Wales - the stamp of Approval.

This week's news of an OBE for the architect of cattle carnage in Wales, Christianne Glossop, comes as no surprise. But in 2011, the lady was the farmers' hero, when she announced the following, in a video message:

'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.

OK so far? And in 2011 Ms Glossop continues with her vision:

A long term study that took place in England a number of years ago now showed us that culling badgers can directly reduce the incidence of infection in our cattle herds. And that's what we are preparing to do here in Wales. The long term study that took place in England - The Randomised badger culling trial, set out to ask the question - Can culling badgers have an impact on incidence of infection in our cattle population? And what that study showed was that, in fact, it can reduce the incidence of infection in cattle and that that benefit can last over a significant period of time.

She expands on that statement too:

The areas that were culled have been studied in the 3 - 4 years following the end of badger culling and the benefits continue to be shown and so the great news, great new evidence that was published just two weeks ago now, showed us that the benefits of badger culling can be seen up to 3 - 4 years following the end of culling.

And finishes with the following:

It's really important to remember though that if we are going to be successful in our TB eradication programme here in Wales we must tackle infection in all species. And so alongside our plan to cull badgers we are also bearing down hard on infection in the cattle population. We're carrying out more testing we're removing cattle from the herds and slaughtering them as rapidly as possible and we're also working with farmers across Wales to raise standards of bio-security to reduce the risk of introducing infection into our farms”.

We think that Ms Glossop makes it clear in her video, which can be seen on this site with the transcript above, that culling badgers is an essential part of curtailing the rise in bovine TB. It is. And in 2010 she was given a roadmap of how to do that. Sadly, that was a worse shamble than the English RBCT. She had been royally shafted. But this lady was for turning. And while slaughtering just shy of 90,000 cattle in the Principality during her tenure (2010 - 2019 ) barely a single tuberculous badger was culled. A few were vaccinated at vast expense. Farmers Weekly report the huge increase in cattle slaughterings recorded for 2019. The highest on record. So in Ms. Glossop's case, OBE has to be an acronym not for Order of the British Empire, but for Obscene Bovine Extermination.

50 years. A tale of Ministerial failure - in pictures.

 

 We first published this posting in 2012, but as 2021 looms, it will be 50 years since a tuberculous badger was found and post mortemed in a Glos. on a farm where repeated tests and slaughter were failing to clear the cattle herd of zoonotic Tuberculosis.

 Using their own maps, we will track the disgraceful decline of this country's so-called TB eradication programme.



After the Attested herds scheme of the 1950s and 60s, we were so nearly TB free. But a couple of 'hotspots' remained, which finally responded to parallel action on badgers after the mid 1970s.

Farmers controlled badger numbers.

The Protection of Badgers Act (1972) meant that any population control, for any reason, was by license only. MAFF controlled badgers " to prevent the spread of disease".

 And in 1986,  where at least one confirmed TB reactor had triggered annual tests for the parish,  the maps looked like this.

513 reactor cattle were slaughtered in 1986.

After 1986, the real decline began, as gassing of a complete group of badgers implicated in cattle breakdowns by MAFF, was replaced with cage traps and shooting - of those that hadn't been released or moved.

But the big change was the land allocated to the Ministry wildlife teams. This was reduced during the Interim Strategy  operating 1988 - 97 from 7km down to just 1km and then only on land cattle had grazed.
All arable, woodland or neighbouring land was out of bounds to the wildlife teams - if not badgers..

Over the same period badger numbers were estimated to have increased by 77 per cent per decade.

 The 1996 map tells its own story of expanding hotspots.

3,881 cattle were slaughtered in 1996.

In 1997, the then Labour government accepted a £1m bung from the Political Animal Lobby (PAL), and a moratorium was introduced overnight on Section 10 (2) of the Protection of Badgers Act.

No licenses were issued to "prevent the spread of disease".
Two years later, the number of cattle slaughtered had doubled.

The moratorium is still in place.

 The 2006 map shows hotspots expanding like Topsy.

 MAFF was now been re invented as DEFRA.

22,282 cattle were slaughtered in 2006.

After the end of the Badger Dispersal Trial  RBCT in 2006, Defra cracked down hard on cattle movements and ramped up testing.

 Pre movement testing was introduced in a valiant attempt to find this hidden reservoir of Tuberculosis in cattle.

The 2011 map showed the annual testing area as solid red, increased by several miles from Defra's original 2010 model. As far as badger could walk?


34,617 cattle were slaughtered in 2011.

Fast forward to the 2012 announcement of several new annual testing areas.

Please excuse the home made map - but as you can see, many buffer counties and those with sporadic and expanding problems now require annual tests and preMT of their cattle.

No action on badgers.

In 2012, there were 4919 new herd incidents and Defra slaughtered 37,734 animals.

 
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We think the new format of Defra's maps looks a tad truncated. In fact, very odd. We prefer the old GB format.

Wales has devolved completely - as have its figures in most of the press reports. And Scotland's head is removed.

Nevertheless the GB map, minus its top and left side, we print here - straight from Defra's new 2013 pdf file,
which explains their new cattle measures.

Still nothing on badgers at all. And the cattle killing goes on with much enthusiasm.

Thus a sobering fact is that almost 50 years ago when that first TB infected badger was formally identified in 1971, the incidence of cattle reactors in Britain was 0.045%, with 1,834 cattle slaughtered under TB orders.

This was before badgers were made a protected species and any action had been taken to control them due to zTB.

In Great Britain, during the 12 months to April 2020 Defra slaughtered 40,487 cattle under TB orders associated with 3,972 new outbreaks. 

In fact this country (GB) has been slaughtering around 30,000 to 40,000 cattle each year for the last 10 years associated with 4,000 to 5,000 new TB outbreaks annually. 

 So, by giving infected badgers the ultimate cult status, and their ancestral home a grade 1 listing, it is readily apparent that we are now in a far worse situation than we were more than 50 years ago. And it would be naive to assume that badgers with advanced tuberculous did not suffer from this disease.

More on this from a group of veterinary surgeons, veterinary pathologists and others who worked on this disease during the 1970s and 1980s - and almost had it beaten - can be read in the Veterinary Record.

Meanwhile, our graph, prepared a few years ago now, shows the numbers of cattle slaughtered in relation to the dumbing down, and finally abandonment, of any semblance of badger control in response to outbreaks of zTB in cattle herds in Great Britain.

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