cull survivors scared off their patch, and TB carriers, the result is they could have passed on TB to loads of other badgers and cattle in their panicked wandering. The Cull will have huge impact on the movements of surviving badgers and in likelyhood will see more localised outbreaks of TB in due course.

Badgers give TB to cattle, fact. Infected cattle give TB to badgers, fact. The answer has to be a vaccine route, but the problem is one of EU regulation. You can't tell the difference between an infected cow and one thats been given the only effective current TB (Bacille Calmette-Guérin) vaccine, so its illegal to give the vaccine. If all cows in the EU were given the vaccine, they'd all be fine, but you wouldn't know which if any were carriers. The EU wants a vaccine that can be differentiated from an infected cow v vaccinated, which is several years away.

You could also vaccinate badgers, the RSPCA offered to in the test areas rather than a cull but were refused. Cost would be considerable.

The answers are a few years off and the heated debate will continue until an effective solution is found. I have great sympathy for farmers who get an outbreak, and for the poor badgers. Full info for those interested below ;

Footnote, many human contagious diseases which cause many deaths such as influenza in the elderly are spread by children bringing them home from school, schools are breeding grounds for germs. Should we vaccinate or cull children?

http://www.tbfreeengland.co.uk/vaccination/

[Rod Taylor]

Deer can carry Bovine TB too, grazing the same fields as Cows and there are more of them about now than ever before, but I have yet to hear anyone talk about culling them ???

[Andy M]

There is a lot of concern about deer numbers (highest ever in East Anglia) and the damage they cause to woodland. Culling programs are used for this reason rather than TB, but are often opposed by those who do not understand the reasons. I don't think there is quite the same TB reservoir in deer as there is in badgers.

I can see that reducing numbers may help a bit, but do not think severe reduction in numbers would necessarily sort out the epidemic - unless it was total eradication!!

That TB has virtually disappeared in humans is more due to improved nutrition and living conditions than immunisation programs. There is no one simple solution (surprise surprise).

[Dexter's Shed]

Deer can carry Bovine TB too, grazing the same fields as Cows and there are more of them about now than ever before, but I have yet to hear anyone talk about culling them ???

a lot of deer herds are managed by their owners or by the owners of the land they are on, culling old or sick animals to keep the herd healthy, this does not happen with the badger as its protected,

weils disease is a nasty one carried by rats, being a pestie Ive known a couple of people that have caught it, funnily enough cows carry that too, yet we never hear about that do we

[Andy M]

DS
Not sure about your point about Weil's disease (which is rare) - most people are only too happy to get rid of rats, but it is impossible to make a significant permanent dent in their numbers as pretty quickly more move in to a cleared area.

The problem with culling sick animals is that TB is spread by animals that do not appear to be unwell externally. Diseased cows are slaughtered but their disease is only diagnosed by individual testing, not by their appearance.

Anyway, a better benefit for human health would be to cull cars!