to think it must be easier to vaccinate cows than to vaccinate badgers?

[AtYourCervix]

This here badger cull in the south west. Now there is talk of vaccinating badgers agsinst TB rather thsn shooting them.

But wouldn't it be easier to do cows?

And why not vaccinate cows rather than shooting the badgers?

Disclaimer - i know very little about cows and badgers but i can't see how a cull is better.

Ithink it's to do with what enters the food chain.

What about when we eat the cows/drink milk?

But cows are already full of other vaccines snd antibiotics. Is it particularly the TB vaccine that gets into meat and milk?

A vaccinated cow will always give a positive result for TB and therefore it's meat and milk cannot be sold. I think they've desperately been trying to create a vaccine that doesn't do this for years without success.

Also linguistically satisfying.

Because yes, you're right it's the obvious solution.

God knows. I can't speak for scaevola (sorry for repeating what you said scaev, btw, when I read and then posted, there were no replies yet) but I don't have any knowledge of vaccines. I am just assuming that since it very obviously would be far easier and cheaper to vaccinate cows, there must be a reason why it can't be done and that must be to do with the effect on the meat /milk.

Otherwise, it simply makes no sense to cull badgers and then to talk about a costly and difficult vaccination programme for them.

I see.

our cows aren't full of vaccines and anti-bs.

I have just sent 3 pg cows off to slaughter this morning as they were reactors when we tested for tb last week

that makes 64 cows we have had to kill in the last 8 months

before anyone slates me - I don't know what the answer is. Badgers can die a prolonged and very painful cruel death from tb (as can cattle) so they need to be put out of their misery. I can't, however support someone taking pot shots at them. I would rather see a trapping and testing programming - the badger is pts if it tests positive and is vaccinated and micro-chipped and released if not.

The trouble with vaccinating cows is that there isn't one. And then it could give a false positive when tested and you wouldn't know if it was due to the vaccine or they had tb so would have to cull anyway which would defeat the purpose of vaccination

Whojamaflip

What happened about 100 or 200 years ago?
There have always been badgers and always been TB.
Is it the intensive farming that has made the difference?

Dunno.

You don't suppose people first got tb from eating animals that had been infected, do you?

I know nothing about these things (blush)

A vaccinated cow will always give a positive result for TB and therefore it's meat and milk cannot be sold.

^^ this
And yes there has always been bovine tb, which used to enter the food chain. Now it doesn't, but the impact of culling out test positive animals is huge on the beef and dairy industry (yes there is compensation but its only for market value which doesn't take into account the loss of subsequent calvings and lactations, and costs the tax payer).
Testing and culling animals is not working (so many false positives) and may even be taking out cows from the herd that have immunity from tb, leaving behind a much more susceptible herd.
I think vaccinating badgers is going to be a drop in the ocean. The Welsh assembly lost the best opportunity for getting good evidence on whether a controlled badger cull would have an impact.

I can see that it is hard on farming to gave to destroy infected cattle.

But it doesn't sit right that culling badgers us the wsy to avoid that. Don't know what the answer is though.

Whojamaflip I am sorry to hear about your losses. It must be heartbreaking.
But I was glad to read your post as I have been having this argument with a friend who insists that cows should be vaccinated. I will tell her about the lack of vaccine (wasn't sure if there was one or not).

It does seem obvious to me that something needs to be done about it. We have been culling cattle for years in this country yet TB still grows as a problem. So culling cattle alone isn't working. Either everything that's infected needs culling (including badgers, deer & other wildlife), or cull nothing.