By unlocking the export potential China offers the pig industry, not to mention the red meat sector as a whole, we could gain entry into a marketplace which comprises a fifth of the world’s population.Farmers warned of complacency as anti-badger cull campaign is stepped up
NFU president Peter Kendall has warned farmers that ‘complacency’ could cost the industry the opportunity of a badger cull to control bovine TB (bTB).
Mr Kendall’s message, delivered in adverts in the farming press, comes as the campaign to halt the policy is ratcheted up.
With less than two weeks to go to the close of Defra’s consultation on proposals for a badger cull in England, both sides are urging supporters to make their voices heard.
Mr Kendall said: “Do not leave it to your neighbour or think someone else will be responding. This is about everyone using their own experience, their own voice to ensure government hears loud and clear that action on bovine TB is needed and needed now.”
He pointed out that animal welfare groups are mounting their own campaigns.
“However, my biggest fear isn’t how vociferous they can be, it’s complacency on our behalf, the idea that this is a done deal, which could transpire into apathy and be our downfall that really worries me,” Mr Kendall said.
“We owe it to ourselves and each other to engage with what is our best opportunity in a generation to do something about terrible disease.”
The campaign to halt the cull has been boosted by the coming together of high profile UK animal welfare and conservation groups under the banner of the Badger Protection League.
The RSPCA, Badger Trust, Viva, League Against Cruel Sports and Secret World have got the backing of a number of high profile celebrities.
BBC naturalist Sir David Attenborough, actress Joanna Lumley and rock star Brian May are named as being among their supporters.
Other celebrities said to be backing the campaign include Simon King, Chris Packham, Virginia McKenna, Alan Titchmarsh, Michaela Strachan, Tony Head, Jilly Cooper and childrens’ television presenters Dick and Dom.
An advertising campaign encouraging the public to oppose the badger cull will be continued this Saturday (November 27) in national papers and regional papers in the South West with a circulation of over 5 million.
Badger Trust chairman Dave Williams said the initiative would ‘add strength to our campaign to stop this unjust proposal from the Coalition Government’.
“Vaccination is an alternative which does not come with the high risk that the government’s proposal carries. If the government can ignore the science on this subject, we should ask ourselves whether they will take the same attitude on other important subjects?” he said.
Campaign websites
The NFU is offering advice on how to respond to people ho want to support the cull at: http://www.nfuonline.com/home/bovine-TB/
The Badger Protection League is offering the same service for its supporters at: www.badgerprotectionleague.com
The Defra consultation, which closes on December 8, can be viewed at: http://www.defra.gov.uk/corporate/consult/tb-control-measures/index.htm
Responses can be sent via email to: tbbc@defra.gsi.gov.uk
or by post to the TBBC Mailbox at 17 Smith Square, London, SW1P 3JR
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Readers' comments (82)
Anonymous | 26 November 2010 6:48 pm
Why don't the NFU push for cattle vaccination? The existing eradication policy and testing regime is a nightmare for farmers. It is costly and has serious health and safety risks too. It is clear that the existing ‘zero tolerance’ eradication policy is having more of an adverse impact on families than the disease itself. DEFRA does reveal, however, in the latest consultation documents that a vaccination for cattle will be available in 2012 (with DIVA test). The BCG vaccine is not perfect – but then neither is the existing skin (or blood) test and yet it is the skin test that is used to denote whether or not bTB is endemic in an area! Bearing in mind the average lifespan of most cattle (just 3 years for beef and 5 for dairy), vaccination could be used as a successful control, rather than eradication, policy. However, the EU procedures will not be completed until 2015! This is not good enough and derogation should be sought so a vaccination programme can be started for cattle as a matter of urgency (already successful in Ethiopia where they cannot afford to keep culling cattle! needlessly). Then surely wildlife reservoirs will no longer be a problem!
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Charles Henry 1945-(Diuturnity) | 26 November 2010 7:27 pm
Anonymous; your naive comment may be well intentioned, but it is completely ill-informed. . Vaccination by BCG can only ever be partially effective, even in the human population. . Vaccination in developing countries serves only to reduce infection where raw, untreated milk is the norm for many people. . Leaving Mycobacterium bovis to become increasingly endemic in all mammals in this country is not an option. . I repeat. . It is not an option. . It has to be 'put back in its box again'. . It is a total disgrace that politicians with the help of Peter Kendall are trying to put the responsibility and onus of a badger cull back onto farmers. . This is now a public health issue, as are town foxes and rats because of political incompetence. . When the 'Bell Tolls', public figures will be held criminally accountable for their inaction.
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Anonymous | 26 November 2010 9:12 pm
Charles Henry
You say that 'Vaccination by BCG can only ever be partially effective'. Partially effective it may be, but badger culling is certainly not 'more' effective is it? Accusing the previous, carefully considered poster as 'naive' says more about your own lack of knowledge than his/hers!
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Anonymous | 26 November 2010 9:48 pm
I think that all farmers should be aware that by responding to the NFU's call to 'make yourselves heard' they may well end up shooting themselves in the foot. By granting farmers what they are supposed to want, i.e. permission to kill badgers to stop bTB, they are paving the way for cuts in compensation payments for future outbreaks. After all, they won't be needing them anymore because culling will solve the problem won't it?
