The Badger Cull

[Catherine]

Quote:This is awful and then one day everyone will say what happened to all the animal species,us is what happened to them.

Quote:Hands off the innocent badgers!

Well said.

They need to get some proper epidemiologists to analyze the situation. They can determine where the TB came from and how it is transmitted. Against all evidence they have decided that badgers are the problem and should be eliminated. Since badgers are not the problem, eliminating them will give a false sense of security. Whatever is the cause of a TB spread still exists and will still exist even if they kill every single badger. There will be a much larger outbreak because no precautions are being taken against the real problem.

I think lack of quarantining of cattle when they are sold and a lack of testing are very much part of the problem. Is there no vaccine? Vaccinating would help break the transmission of the disease. Documenting cattle movements from area to area and a more accurate way of identifying individual cows would help. Perhaps cows could be microchipped. Then there would be no doubt about who an individual cow is. That way a cow from an infected herd  couldn't "accidentally" get sold to an area where there is no TB. The real problem is cattle management, not a few wild badgers who have little contact with cows. Badgers are nocturnal and cattle are diurnal. I don't imagine that they have much interaction.

When you grab at the wrong solution, the problem doesn't go away.

Badgers shouldn't have to pay for our stubborn stupidity.