Yoosful site? Or not.

We linked to a useful article on this site - (link) earlier in the year. In that article, Professor Ian Boyd, Defra's current Chief Scientist, was explaining the 'regional accents' - link) of the bacterium known as m.bovis.

That article was a good one. Unfortunately a quick wander around the site, reveals - (link) that the so called and quaintly entitled 'challenge' which cattle (and now sheep, farmed deer, pig and alpaca) farmers have with this disease is not to do with the disease itself at all. It is one thousand per cent to do with how this damned department, now named Defra but formerly MAFF,  have failed to deal with it over decades.

And as the page linked to above is headed by the blandly outrageous statement which explains so much about the attitude of this dinosaur, we have no confidence, despite the appointment of the most progressive Secretary of State for years,  that anything will change anytime soon. It's title page states with utter confidence that:

Bovine tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease affecting cattle.

Really? Try telling that to the owners of the dead sheep, pigs, cats, alpacas, deer, goats and not a few dogs. - (link)  - all animals which are stacking up in their hundreds, despite all efforts by Defra to dumb down the overspill reality of this 'disease which infects cattle'.(sic)

Until the architects of this site (Defra), produce meaningful statistics - (link) on the level of overspill to other mammals, infected not by their tested-to-extinction dead cattle, but the free ranging and translocated - (link) 'wildlife' they are sooooo  keen to ignore, we don't see the situation changing any time soon. - (link)