Badger Cull 2013

[gonetoearth 5,144]

Who is shouting , the mountain hare. And its leverets have sufferd greatly at the hand of preditation were no vermin control is carried out and were the land owners hands are tied concerning the badger some areas have seen hare stocks wiped out. Your total all out defence of the badger seems a bit strange Do you agree the are over populated in certain areas do you agree its cruel to let bovine tb carry on infecting both species or is it save good old bill badger at any cost

[gonetoearth 5,144]

 

Right so your championing a vaccination programe to vaccinate all of the british badger population or the whole of the bovine herd in the uk. Is brain may going to foot the bill and find all the set locations in the uk trap and inject or sit in a hide waiting to abush old bill while he shuffles across the meadow. The reality is we have bovine tb at empidemic levels and its costing billions Mr badger needs controlling there is is march tomorrow hope you attend

 

"According to Defra (www.defra.gov.uk/foodfarm/farmanimal/diseases/atoz/tb/research/vaccine.htm) Developing a TB vaccine for badgers and cattle is a long-term goal and a substantial part of the Defra research programme focuses on this. Total investment (since 1998) in vaccine development reached more than £17.8 million by the end of March 2008. Over £5.5 million was invested in cattle and badger vaccine research in 2007/2008. We are told that real progress has been made yet a vaccination for cattle is STILL not available as efforts have, instead, been concentrated on a vaccine for badgers."

 

Chuff knows how much they are investing these days but to be focussing on badgers instead of cattle where as all you have to do is vaccinate cattle at birth or round them up (heck of a lot easier than trying to corall badgers) is just a waste of public money and this is the consequence.

. Back to my qestion in overpopulated areazs do they need controlling and what methord would you recomend

[paulus 26]

I can only speak from experience on the ground and not from any scientific journal or any other fooking place, but when your faced with 70 year old farmer with tears streaming down his face after hes been told his herd of prize cattle that he has spent most of his adult life and his father before him have reacted positive for TB yet again and there is clear evidence of a link between badgers and TB in cattle and the fact the fooking things are rampant in our area as we are a small village with no major roads to cull the fookers. Then yes even if the cull does nothing more than create a fire break or shows if a full scale cull would be effective or not then by fook im all for it. What other hope do these farmers have ?

[hutch6 550]

"all the other animals that come come and go as they please". Cats, dogs, alpacas, wild boar, deer and rats.

 

right take each in turn. TB in domestic dogs and cats is tiny. Alpacas are generally fenced into small paddocks and not nosing round dairy farms late at night. Wild boar - in the FoD yes they roam but then there aren't many dairies in that neck of the woods. deer = heavily controlled. rats - not known to travel vast distances and although they might act as vectors I should imagine that TB would kill them before they get too far. If you want us to recognise your argument you need to be objective and see how daft some of your points are.

 

I am unsure why we protect badgers and not rats - are we trying to save the earthworm?

 

I understand that TB reactors we use on cattle are not effective on badgers and the only true way to find out if a badger is a vector is by checking the lining tissue of its lungs but unfortunately to do that you need to either kill or anaesthetise it first. For that cost - shoot the bloody thing and then we don't need to waste BILLIOn more on tests, trials, vet fees for our cattle industry.

 

Don't most farms have a dog or two and a cat or two that wander about the land and domestic setting? Don't cats take rodents from hedgerows etc? Don't cats and dogs sometimes get acess to bits of unpasturised milk?

 

How are deer "heavily controlled"? The government had to increase the cull numbers to try and slow down their numbers just the other year. It increased by about a further 20-30,00 didn't it? If they are heavily controlled then it's not heavily enough if an increase of that magnitude is required.

 

Erm, no. THe vaccine programme they were looking into was an inocculation of oral format prevention and cure. Given that you can' tbe sure the badgers are getting their Gary Abletts twice a day but sure it is a more worthwhile programme than balsting everything into oblivion just because you can. Just seems senseless.

 

Call me an anti, say I should be on the other side etc but when it all goes breasts skywards and hunting in all forms is banned I promise I won't say "I told you so".

