Badger Culling

[Silly Sausage]

Become vegetarian

No chance!
Interesting 'Horizon' the other night, cattle & sheep have the largest Carbon footprint, with pigs & poultry a hell of a lot lower.
Eat more pigs and chickens.

 

[Guest77]

I like foxes as well and I am glad new labour got rid of hunting with dogs, I mean 50 horses and 50 dogs chasing a fox to exhaustion so the dogs can rip it apart alive and then some toffy nosed tart holding up the tail shouting whatto the brandy's are on me at the pub makes my skin crawl.

 

[dingledong]

Perhaps you can provide a link to corroborative proof of that Ding.

Sorry I do.t know how to do that but it seems they have the fourth highest rate dentists are number one now

 

[Barry White]

Let me google that for you

 

[trev]

So half an hour ago they had the highest rate now they're only fourth and you don't know how to copy and paste.
Not looking good for you is it Champ?

 

[dingledong]

It seems there is still accounting going on even though it's banned
So how would you control foxes

 

[Guest77]

It seems there is still accounting going on even though it's banned
So how would you control foxes

I wouldn't control them, it is up to the farmers to protect chickens and nature will ensure the fox population doesn't get out of control.

 

[trev]

It seems there is still accounting going on even though it's banned
So how would you control foxes

What Mike said.

 

[dingledong]

I just went on line and looked and it said fourth so at least I told you what it said and I have no idea how to copy and paste at all sorry to say . I spent over an hour trying to get an avatar up without success
But 4th is still high
And because I can't copy and paste I don't have a valid argument then

 

[dingledong]

Ok I.ll drop out of this discussion

 

[trev]

NO! Stay, it's good seeing you blow your own statements out of the water.

 

[Guest77]

I just went on line and looked and it said fourth so at least I told you what it said and I have no idea how to copy and paste at all sorry to say . I spent over an hour trying to get an avatar up without success
But 4th is still high
And because I can't copy and paste I don't have a valid argument then

LOL, it takes all sorts hehe

 

[Rockingit]

OK boys, I've something fairly substantive to say on this, and I'm fairly learned on the subject, too. The reason being that Father in Law is a large scale dairy farmer, and has one of the largest herds in Somerset. In fact, I'd wager there's half a chance that many of you will actually have his milk (in the form of cheese) in your fridges as you read this. And two years ago, he lost something like 180 pure pedigree beasts unnecessarily in TB screening.

Now, before I start on Cows and Badgers I'd just like to pose this question about vaccination: Why would you want to? For example - the UK is thankfully (and amazingly) Rabies free. Now, there are very effective vaccines against Rabies.....so why don't we just vaccinate every single form of Mammal (Humans included) in the UK, and not bother with border controls etc? Er.... no thanks. So basically, why allow the spread of a disease, simply because you can treat the symptoms. It just doesn't make sense. It's the electricians equivalent of saying it doesn't matter how shoddy the installation is, I put an RCD in.

Now, about Badgers. Yes, they look nice. Well, that's when they haven't got their chops dripping in blood after they've just been down a burrow for a rabbit. Badgers have no natural predators in the wild, they actually require human beings to manage the population. The minute that someone decided all badgers must have leaped off the pages of Wind in the Willows, and must be protected, it was incredibly short sighted and ill-informed. And yes, they carry, and spread, TB. And we know this first hand because F-I-L's herd is a closed herd. There are no inbound cattle movements. And contrary to popular belief, they are not pumped full of drugs and kept crowded and so on. They are very well looked after indeed. They have sanitised stalls when in, filtered treated water...etc. At an engineering level, there is no other possible explanation.

So now we're left with cows, or rather, the means of testing for TB in cows. For reasons best known to themselves, DEFRA (and in fairness I think this is starting to change very very slowly) use a method of testing which has been long abandoned by every other country (Australia was the first) as being completely unreliable. It's a two-stage test - they have a 'skin reactor' which is where they are injected and then a few days later if they are suspect to carrying TB some part of the cows skin becomes inflamed. Apart from the fact that there are hundreds of other things which can cause the same reaction. The other second part of the test can only be done postmortem. That's right.....in order to see if you need to kill the cow in order to stop the spread of TB, you first have to kill the cow. And, there are other, far more reliable, means of testing available, the UK just refuses to use them.

Out of 180 slaughtered prime pedigree dairy cows, guess how many actually had TB? None.

So, if we're talking about the 'unnecessary killing of animals' where do you think we need to start?

 

[trev]

Trust you to be the voice of bloody reason, haven't you got work to do in Hong Kong?

It's not treating the symptoms though is it? Innoculation will prevent the animals getting the disease in the first place

 

[Barry White]

from defra website

BCG vaccination of cattle, as with BCG vaccination in other species, is not 100% effective in preventing TB. Rather, it provides a spectrum of protection:

• Some cattle will be fully protected;
• Some cattle will suffer a less severe form of disease (and be less likely to affect other animals);
• Some cattle will get no protection from vaccination.

As far as we know BCG does not have a therapeutic effect in already infected animals.
BCG vaccination of cattle could be a valuable tool when used alongside other TB control measures in the UK.

Vaccination of cattle against TB is currently prohibited by EU legislation, in place principally because BCG vaccination of cattle can interfere with the tuberculin skin test which is the recognised primary diagnostic test for TB in cattle.

quotes from Cattle vaccination « Animal Diseases

so inoculation is not on the agenda