Badger Culls

I completely agree with what Chris say's. No need to cull Badgers these days with the way modern medicine is. But you will probably get farmers sayin it's easier to cull badgers as it's to expensive to have their cattle inoculated. If that were the case then the government should step in to help fund the inoculation.

There was a bit about this on the Adams Farm bit of Countryfile tonight but I did not quite grasp why the farmers thought inoculation would not work,must look to see if it is in I Player.Maybe someone was paying more attention than me and may come in with the answer.

In order to vaccinate cattle you have to produce another test to differentiate between those that are infected and those that are immune. The latest estimates say that this will be finished by the end of 2012. Now onto the politics of matter. To use it would be illegal without the EU approval. Now they estimate that the political wrangling will mean it'll not be approved until 2015.

Sorry folks C P is so biased it is unbelievable,watch Countryfile Sunday program 27th Feb.I will give you the true facts from the scientist who is developing the vaccine and if you do not believe me you can watch and hear it from him.People like Chris Packham should not give false information.

Vaccine will in all probability be available for cattle end of 2012 but we need at least 3 years after that for European laws to pass it and it will only probably be part of defence it seems we may have to vaccinate Badgers,cull some cattle and cull some badgers so he said best we can hope for is 2015.

Promise you farmers wish vaccine available tomorrow and would get on with it immediately,most farmers have nothing against Badgers except the spread of B T B.

It is absolutely disgusting of Chris Packham to give completely wrong information to general public and he has done this before about Golden Eagles.

Any disbelievers please watch the program on your P C.      

To be fair to Chris he was answering a question posed by a member of the audience, and he did say that he was only giving his opinion :)

Well his opinion well off beam when vaccine not available for at least 4 years and if true to usual form could easily become 8 years.C P is doing serious disservice to farmers using his celebrity name to oppose a badger cull which BTB ruining lots of farmers,cattle and badger lives when he obviously knows absolutely nothing about what he is opposing,quite despicable and completely different if he knows about what he is opposing,by that comment he obviously does not.

Sooty,  You have read my views on culling before and for the benefit of the others it is simply that if we need to test and cull cows then there is no logical reason why we shouldn't test and just cull those individual badgers that have TB.

There has been one important piece of news recently that has not been referred to and it is one that I am surprised that farmers and others aren't shouting 'hurrah' at.   Since the beginning of 2008 DEFRA figures show that TB in cattle has reduced by over 20% and over 30% in the badly affected areas of Wales.  This is GOOD news and has come about because of the testing regime.

The Badger Trust say this is the steepest decline siince the 1960s and of course they say if culling had been in place that would have been presumed to have been the cause of the decline.  If they are right about the rate of decline then it is difficult to disagree.

Given those stats, and I have checked the DEFRA site to make sure, surely now is the time to think twice about starting a general cull which could reverse the decline in some areas.

Well I have always preached that it should be just as practical to just cull infected badgers Bob but the powers that be seem to think it not practical,agree about the decline being good news but of course only benefit to a relatively small number of farmers so majority not jumping up and down in pleasure when they can only sell animals directly for slaughter,the testing regime could not have got tougher so think it could be a case of test more accurate and do agree if a cull had taken place it would have been a false reading of the situation.

Think you know I am not anti badger just need to do something to cut down disease all round cattle and badgers but do think Chris Packham out of order saying vaccinate cattle now when we are at least 4 years away.The cull is postponed as I understand it so lets hope that improvement continues and saves the tax payers lots of money in compensation plus all the other benefits.