[CorkyJohn 808]

Many countries have eradicated bTB through the systematic application of the tuberculin skin test alone and the slaughter of all test reactors."

How many of these countries allowed the legal hunting/controlling of badgers? They have been protected for a long time in the UK & we have a problem. You mention wiping them out, I don't think the cull is aimed to wipe the species out completely.

[hutch6 550]

Who is shouting , the mountain hare. And its leverets have sufferd greatly at the hand of preditation were no vermin control is carried out and were the land owners hands are tied concerning the badger some areas have seen hare stocks wiped out. Your total all out defence of the badger seems a bit strange Do you agree the are over populated in certain areas do you agree its cruel to let bovine tb carry on infecting both species or is it save good old bill badger at any cost

 

Controlled yes. Almost wiped out, no.

 

Here's the thing. They come to the table spouting "we need to reduce the badger population to around 10% of it's current population numbers".

"So what are the current population numbers?"

"We don't know but we aim to reduce them to to 10%".

"10% of what number though?"

"The number of badgers"

 

It is not an all out defence of the badger as far as it's impact on other species goes (another subject entirely), it is the absolute blame for bTB the heads of this cull have placed on it without any form of scartch the surface concideration for the other carriers and reasons for contamination. Just because I don't want to go around blasting them to bits doesn't mean I don't think the number should be reduced slightly but that should be done without the tranished brush of bTB behind it.

[whippet 99 2,613]

only found out today how much the marksman get per badger,...............fooking hell there be some trigger happy shooters out there............

[hutch6 550]

I can only speak from experience on the ground and not from any scientific journal or any other fooking place, but when your faced with 70 year old farmer with tears streaming down his face after hes been told his herd of prize cattle that he has spent most of his adult life and his father before him have reacted positive for TB yet again and there is clear evidence of a link between badgers and TB in cattle and the fact the fooking things are rampant in our area as we are a small village with no major roads to cull the fookers. Then yes even if the cull does nothing more than create a fire break or shows if a full scale cull would be effective or not then by fook im all for it. What other hope do these farmers have ?

 

I agree completely that they are helpless but badgers are NOT the only carrier issue.

 

You're telling me that Farmer Giles hasn't already been told by Old McDonald to shoot the badgers and then throw them in the road early morning to make it look like it was run over? Maybe put some paracetamol in a bit of dog food for them? Pretty darn naive your farmers aren't they?

 

Go out, get a licence and blow any badger you see to kingdom come but when it fails to reduce the cases of bTB and the public cry for a full ban knowing the actaul science behind it then you've only yourselves to blame and you'll have to deal with Brian May's smug face everywhere.

[paulus 26]

 

I can only speak from experience on the ground and not from any scientific journal or any other fooking place, but when your faced with 70 year old farmer with tears streaming down his face after hes been told his herd of prize cattle that he has spent most of his adult life and his father before him have reacted positive for TB yet again and there is clear evidence of a link between badgers and TB in cattle and the fact the fooking things are rampant in our area as we are a small village with no major roads to cull the fookers. Then yes even if the cull does nothing more than create a fire break or shows if a full scale cull would be effective or not then by fook im all for it. What other hope do these farmers have ?

 

I agree completely that they are helpless but badgers are NOT the only carrier issue.

 

You're telling me that Farmer Giles hasn't already been told by Old McDonald to shoot the badgers and then throw them in the road early morning to make it look like it was run over? Maybe put some paracetamol in a bit of dog food for them? Pretty darn naive your farmers aren't they?

 

Go out, get a licence and blow any badger you see to kingdom come but when it fails to reduce the cases of bTB and the public cry for a full ban knowing the actaul science behind it then you've only yourselves to blame and you'll have to deal with Brian May's smug face everywhere.

 

Badgers need controlling just like any other animal that has no other natural predator other than man. Yes if it was legal i would remove as many of possible from the area buy what ever means were at my disposal. The same as i do with rats and rabbits, What actually makes the badger need any more protection than any other animal in our countryside? Why do you think its only the culling of the badger that will be a nail in the coffin for hunting? you seem to be quoting "you've only yourselves to blame" quite a lot given your one of us apparently?

