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Does this seem a little daft to anyone else that we are forcing people into situations where they need food banks to survive but we can afford to spend 4K+ per badger to reduce TB in cattle?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-26369306
Yes but more live TB-free cows means certain essential foodstuffs, which poor people who live on council estates and wear flammable clothing tend to eat, are cheaper
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I believe this is the primary motivation behind the policy
Wow ,are they to scale binners ?
Wow ,are they to scale binners ?
That's why they want to cull the badgers, TB makes cows stunted. Get rid of TB and they're a 100' tall!
that fillet-o-fish must be a fillet-o-whale!
As opposed to £46 million a year in BTB cattle slaughter & compensation costs?
Plus its a made up estimated figure, which includes the cost of policing - which wouldn't have been necessary if violent animal rights campaigners were not threatening to disrupt it.
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Maybe 'a badger' could be the slang for £4000?
food banks, ofc there really needed
So, we carried out a pilot to see if it would be effective and the results are in.
It's what happens next that is crucial
Vaccinate the cows perchance ?
Badger burgers?
As per Ninfan's post, in purely monetary terms, bovine TB costs the Government and hence taxpayer quite a lot. It costs DEFRA something like £25-35 million a year for the compensation, slaughter and disposal of cattle at infected farms and each infected farm costs DEFRA something like £35k, with farmers also suffering loses of something like £12k on average. I think these figures are reasonably well accepted. So the argument was that a wholesale cull across England and Wales was expected to result in a 16% reduction in bovine TB cases, which would be a saving of more than £5 million a year. So in purely monetary terms, the cost savings year-on-year looked favourable. If the pilot had worked.
(The cost to DEFRA is about £35 million for the slaughter, etc of the cattle of infected herd, but they recoup a significant part of that as salvage (meat that is fit for human consumption). But other costs like testing, research and staffing cost another £30-40 million each year as paer Table 1 of [url= http://archive.defra.gov.uk/foodfarm/farmanimal/diseases/atoz/tb/documents/consultation.pdf ]this document[/url]. I am not convinced these costs would reduce that much even if bovine TB incidence was reduced.)
I personally think the pro-cull statistics were dubious at best and as far as I am aware the scientific community who study these things are not convinced, but yet again this is a political issue and the NFU wield a lot of power / influence.
It's what happens next that is crucial
Seriously though, as I'd said before the cull, the answer has laid all along in sample trapping & testing followed by gassing & collapsing infected setts, there's no point in killing healthy badgers. However gassing was ruled out up till now on a political basis.
As opposed to £46 million a year in BTB cattle slaughter & compensation costs?
Badger culling has no impact on that cost, as has been shown.
So, we carried out a pilot to see if it would be effective and the results are in.
Previous trials and expert opinion was pretty conclusive before this trial started.
IMHO the science supporting a cull was always dubious/non-existent.
Can someone explain why they don't inoculate?
Seems to be pretty effective in humans
Can someone explain why they don't inoculate?
The NFU wouldn't accept it, even though it's common on the continent.
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Friday afternoon work-avoidence 😀
A better solution would be to cull the people who live on council estates that wear flammable clothing.
wasnt the trial in the somerset area, can the buggers swim for that long or is problem now over? Now must be the best time for finding any left on the last few bits of dry land. 😉
Inoculation ends up in the food chain something I think we would want to avoid as the long term affects are unknown
Odd, I know I should care.
cloudnine - MemberCan someone explain why they don't inoculate?
Seems to be pretty effective in humans
footflaps - MemberCan someone explain why they don't inoculate?
The NFU wouldn't accept it, even though it's common on the continent.
Where do they innoculate?
I thought the reason they didn't innoculate was that it's banned under EU law (78/52/EEC) because the bovine BCG vaccine interferes with the mandatory tuberculin skin test and therefore the cattle cannot be declared officially tb free for trading and there is a ban on trading non tb free cattle.
[url= http://www.vet.gov.ba/pdffiles/eu_leg/anheu09.pdf ]EU tb stuff[/url]