End of the road?

 

We wrote of a black alpaca called Geronimo   in a posting in 2018.

Imported from New Zealand, into a UK TB hotspot, the animal subsequently tested positive for the disease and Defra's death notice was served.

After almost four years, some big money spent and several court appeals later, the animal is still alive and is due for  destruction  this week. 

The Sun, carrying the story on the link above, now puts the animal's owner in the firing line, as she has vowed 'to take the bullet' meant for her alpaca. 

It's probably worth mentioning that the number of cattle subject to Deathrow's paperwork in those four years, has exceeded 40,000 in each of the last three years. A peak in  2018, can be viewed on this link when 44,654 animals were compulsorily slaughtered after failing either the skin test or the notorious gamma ifn blood test.  A cumulative total of 130,113 cattle were condemned 2018 - 2020.

We also discovered some years ago that Defra were massaging  figures for camelid casualties of the zoonotic tuberculosis epidemic, now entrenched in the wildlife of GB. While individual cattle deaths were recorded, with alpacas, numbers published were restricted to a single group or herd. And even included herds which had had contact or were 'tethered' to the initial outbreak.  

We have been unable to ascertain whether this is still the case. 

But this is what tuberculosis in an infected alpaca looks like at post mortem.

Edit update:

There is of course another  ante mortem test for camelids, one which many people will now be familiar with after 17 months of covid. And that is PCR.  (Geronimo's owner is criticising the test, we understand)

In 2013, it was pretty obvious that trying to shoe-horn other mammals into the bovine test scenario was not going to work, and the owners of alpacas were particularly hard hit. So a group decided to self fund a Proof of Concept   study into whether PCR would be a more appropriate test  for these animals.

It worked, just as the PCR test for infected badgers  worked, when Owen Paterson's department threw £742,000  to Liz Wellington at Warwick University to develop her test to identify infected badger setts.

Sadly for reasons known only to themselves, neither test was accepted by the British Alpaca Society or Defra whose single collective brain cell is still in denial for camelids and badgers - if not for cattle..

Follow the money

 

We've pondered long and hard while scribbling this blog, about how genuine 'science' as practised decades ago, can be at best ignored and worse, denigrated and made the subject of derision. As is anyone who dares to question the current mantra of kill cattle, cattle cattle - and vaccinate badgers.

We've seen consultation after consultation, all skewed towards preordained conclusions, even to the extent of our current Secretary of State announcing the result , ahead of reading the replies. And we've read the Hansard reports of the RBCT debacle, where it's chief wizard  declared with some pride, that his trial had to reach a preconceived and totally political, conclusion.  

Follow the data? Our co editor, taking a lead from the Financial Times,  together with his own research, has a tale which makes the 2015 'cash for questions' scandal look like 'Listen with mother'. 

Cash up front will get you ringside seat with anyone from the Prime Minister down, and including HRH Prince Charles, whose nephew, Ben Elliot  (by his marriage to Camilla) runs this seedy set up.

Anyone who stumps up £250,000 can have a seat within the inner sanctum, known as the 'Advisory Board' and is guaranteed access to Boris Johnson,  chancellor Sunak and others. Failed MP, now in the Lords and parachuted into Defra, Zac Goldsmith is also mentioned in dispatches.

 So after 538 Parliamentary Questions, 17 years of gathering research on policies which worked to eradicate zoonotic Tuberculosis and more importantly, those which did not, we have a government bought and paid for. A government which wants to leave a reservoir of this zoonotic disease in wildlife, kill more cattle and vaccinate any badger which happens to enter a peanut laced cage, despite the published evidence of a very dead cat,  carrying the same  unique genotype of zTB found in badger vaccines. 

And we in the UK dare to criticise the corruption of other country's governments? Really?  

A 'banana republic' is described as one where a government functions poorly for its citizens while disproportionately benefitting a corrupt and elite group group or individual. 

As we said, follow the money.