Cattle carnage in Wales

The farming and veterinary press are singing from the same hymn sheet this week, as The Vet Record (above) 25/01, the Farmers Guardian - [link] 24/01 both comment on the appalling carnage happening across the south of Wales, following the 'enhanced' cattle measures introduced recently.

This follows publication of the worst ever figures for cattle slaughterings in the Principality's history.

Cattle deaths climbed 31 per cent in the year to September 2019. The latest official figures show that this policy (enhanced measures) resulted in 13,078 cattle being slaughtered in Wales as TB reactors in the 12 months to September. That’s a 31% increase on the previous 12 months (9,946). And in Wales, 76,769 cattle have been slaughtered for TB between 2010 and 2018.

 We are told that the 'enhanced measures' can be described as follows:

"The policy involves switching over to severe interpretation of the skin test as well as also classifying inconclusive reactors to this test as reactors and this is repeated every 60 days. (This even in herds even where reactor animals are not found at pm to be lesioned, and are negative on culture)
An annual herd blood test using the gamma interferon is also carried out. Additional blood tests to check for antibody are usually also applied."

All reactors to the above tests, are slaughtered.

So, the protocol appears extremely thorough indeed. But what are the results of all this “thorough” testing in Wales? A Freedom of Information Act request revealed that during 2018 and up to end of June 2019 almost 9,000 (8,995) animals had been slaughtered from 661 farms in Dyfed alone.

"The total of TB lesioned animals was 1,019. But only 6 cattle showed gross TB lesions in the lungs (0.6%) an extremely low figure."

Drs. John Gallagher and Roger Sainsbury, two retired ex Ministry senior veterinary pathologists, and a retired practise vet from Cardigan, Richard Thomas,  who collated the figures, comment on these results:

“With the very low number of lung TB cases found in Dyfed, we consider it incompatible with the CVO’s claim of cattle-to-cattle spread”

But proudly explaining her ongoing carnage, the Welsh CVO, Christianne Glossop, explained that New Herd Incidents and Herd prevalence where both lower in Wales than in 2009.

The cynical among us would say that having lost hundreds of cattle, and with them the ability to sustain a business, many farms would have thrown the towel in. And indeed there appears to be some 20 per cent less registered cattle farms - [link] in Wales than a decade ago.
 A drop from 12,460 registered cattle herds in 2008, to 9,868 in 2018.

We wrote last year - [link] of the carnage happening across the Welsh valleys, courtesy of the Welsh Assembly Government's one sided policies and we also posted the video link of Glossop - in a previous life - supporting culling badgers as part of the measures to eradicate zTB in Wales.

Culling badgers, the lady said then, would make a big difference to the levels of infection in the countryside and thus to cattle TB. Within days that video was removed from view.

So it is only our transcripts of this politically motivated leader's speech which remind us that zoonotic Tuberculosis in badgers is as subject to political steerage now, as it ever was.

 This is what the lady said in 2010:

" We have a big TB problem here in Wales. And it's quite clear that if we're going to succeed in eradicating this epidemic we absolutely have to tackle all sources of infection.

We have infected cattle and we are testing and slaughtering those infected cattle on a regular basis. But alongside that we must deal with infection in other species.

One of the biggest problems is our wildlife reservoir of infection particularly in the badger population."

Killing the Badgers will make a big difference to the level of infection in the countryside and we know from scientific studies carried out in England that it can also have a direct impact on the incidence of infection in cattle."  

In her 2010 video, Glossop got it correct. A parallel policy. Nine years on and she is responsible for the carnage experienced across south Wales, leading to the deaths of 76,769 cattle since she made the film, and up to 2018. We hear that the lady retires this year. What a legacy to have presided over..

 And there can be no doubting the mental and financial strain put on the owners of thse cattle. Carnage indeed.

New Year - New news.

As we wade into a wet 2020, and 15 long years since this blog was started, the results of the farmer led culls of endemically infected badgers is starting to show in the amount of cattle going into Defra's mincer.

In the High Risk Area, it is dropping, as are breakdowns.

We were hearing, anecdotally of course, of long standing herd breakdowns resolving quite quickly after culling the wildlife maintenance reservoir began, but we had to wait until the mathematical modelers had fired up their machines to see a reduction of 58 per cent -[link] in cattle TB in the Gloucestershire pilot cull area. And a significant drop in the Somerset pilot cull area.

 Further analysis over the years 2013 - 17 has produced more data, reported by Sara Downs's team in Nature- (link) and the crucial paragraph, amongst the diagrams of models is quoted thus:

"The effect was strongest in Gloucestershire where the central estimate was 66% lower than in comparison areas compared to 37% lower in Somerset."

Other scattered  areas of the far South West have joined in, clearing up the decades of intransigence and political chicanery undertaken by successive governments, and reports of significant drops in herd breakdowns are coming through.

APHA's interactive TB maps show this quite starkly.

A screen grab of 2016 outbreaks in England, counted from a line due south and west of Birmingham, where the majority of the new cull areas are now in place, is pictured below.
There were 2,700 herds under restriction and a very small number of farmer led badger control areas..

And a similar screen grab showing outbreaks in 2019 has 2,137 herds under restriction. A drop of 21 per cent in herds under TB restriction.

Bearing in mind that some of these scattered cull areas had only just started their monumental clean up exercise, and that Defra are still allowing the translocation and vaccination of badgers, not to mention the opt outs of misguided people who think they are somehow protecting these over populated, endemically infected animals, that is a remarkable drop.

Particularly as only 42 nights culling per year is allowed, under very strict conditions from un-Natural England. It was never going to achieve the effect of Thornbury which was described in our Parliamentary questions, and in 2004 formed  the basis of this site.

We asked why the 8 month sett euthanasia at Thornbury had been so successful, keeping cattle clear of TB for at least a decade.

The answer was unequivocal and needs to be inscribed over the door of every building occupied by this most political of government departments, and especially the office of the Secretary of State:

" The fundamental difference between the Thornbury area and other areas [] where bovine tuberculosis was a problem, was the systematic removal of badgers from the Thornbury area. No other species was similarly removed. No other contemporaneous change was identified that could have accounted for the reduction in TB incidence within the area" [157949 - Hansard]

Keep it simple. A very Happy New Year.