The Welsh Assembly's decision to operate a badger culling pilot trial parallel to their enhanced cattle testing programme, may be challenged by the Badger Trust. In a not unexpected hissy fit, the Trust are reported to be attempting to put a judicial spoke in the wheel of the Welsh TB eradication policy.Badger Trust chairman David Williams said the decision would be challenged on the basis that it is not ‘underpinned by robust scientific evidence.’We assume that he refers to the ISG's 'robust' scientific evidence rather than anything prior to 1997, or after 2007?
The charity said badgers cannot be killed unless, under the Animal Health Act, it is to ‘eliminate or substantially reduce the spread of disease’ and was ‘both necessary and the most appropriate way but without causing undue suffering’.
True. And the present unchallenged, and possibly unlawful moratorium on this part of the Protection of Badgers Act, has done nothing for the health and welfare of badgers which the Trust pretend to support, but let that pass.
Farmers Guardian has the story.
Referring to the Independent Scientific Group’s 2007 report on badger culling, the Badger Trust claimed any benefits would be ‘at best very marginal’, while the cost would be ‘substantial’. And of course in that sweeping statement, they have deliberately missed the crucial evidence given by the diminutive professor to the EFRA committee on many occasions, when he said (quite forcefully) that culling badgers "In the way in which it was done in the
Even the WLU operatives and managers, overseeing the diminutive professor's (political) instructions piled in with their own experiences of this 'robust' type of science.
And the Badger Trust seems to have blindsided the follow up
on the trial, completed last year by some members of the original ISG, which showed even with protocol as badly skewed as this, a drop of 60 percent in cattle TB across all the proactive cull zones, with a corresponding drop of 30 percent in the 'edge' zones was eventually achieved. But that was after Bourne published his report and so is politically and conveniently pigeon holed. Out of sight.
2 comments:
Number of cattle with TB down 20%
Monday, November 2, 2009
www.irishtimes.com
http://preview.tinyurl.com/yffl5et
SEÁN Mac CONNELL Agriculture Correspondent
NEW FIELD trials to stop the spread of TB in cattle by vaccinating
badgers rather than exterminating them is showing good results,
according to the Department of Agriculture.
The number of Irish cattle affected by bovine TB has fallen by nearly 20
per cent this year.
The latest figures from the Department of Agriculture have also shown a
significant fall in the number of "reactor" cattle this year up to the
end of October.
In areas where the department killed off the badger population, the
incidence of bovine TB dropped in the cattle herds, but this has caused
outrage in animal welfare circles.
Badgers killed in the field trials carried out in areas where there have
been high levels of TB in cattle have been found to have TB infection
levels as high as 40 per cent.
A statement from the department said the research project with
University College Dublin and the UK government's department of
agriculture on the efficacy of an orally delivered vaccine to badgers is
"showing promising results".
"If the field trial is successful and subsequently a national badger
vaccination strategy is adopted, the need to remove TB-infected badgers
will reduce as tuberculosis levels falls in both cattle and badgers.
"However, it will be some time before the benefits of a vaccine can be
seen, and it is envisaged that the existing strategy will remain in
place for some time."
The battle to control the disease has intensified following the
announcement some days ago by the EU that it has recognised Scotland as
being free from the disease, giving it a trade competitive advantage.
This was awarded because 99.9 per cent of herds in Scotland achieved
TB-free status for six consecutive years.
In the Republic the number of herds restricted for TB was 5.9 per cent
of herds tested in 2008. England, Wales and Northern Ireland have
similar problems eradicating the disease.
Third-quarter figures showed the number of so-called reactors -- cattle
which fail the test -- has fallen to 18,237 compared to 22,997 reactor
cattle in the same period in 2008.
The figures reflect an improving situation in the 50-year fight to rid
the national cattle herd of the disease which has cost the Irish
taxpayer an estimated EUR1.5 billion and the industry probably twice
that figure.
This article appears in the print edition of the Irish Times
Anon 4.58
We've seen this extraordinarily bad, muddled and misleading report in the Irish times..
Will post on it later. But you will note from that they report that the 20 percent drop in cattle reactors is primarily from reactive culling of badgers in response to cattle TB. Badgers whose infection rate is up to 40 percent.
And the vax project ? (Small and local)
"A statement from the department said the research project with
University College Dublin and the UK government's department of
agriculture on the efficacy of an orally delivered vaccine to badgers is
"showing promising results".
(As in, barely started, not on a wide scale and not been going long enough to deliver much at all?)
"If the field trial is successful and subsequently a national badger
vaccination strategy is adopted, the need to remove TB-infected badgers
will reduce as tuberculosis levels falls in both cattle and badgers.
"However, it will be some time before the benefits of a vaccine can be
seen, and it is envisaged that the existing strategy will remain in
place for some time."
(See what we mean? "It will be some time before benefits of vaccine can be seen".
It is not the vaccine policy which has delivered the drop. Which from reading the headline, a reader may not understand.
Badly skewed copy.
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