Noooooooooo don't kill the badgers

[Enideepmidwinter]

badger cull next year

they live at the bottom of my garden. Will camp out to protect them!

Did you hear that episode where David Archer killed one?

yes bastard

sorry if i am being a bit dim here but exactly how are badgers giving cows TB?

poor badgers

its very dubious whether badgers are actually giving cows TB. Cows may be giving badgers TB. This angers me so much. Another reason to decimate an indigenous species.

Enid and other supporters of the badgers may be interested in this campaigning site

the jury is still out as to how TB interacts in badgers and cows. But what is true is there has been an increase in TB in both in the last 20 years and cow farmers are struggling to cope with the effect on their livelihoods. Understandable that they want to lash out at something - but there is evidence that killing badgers actually spreads the disease - the ones they miss run away and go to new areas - potentially carrying TB to clean areas. Also there is a suggestion that cows being moved between farms are carrying it - restocking after the foot and mouth problems have led to TB in areas that had none before it.

No simple anser.

ironic that our local farmer gets a subsidy to protect his hedges for wildlife (that is his reason for never cutting them ) then he gets to shoot all the badgers, foxes and rabbits that live there [bonkers emoticon]

If you think that badgers don't give TB to cattle, and that farmers don't kill badgers in their hundreds already, you are very naive!

Why do you think there are so many dead badgers at the sides of the road? They haven't been hit by cars you know (otherwise there would be quite a few cars at the side of the road as well)....

And I don't think the hedges are there for rabbits (!), there are so many of them at the moment that there is likely to be a big myxi outbreak in the next year or so. I think the wildlife the hedges are meant to protect are small mammals (fieldmice etc) and songbirds not rabbits and foxes!

PPP what you say is just your opinion, not objective fact. sorry.

and what would be your solution? kill all badgers to the point of extinction?

I know about the badgers on the side of the road. Am not naive, we live in a very rural farming area, surrounded by fields etc etc. There is no proven link between badgers and tb however much the farmers like to think there is.

It was a bit facetitious (sp?) about the hedge

This makes me so angry!

I can understand that TB is infecting farmers and they want to lash out at something, but the government bowing down to this when there is no suportible sceintific evidence to back it up.

You won't be the only one camping out Enid. My Gramps loves the badgers on his land and he'll do his best to protect them too.

PPP there wouldn't be any risk of a myxi outbreak if we hadn't introduced it to rabits in the first place. Whenever humans get involved without thinking of the facts logically we screw it up. That's a fact.

Hello everyone, before you go nuts at me did I say I was pro culling? I'm just pointing out that it already happens! Fact! And that badgers give cattle TB! Fact! I didn't make any statement about whether culling would help or not as I'm not an expert and if the experts have been in dispute about this for years I don't see how I am expected to make a judgment.

I also do not dispute for one second that there would be no myxi if we hadn't introduced it, so climb down off your high horse, dear. I'm just stating that rabbits aren't exactly in any danger of extinction/need of specific protection, and at the moment population levels are particularly high.

Sheesh.

no its good to hear lots of pro stuff as I need to hone my argument for when I am camping out at the bottom of my garden

I listened to the discussion on Jeremey Vine and it does seem that badgers are spreading TB amongst cattle.
I don't know whether culling is the answer but if TB is rife amongst badgers it seems clear to just leave the badgers is also cruel as they suffer greatly as a result of the disease.

I do think we generally do get a bit mawkish about certain animals - I doubt there'd be an outrage if we were talking rats!

in your cath kidston flowery tent?!!

but of course pph

seriously though i dont really want snares on my land

Current state of research is fairly clearly summed up here .

In summary, there certainly appears to be correlation, but as we all know, that doesn't imply causation, although the Kreb Report of the late 1990's was quite heavily inclined to believe badgers spread TB to cattle. How to control it effectively is, of course, another matter.

Does anyone know, btw, why it matters if cows get bovine TB? Does it transmit to humans?

I do worry though that it might be a red herring and stop farmers looking at the problem of cow transportation spreading tb

it matters to the farmers cos the cattle have to be slaughtered

they dont always slaughter them though

a friend of mine owns the farm near us and they used to drink 'raw' milk but she said they had to stop as the cows have tb

ok - but then how much to treat the cattle? you couldn't leave the poor beasts untreated and if you had a herd infected .....

no one looks at how industrialized farming practices contribute to the problem. i heard compelling evidence that cows may be giving badgers tb, but haven't had time to look at researh posted here yet. I think it is facetious to compare badgers to rats. Rats hang around dirty disease ridden places, badgers don't. I'm not particularly sentimental about animals, but i get very angry when our complacent society trashes the countryside and all the different species for convenience. wild animals are seen just as a nuisance, not as part of the countryside to be respected and protected.

Well, this may be scuttlebutt, but my understanding was the reason that cows infected with bovine TB are culled is because a)the health implications (to humans I think) of drinking unpasturised milk from a cow with TB and b) the possibility that they will infect other cows.

Now, if we could solve problem a) by, for example, insisting milk from cows with bovine tb is pasturised or thrown away, then b) would no longer be relevant. I think (warning, this is just a very dodgy recall of something I was once told) that most cows in diary herds don't get old enough for the long term effects of bovine to have a serious effect on their welfare or productivity, so from that point of view it isn't really an issue.

But I'm probably wrong, hence my interest in finding someone who actually knows why bovine TB is a problem.