Wales is bleeding

The situation of zoonotic Tuberculosis in Wales, is not only a national disgrace, it was totally avoidable.



 


(Apologies - blogger doesn't like the video link, so it's added as a URL  Click the link below to view)

The instigator of this carnage, having done a spectacular U turn on her proposed badger cull, is CVO, Christianne Glossop. Pictured above, the lady had it right in her 2010 video clip, but these are comments she would now rather forget.

On the video, She gave a   stunning overview -[video link] of her plans to eradicate TB in Wales. And then reneged on them, in favour of more brutal cattle measures and vaccination of badgers. 

Beginning two years ago, by signing farmers up for 'Enhanced Measures' the Welsh Assembly Government's hatchet squad have set about decimating the cattle population, while admitting that they do not have the resources to even begin to tackle the wildlife testing regime which was supposed to run parallel to it.

This is studiously ignoring documented historical evidence, which we quoted from the CVO reports for England in this posting. - [link] Only when action was taken against resident badgers, did the incidence of cattle TB begin to drop 1972 - 76. But no amount of carnage, testing and bio security even made a dent.

So we set out below the stories of some family farms now affected in South Wales. Presently one third of cattle farms in the area are under restriction.

The first breakdown for one family dairy herd was 2004: the farm would lose a few cattle, subsequently go clear, often over the winter housing period, only to fail again when the cattle grazed.

From June 2006, no bought in cattle entered this particular herd, which was protected from neighbours by double fencing and had its own slurry spreaders.

For the milking herd to remain at around 150 animals, the owners decided to use expensive sexed semen to enable them to breed their own replacements from the very best cows in the herd and a decision was made to buy no cattle in at all.

So this farm has operated a completely closed herd, for the last thirteen years.

In late 2017 another breakdown restricted the farm, and after 18 months of testing and slaughter, the APHA vets told the farmers that their cattle would be subject to 'Enhanced Measures'. This meant that all cattle would be tested under severe interpretation every two months, and all animals over 6 months blood tested annually.

Although a risk assessment form would have been filled out for this breakdown, APHA declined to inspect or map the badger setts on the farm, even though farmers involved in these 'Enhanced measures' had been given the impression that badger control, (trap test and remove any positives) would be part and parcel of the programme.

 Due to limited resources (for badgers at least) only a very few farms (6 ?) are enrolled in testing badgers. One third of farms in the area are under TB restriction at the time of writing and along this valley over 600 reactor cattle have been slaughtered..

Early this year, the farm tested under these measures, and 21 animals failed. Of those, 9 were pregnant, two due to calve within the month. Following a meeting with APHA, the case officers (having refused before) did inspect the badger sets on the farm, finding one rotten carcase within 300m of the farm buildings. There was evidence of considerable badger activity, including latrines, runs and sets.

The farmer was assured that his case would be put forward for the promised badger sampling. To date this has not happened, and in last month a further test at severe interpretation revealed another 30 cattle to be shot. Eighteen of these were confirmed as pregnant.

It may be pertinent here, to remind readers that when a heavily pregnant cow is shot, her calf can take up to ten minutes for its placental blood supply to fail, and for it to die. During that time, it will kick, adding greatly to the distress suffered by cattle owners of seeing a lifetime's work destroyed before their eyes.

 Currently, the milking herds on some of these farms have been reduced by almost half, some farmers have received no written action plan and on many farms, no one has trapped or tested any badgers due to 'lack of resources'.

Those same lack of resources mean that the blood tests (Gamma ifn / IDEXX) have not yet been carried out on cattle either. But that is no bad thing, as the blood tests have a false positive rate said ( optimistically in our opinion) to be around 5 per cent, and if they are instigated, that means another bunch of cattle for the chop, the vast majority of which will be NVL (No visible Lesions).

In the year to April 2019, Christianne Glossop and her gang of hit men (and women) have diligently stuck to their guns and shot 12,000 reactor cattle. However, from their recent report - [link] we read that just 26 badgers may have suffered the same fate, using a penside test (DPP) with only 55.3 per cent sensitivety.

 The badgers released but subsequently testing +ve to laboratory screening of their bloods, were not recaptured again. Well that's just great then isn't it? Ten days to shoot a pregnant reactor cow confined in isolation, on a severe interpretation of the skin test or gamma bloods, but release badgers which subsequently were found to be +ve for zTB? And vaccinate them into the bargain ?

 And the cost to the taxpayer of that exercise in futility? £395,802. 10

 Our co editor and many veterinary pathologists (although obviously not Ms. Glossop) have pointed out that as badger densities increase and with them, the opportunity to spread the disease that is endemic within them, by taking a brutal line with cattle which may have met the challenge - and fought it off, we are leaving an very 'naive' population of cattle to face an increasingly contaminated environmental challenge. Madness.

 Finally, this week's Farmers Weekly Opinion piece - [link] by Will Evans hits the nail on the head.

Will points out that 19 per cent rise in cattle slaughterings to April 2019 as evidence of farmers' co operation with the zTB programme. And describing current policy as 'dreadfully wrong',  he calls for the Welsh Assembly Government to face up to its responsibilities and control the disease in badgers.

We agree. And would point out that Ms. Glossop's legacy will not be the outcome of that video she would rather forget, but the picture below.