[TIMMAY 6]

Putting my head above the parapet here, but I see badgers in greater numbers than rabbits in many places when I go out, and the A roads in my area are littered with badger carcasses. I may be over simplifying things, but I always thought that if a population of any species just grew, and grew, uncontrolled, nature would always kick in and animals would starve due to limited resources, or disease would spread like wildfire through a dense population, neither of which is very nice, which is why we cull species such as deer. The tb issue aside I really don't see why any species is so heavily protected, when their numbers are so great.

Also this talk of vaccination, or 'birth control' I find mad. It's always discussed as being humane, however I think it can cause a massive animal welfare problem. If an animal is shot dead, and knows nothing about it, I see no welfare issue at all, however a caged animal being messed with for a prolonged period of time, being injected, moved about or whatever, is going to cause that animal a great amount of distress, and therefore poses a far greater welfare issue, than being killed quickly. And if someone is going to say about putting 'birth control' in their food, how on earth can you monitor the dosage, and I dread to think what the effects could be 'in the field' as opposed to a laboratory!

[hutch6 550]

 

 

I can only speak from experience on the ground and not from any scientific journal or any other fooking place, but when your faced with 70 year old farmer with tears streaming down his face after hes been told his herd of prize cattle that he has spent most of his adult life and his father before him have reacted positive for TB yet again and there is clear evidence of a link between badgers and TB in cattle and the fact the fooking things are rampant in our area as we are a small village with no major roads to cull the fookers. Then yes even if the cull does nothing more than create a fire break or shows if a full scale cull would be effective or not then by fook im all for it. What other hope do these farmers have ?

 

I agree completely that they are helpless but badgers are NOT the only carrier issue.

 

You're telling me that Farmer Giles hasn't already been told by Old McDonald to shoot the badgers and then throw them in the road early morning to make it look like it was run over? Maybe put some paracetamol in a bit of dog food for them? Pretty darn naive your farmers aren't they?

 

Go out, get a licence and blow any badger you see to kingdom come but when it fails to reduce the cases of bTB and the public cry for a full ban knowing the actaul science behind it then you've only yourselves to blame and you'll have to deal with Brian May's smug face everywhere.

 

Badgers need controlling just like any other animal that has no other natural predator other than man.

 

 

Not to this extent Paulus and not under this umbrella. Enjoy your hunting whilst you can.

[hutch6 550]

Putting my head above the parapet here, but I see badgers in greater numbers than rabbits in many places when I go out, and the A roads in my area are littered with badger carcasses. I may be over simplifying things, but I always thought that if a population of any species just grew, and grew, uncontrolled, nature would always kick in and animals would starve due to limited resources, or disease would spread like wildfire through a dense population, neither of which is very nice, which is why we cull species such as deer. The tb issue aside I really don't see why any species is so heavily protected, when their numbers are so great.

Also this talk of vaccination, or 'birth control' I find mad. It's always discussed as being humane, however I think it can cause a massive animal welfare problem. If an animal is shot dead, and knows nothing about it, I see no welfare issue at all, however a caged animal being messed with for a prolonged period of time, being injected, moved about or whatever, is going to cause that animal a great amount of distress, and therefore poses a far greater welfare issue, than being killed quickly. And if someone is going to say about putting 'birth control' in their food, how on earth can you monitor the dosage, and I dread to think what the effects could be 'in the field' as opposed to a laboratory!

 

What is this badger "birth control"? I don't fancy trying put a love glove on old Boss Hogg badger that's for sure.

 

Do you think vaccinating a badger after an hour or so in a trap and then letting it go is more human that killing it? Maybe not when the numbers are say 50 or so around you but what about when there are just two or three? In some areas there is no doubt badgers will be wiped out completely and what happens to the natural order of things?

