Badger cull 'would reduce TB'

Readers' comments (13)

• Anonymous | 19 July 2010 11:12 pm

  Has Dr Fenwick's paper been peer reviewed?

  Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment

• the peasant | 20 July 2010 10:04 am

  Listen to Brian Walters, listen to the British Veterinary Association, listen to the people who deal in reality. Remember the computer model that forecast that the end of the 2001 F&M epidemic would be on Election Day that year?

  Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment

• Jan Curtis | 20 July 2010 11:33 am

  Listen to the Judges!!!!! who examined the evidence very thoroughly, 9% is not a significant improvement.
  We have spent well in excess of £100 million of tax payers money killing badgers and trying to prove a link between cow and badger.
  With cows still turning up in abattoirs with TB, it just goes to prove that before we kill any more badgers, we need to perfect the TB test itself, which at only 80% accuracy is definitely not picking up all the sick cows.
  I am speaking as a retired farmer who knows only to well the horror of the TB test, not as a badger hugger as accused.
  I believe we need to concentrate on improving the test, and the on farm husbandry, before we consider another badger cull.
  We have been killing badgers now since the gassing in 1975, and it has not proved to be the correct way to go, we still have the disease, and we will go on having the disease until we stop concentrating only on the badger, it is time to change our thinking.
  

  Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment

• Rowena | 20 July 2010 12:26 pm

  @Jan Curtis
  
  Try telling that to Pat Bird:
  
  http://www.farmersguardian.com/home/livestock/livestock-features/controlling-bovine-tb-in-the-uk/33224.article
  
  'Controlling bovine TB in the UK' Farmer's Guardian Article today.

  Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment

• Rowena | 20 July 2010 12:33 pm

  Badger vaccination wasn't an option previously. Why continue to insist on controversial culling, when a more humane method is available now?

  Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment

• Sally | 21 July 2010 2:44 pm

  Maybe now is the time for a change of direction? It is clear from the public opposition in Pembrokeshire that the public are not happy with mass culling and, indeed, if such action is taken the farmer will undoubtably be blamed, particularly as the science is not clear on the issue. Neither will culls be a quick fix for farmers who have had to suffer the existing system for far too long.
  
  The government's primary objectives (Ref. 1), which form the basis of the existing bovine TB (bTB) control/eradication policy, are:
  
  1. To protect public health
  2. To prevent bovine TB spreading to other animals
  3. To make sure that cattle do not suffer because of bTB
  
  There are many fundamental questions associated with each, plus related questions, as set out at www.bovinetb.co.uk/article.php?article_id=27 If these cannot be adequately answered then the policy is suspect and a radical re-think is needed before we waste millions more of taxpayers' money.
  
  

  Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment

• Anonymous | 21 July 2010 2:47 pm

  There is no excuse for culling badgers now that the bTB vaccine is available. A badger vaccination programme should be implemented straight away using a portion of the WAG funds that were to be used on a cull.

  Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment

• Tony | 21 July 2010 6:11 pm

  I suspect that this work of fiction produced by the FUW, will now be used by the WAG when it continues it's culling policy in the Autumn. Culling the badgers hasn't worked in Ireland, so why is it going to work here? Let's stop damaging Wales' reputation and it's tourist industry, and let's vaccinate the badgers.

  Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment

• Will | 21 July 2010 6:44 pm

  Similarly to some of the comments above, I wonder if "published" means "published in a scientific journal". What a non-scientific reader might not realise is that the findings of a computer model depend critically on the assumptions you put into the model. If those assumptions are unrealistic, the results will also be unrealistic, or put another way: Garbage In Garbage Out. The process of peer review that a researcher must go through to publish in a scientific journal means other scientists can assess and criticise those assumptions. Also critically, an author must declare any competing interests that might compromise their objectivity: such as being funded by the FUW!
  Even if it is a good computer model, with reasonable assumptions, it is by no stretch of the imagination, "hard evidence", as many websites, including this one, seem to imply. I also wonder about the phrase "could reduce btB by 30%"... the phrase "could" implies that this is the upper bound that the model predicted- where was the lower bound? This is surely what matters- we should be weighing the benefit that we are at least expecting to receive against the ecological damage, and animal suffering, that would be caused by an extensive badger cull.

  Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment

• Urban Leprachaun | 21 July 2010 10:21 pm

  This quote is from a Commons Committee on bTB, 6th Dec 2005.
  
  "Angela Browning (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con): I apologise that, due to other
  commitments, I must leave the Committee early. Having set up the Krebs
  commission when I was a Minister, I can tell the Committee that the intention of
  the last Conservative Government was that the Krebs report should identify
  radical change to deal with this matter. That was eight years ago."
  
  Krebs was set up in November 1996 - when John Major was the Prime Minister.
  
  Clearly Browning was expecting a result from Krebs that would point to a badger cull. Sadly, the scientists came up with the "wrong" answer.
  
  Drat!
  
  It is clear hewre that

  Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment