Badger cull won’t stop the spread of bovine TB

WHEN I first began to read Mr Neal’s letter ( Newbury Weekly News, November 5), in response to Ms Hoblin’s of October 8, I quickly assumed that it was a mischievous, if somewhat irresponsible, spoof written to discredit the pro-cull argument.

There are the unpleasant personal attacks (I doubt Mr Neal would have used the words “shrill” and “hysterical” to describe a letter written by a man).

Then there is the strange obsession with the word “obfuscation” and the rather wittily crafted (I first supposed) decline into incoherence as the letter progresses. However, I then realised that Mr Neal’s outpourings might actually have been written in earnest and so am moved to respond to the dangerous ignorance he displays.

I am, of course, sorry to read that there is a current outbreak of bTB in his cattle and can only imagine the distress that the suffering of his animals must be causing him.

His highly-selective quotation from the Government response to the Godfray report though, which itself was published two years ago, is disingenuous to say the least and it is outrageous to ignore its overall conclusions.

As a custodian of our countryside and its wildlife, I feel that he owes it to us to be fully informed and up to date and I am shocked that he is not.

There have been many studies and reports, of course (of particular significance in my view is the Gatcombe report), but what is now beyond doubt is that if any wildlife is responsible for infecting livestock, that constitutes a truly tiny percentage of the problem. More prolific and recently identified candidates have been shown to be the use of slurry, hunting with hounds, people (simply via their boots and vehicle tyres), intensive farming (leading to reduced immunity), inaccurate testing and poor bio-security.

Mr Neal makes much of his “very high bio-security”, but goes on to say that the nearest cattle to his are half a mile away “as far as [he] is aware”.

I feel he should be a great deal more certain of such an important detail. He seems to think that testing for bTB in cattle is reliable to the point of infallibility – it most definitely is not.

It is, in fact, not fit for purpose.

Ms Hoblin was extremely specific about Government deception, referring only to the promise to phase out the cull (based on the latest scientific evidence), upon which they reneged, presumably under pressure from the NFU.

I struggle to make sense of almost any of the second half of his letter.

What can he mean when he talks of culling “from the clean area into the diseased area” for example?

Or “if action is taken sooner rather than later there is no danger to badgers”?

I do also wonder what are the “natural barriers to badger movement” mentioned in one of the quotations from the Government report.

Is this rooted in the original belief, espoused by Government in the first place, that badgers cannot swim and that therefore cull zones were designated in accordance with river ‘boundaries’?

They are perfectly capable of swimming, although I am told that they are not terribly keen on it.

In spite of what he says, the cull has been going for years and has not improved the situation one jot.

Even with the 10-year “randomised badger culling trials” carried out in the 1990s, the UK’s biggest review of the links between badgers and tuberculosis in cattle, the former UK government scientific adviser Lord Krebs, the architect of the 10-year Krebs trial, concluded that badger culling was not an effective way of controlling bTB and could make no meaningful contribution to the reduction of the disease in cattle. He said the best option would be to develop a cattle vaccine in the long term and in the short term increased biosecurity should be introduced on farms.

His report was published over 20 years ago and yet no progress has been made, largely owing to what seems a wholly irrational obsession with badgers, a point made in the Godfray report. No doubt anti-cull protesters, shrill and hysterical or otherwise, have made a minor contribution to the overall cost of the cull, but it is a triviality set against the total.

I am not sure how Mr Neal concludes they are solely or in any way responsible for the EU fine of 3.5m euros.

He asserts that wildlife brought bTB to his herd.

He cannot possibly be certain of this and it is actually by far and away the least probable scenario to the point of being absurdly unlikely.

I am sure Ms Hoblin would agree that we would all like to see major change, allied with ongoing, rigorous research to bring about an end to this decades old problem. But continuing to blame badgers and killing them in their tens of thousands each year is unequivocally pointless and cruel.

A little learning is a dangerous thing. Perhaps Mr Neal would care to meet with his local badger group with a view to a discussion of the issues.

JULIAN ROTA

High Street

Kintbury