[Matt 160]

I don't get how a badger cull will erradicate bTB when there are a whole other multitude of creatures that harbour and spread it. Deer, wild boar, cats, dogs, rats and alpacas are just a few, so why aren't measures being put in place to cull these alongside an improvement of animal husbandry?

 

The previous cull provided conclusive evidence that it made no difference to the numbers of bTB cases in the trialled area. I fear this is just a way of giving in the nutty NFU leadership team and hiding the fact that hundreds of millions of public money has been wasted on research, compensation and development for an innoculation but the best they can come up with is a vaccine that shows a positive result to the bTB test activator. This is just a cheaper alternative to trapping and vaccinating the badgers for which there IS a verified vaccine. Sure Brian May is a bit of a dick but I don't think a cull is the way to manage this. Maybe of the farmers stopped spreading confirmed infected slurry from their pits into their fields as fertiliser that would be a big step in the right direction. Plenty of farmers have badgers living on their land and have yet to see and outbreak case on their land.

 

TB affects different animals in different ways.

 

Badgers get it in the lungs and kidneys, and from there it's easily spread via sputum and urine. All those other species you mention can be controlled on infected farms; while farmers wave off cattle suspected of having TB, they have to tolerate an increasingly large badger population on their farms which is effectively harbouring the bacteria.

 

The RBCT was flawed for a number of reasons; not least the fact that not enough badgers could be killed because of restrictions imposed on the fieldstaff by the ISG like having to base control around setts (rather than activity) and being restricted to cage trapping with set periods of pre-baiting instead of snares (like the Irish) or lamping and shooting. It still got a 16% reduction despite the restrictions imposed and the lack of control during the 2001 FMD outbreak.

 

The reactive culls were disrupted by the animal rights mob, who using the freedom of information acts, knew the exact boundaries of infected farms, and did their best to disrupt the culling operations in those areas. I personally witnessed them removing badgers from cages on infected farms to be taken to just outside the cull area and released. This 'spike' in infected farms just outside the cull areas has been put down as 'perturbation' (migration due to disruption of their social groups) when in fact, it was carefully planned and executed sabotage by the animal rights groups that was impossible to quantify in a 'scientific' way, and was therefore glossed over by the ISG.

 

It should also be noted that not all the information gathered during the RBCT was released to the public, or peer reviewed.

[jasher 55]

 

I can only speak from experience on the ground and not from any scientific journal or any other fooking place, but when your faced with 70 year old farmer with tears streaming down his face after hes been told his herd of prize cattle that he has spent most of his adult life and his father before him have reacted positive for TB yet again and there is clear evidence of a link between badgers and TB in cattle and the fact the fooking things are rampant in our area as we are a small village with no major roads to cull the fookers. Then yes even if the cull does nothing more than create a fire break or shows if a full scale cull would be effective or not then by fook im all for it. What other hope do these farmers have ?

 

I agree completely that they are helpless but badgers are NOT the only carrier issue.

 

You're telling me that Farmer Giles hasn't already been told by Old McDonald to shoot the badgers and then throw them in the road early morning to make it look like it was run over? Maybe put some paracetamol in a bit of dog food for them? Pretty darn naive your farmers aren't they?

 

Go out, get a licence and blow any badger you see to kingdom come but when it fails to reduce the cases of bTB and the public cry for a full ban knowing the actaul science behind it then you've only yourselves to blame and you'll have to deal with Brian May's smug face everywhere.

 

I can appreciate some of the points that you are making over bTB and the possible effects of an unsuccesful trial cull. You clearly hold a high respect for badgers but you really must see vastly different population numbers near you to keep suggesting that the numbers only need controlled slightly and when referring to a humane method of control to use statements like "Go out, get a licence and blow any badger you see to kingdom come" in my opinion lessons some of the valid points you make.

Edited May 31, 2013 by jasher

[Matt 160]

Don't forget that most cattle in TB hotspots are tested every sixty days and removed even on suspicion of having TB.

 

Most deer that are shot end up in the human food chain and are subjected to the same post mortem inspections as cattle.

 

TB kills most species, but badgers harbour and spread the disease over a long period of time.