Our Environment Minister, Owen Paterson is very keen to
always point out the Republic of Ireland’s success in combatting Bovine
TB. The number of incidents has come
down from 45,000 to 15,000 cases. Southern
Ireland has been culling badgers since the early 1980s and the Environment
Secretary, Owen Paterson attributes these recent falls of the TB infection to
the decline of wild badgers. The science
on both sides of the debate is never clearly convincing although Owen Paterson
is correct when he talks of the incidents in TB cattle being down. In 2013 15,600 animals tested positive in Southern
Ireland compared to 45,000 in 1998 and these figures have been chosen
specifically to champion the cause of the Environment Secretary to make the
decline of TB as positive as possible.
Just one year before in 1997 there were nearly 29,000 cases and the
cattle population is lower now than in the late 1990s. The infected proportion of cattle of the
whole Irish herd we could say that the rate of infection has fallen from 0.37%
in 1997 to 0.25% in 2013, a far lesser impressive statistic. The fact remains that infected animals in
Ireland has fallen to an all-time low.
The culling of badgers in The Republic of Ireland started
in the early 1980s, but the evidence does not show us a consistent drop in
Bovine TB cases until the 2000s. Tracking
the decline of the badger population alongside these figures is never totally
conclusive but what does remain clear, culling as early as 1984 in a fairly
small way compared to later years does not substantiate into scientific
measures to say that the culling of badgers is in anyway helpful in the
eradicating of the disease.
The main argument in my humble opinion is, the province
of Northern Ireland has never culled badgers but it has too seen an overall
decline of Bovine TB in the last decade.
Northern Ireland proves to us that simple conclusions can
never be brought to the fore as scientific evidence.
The outbreak of the foot and mouth disease suspended
Bovine TB testing in 2001 and many culled herds were re-stocked without
knowledge of the Bovine TB status of the replacement animals. This without doubt contributed to the
increased geographic spread and incidents of Bovine TB in recent years. This historical evidence in the recent
history of the farming industry government ministers go to great lengths not to
mention when they talk of the spread of Bovine TB, and for me Owen Paterson
clearly goes too far when he says the Irish experience provides the clear
evidence that culling in Britain is the only way forward to combat the
disease. This was also the opinion of
the BBC Trust and have been so clearly biased in their reporting of the
situation.
But with all the success of the Republic of Ireland or
otherwise, it is heartening to hear that their intention is to replace badger
culling with badger vaccination as soon as practically possible, and the
scientists of Ireland are at the very forefront on research to oral
vaccination.
With all our years of research into this problem it still
cannot be categorically scientifically proven that badgers pass TB onto cattle
or cattle pass TB onto badgers. A fact
that I find quite remarkable. But until such times that it can be proven that
badgers are solely responsible for the rise in Bovine TB throughout the British
Isles then not one more drop of badger blood should be spilled on such a
divisive issue.
Please take a look at my short film of a meeting of badgers deep within some Cotswold woodland.
A group of badgers having a meeting chaired by Daddy Cool
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