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Charles Henry | 27 November 2010 11:05 am
The trouble with people such as the last (ALWAYS ANONYMOUS) posters, with no real knowledge or experience of the genome, they just keep denying the science, and all the historical facts, simply to avoid culling any badgers.(Or is it that they simply just hate farmers and their cattle?). . .
To get a healthy population of badgers again, we first have to clear and shut down all the infected setts. . This bacterium can survive for many, many months away from sunlight. . Some scientists believe it can be any thing up to a year or more in the right conditions, which is why it has been around killing mammals for so many millennia. . Since man ceased taking badgers for food they have had no natural predators to control their numbers.
It is the ill-informed people who have developed an irrational love for badgers above all other mammals that stopped people finishing this unfortunately necessary job in the first place. . They never were, and never ever will be, an endangered species.
The biology and epidemiology of this genome is still not accurately described by many scientists. . Large numbers still believe Mycobacterium tuberculosis (more common in humans) arose from Mycobacterium bovis. . In fact it is the reverse that is true.
Badgers will have to be culled and all reactors in any farmed species will also have be humanely slaughtered.
http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0003426
Dr. Jerome Harms. University of Wisconsin-Madison, back in 1997 wrote.
“Recently, there have been many outbreaks of M.bovis caused tuberculosis in humans especially HIV+ patients. Most have occurred in countries where M.bovis is endemic in the animal agriculture population. Multi-drug resistant strains of M.bovis are now appearing as well. The significance of this TB threat from M.bovis has not been taken as seriously as the threat from M.tuberculosis (Human TB)”
“However, the scientific and medical community must not ignore the potential of an M.bovis TB epidemic.”
He wrote that back in 1997. Continue to ignore him at your peril.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1017/S1464793106007020/abstract
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Gavin Wheeler | 27 November 2010 1:22 pm
Charles Henry, it is you who is ignoring the science - and especially the scientists. Most tellingly, the scientists who actually did all the research on culling badgers to control TB (the ISG members and Chris Cheeseman in particular) are now the most vocal critics of the proposed culls. Will you sneer at them and tell them they have "no real knowledge or experience of the genome"?
Vaccination *is* an option and remains both cheaper, safer and more effective long term than a cull. The RBCT evidence clearly shows that culling *increased* TB in badgers, so the only way to "get a healthy population of badgers again" is to vaccinate - the latest DEFRA study shows that vaccination "resulted in a 74 per cent reduction in the proportion of wild badgers testing positive to the antibody blood test for TB in badgers" over a 4 year trial!
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Charles Henry | 27 November 2010 2:37 pm
Gavin Wheeler; . Krebs was no more scientific than traffic light positioning in cities, speed cameras, or the current road maintenance regime. . It was just political gerrymandering and manipulation of public opinion dressed up as science.
Vaccination using a BCG vaccine will never be a successful, workable option in your lifetime. . Put money on it. . They've virtually given up using it for humans, let alone wildlife.
For all our Grand-children's, children's, children sake, start praying that the Russian's research into bacteriophages (viruses that can infect and kill bacterium) can at last produce a successful vaccine for all strains of the Mycobacterium genus.
Have you not ever wondered what it is that will eventually stop this planet from becoming completely overpopulated?
The thing people like you and the badger groups refuse to accept and now even deny with lies, is the fact that we once conquered this problem by clearing badger setts in the locality of any herds with reactor cattle. . The national herd was clear of disease and all herds in the UK were officially designated ‘Brucellosis Free’ in October 1985. . That is a scientific, irrefutable fact.
The gassing of badgers ceased in the late 1970s and the testing of cattle continued. . In 1986, a total of 38,000 herds comprising 3,200,000 cattle were tested, resulting in the slaughter of just 506 cattle that reacted to the test. . The latest position with over 40,000 reacting and being slaughtered is neither acceptable or sustainable.
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Gavin Wheeler | 27 November 2010 2:50 pm
We cleared the national herd of TB through the attested herd scheme - i.e. strict cattle control measures, not slaughtering badgers. The first badger found with TB was in 1971 - when the disease was already under good control.
Since your position seems to be based entirely on denying the science (claiming the RBCT results are not scientific and that the vaccine doesn't work despite the recently published studies showing that it is *very* effective) is there any use in pointing out that the TB statistics are still going down steadily, as they have been since 2008?
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Charles Henry | 27 November 2010 2:52 pm
The phrase "Another Tool in the Box" was just a phrase adopted by those who knew the limitations of a BCG vaccine, but had been given the unenviable task of selling badger culling to the electorate. . . The man ultimately responsible for this catastrophe in my opinion, is the weak Conservative politician JOHN MAJOR. . He protected the badger in an attempt to garnish a few extra votes. . As we all know to our cost, he was successful.
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Charles Henry | 27 November 2010 3:26 pm
Gavin Wheeler you are again twisting the facts. . Badgers were very rarely, if ever seen in those days and so not believed to be a major factor. . When it was discovered they were, the scheme to test continued apace sucessfully.
And Gavin Wheeler please don't just keep arguing with me. . I know I am right. . Why don't you address your stupidity to someone like Dr Christianne Glossop? Or do you feel because you love only badgers you know better than all of them now.
We care about the welfare of ALL mammals. . What do you think is giving TB to alpacas, or camels in the Zoo or other animals in Wildlife Parks? . The Fairies?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9k52Ce6ZLWY&feature=channel
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