“Sons of Adam….”

This is posted on first hearing that the government are still intending to roll out the badger cull, despite both their claims to be looking for an exit strategy, and that in many ways the current policies and the red tape surrounding them do not serve, even tie in knots, that other endangered species, SMALL farmers, and continued and mounting evidence that vaccines and biosecurity measures can be at least as effective and don’t include mass inhumane slaughter of a protected animal…their ignoring the evidence (130% increase in gloucestershire after government claimed 66% reduction*) and rolling out the cull feel like the actions of the dark age Judge Jefferies “hang them first and try them after…” and then once we’ve killed them we’ll vaccine them??? Truly Mad.

Over to Dex:

Have you ever felt like Mr Tumnus, the faun in Narnia? There I was quietly having a cup of tea when all of a sudden the earth started lifting under my chair and I found myself tipped backwards behind the settee.

It was a fortunate thing for out of a growing hole in my floor emerged, guess what, a talking badger!!

“Alright lads” it said, “let’s vaccinate the food of this one and scarper…”

I peaked around the sides of the settee. It looked like a badger was peeing in my tea pot! “Hold on” I said, leaping up, “that was given to me by great Aunt Ethel, the one human in my family who remembered me in her will…”

The badgers looked up…”sorry lads looks like we’ll have to eliminate this one” and they leapt at me. Fortunately badgers are short sighted and at least one went for the sofa instead of me.

I sparred the others off with my chair, but they are feisty animals…

“What” I cried falling back on mythology “surely not the badgers of all creatures most loyal, would turn against a son of Adam?” and that cracked them, or at least two of them, who sat back on their haunches and started weeping.

But the other said “no, I’m the Bad in badgers you can’t sweet talk me” and he leapt for my throat. If I ever gave thanks for having a ridiculous large detective’s coat it was now, I held it up in front of me, and wrapped the leaping fur ball in its folds, and sat on it.

But that was a mistake, badgers have powerful claws and more powerful jaws and he clamped both on my bottom…”Owwww” I screamed, “stop, please stop”

Fortunately one of the other badgers spoke up on my behalf: “You know he’s right boss, we don’t want to kill them, that’s what they’ve been doing to us.” “Yeah” said the other, I haven’t got the heart to kill them, and anyway look at this one with his beak, I’m not sure he’s fully human anyway.”

“Not till he drinks some of this tea, and solemnly swears to speak up requesting vaccination not extermination for badgers”  said the boss.

It was a fair yet strange request, at least the tea bit, but I feared a badger’s tendency to tunnel where the sun doesn’t shine, so I willingly agreed.

“Phew” I said standing up and rubbing my bottom, “now lets all have a cup of tea and you can tell me what’s going on…,” and then wandering over to the tea pot remembered what I’d seen earlier, “tell me dear badgers what are you up to peeing in my tea pot?”

and here is what they shared:

We are part of an elite team of badger scientists testing out the latest in vaccines to eliminate Mad Policy Disease (MPD) from humans.

As you probably know us badgers have been being scapegoated for the spread of bovine tb where as the greater majority of transmission is understood to be cattle to cattle (75%).**

The government sponsored a ten year fully independent scientific trial into culling badgers and its effect on the spread of the disease (killing several thousand of us badgers so we cannot say they were badger lovers) but robustly concluded that it was not a viable way to go.

Not only did it’s effects not last, they basically concluded that badger culling actually spread the disease, this was due to stress leading to greater susceptibility to it and badgers migration away from areas of trauma, the so called “perturbation effect. This is what they said: “given its high cost and low benefits we therefore conclude that badger culling is unlikely to contribute usefully to the control of cattle tb in Britain, and recommend that tb control efforts focus on measures other than badger culling.”

More recently: The Government tout a 66% reduction in Gloucestershire following a five year  cull, yet do not mention the 130% increase the following year, prevalence also increased in Dorset: Iain McGill, a vet who was one of those to draw attention to these and a number of other significant figures in the report cited below* said the real cause of bovine TB in cattle was infected cows going undetected by the existing skin test, which picks up only half of those with infections.

So clearly there are issues with the current testing system, you are probably also wondering what the other options are?

Well first we want to acknowledge us badgers are not against small farmers who work with the land, we recognise to some extent they also are like us an endangered species being squeezed out by middle men super markets and complicated burocracy that ties them in knots in particular around bTB – they recognise the perturbation effect from red tape – cut one piece of red tape and often it morphs into two more, and also stressed farmers like badgers get depressed and are more likely to succumb to sickness even suicide.

We badgers have our own ideas, but first we are going to read out to you the voice of one small farmer who we feel has truly seen the wood from the thicket in relation to Bovine TB (bTB) and proposed a practical, humane and simple way forward, one which also will release a great deal of farmers from the knots they are tied in by it:

“Is it a danger to human health? – No because bTB stopped being a threat to human health when pasteurisation of milk was introduced in the 1930’s

Is it an animal welfare issue? – No because clinical signs of the disease are practically non-existent in cattle, nor is there any evidence that the welfare of wildlife is seriously compromised.

Does meat from ‘reactors’ pose a risk? – No because meat from ‘reactors’ can still enter the food chain

In other words, the disease itself isn’t the problem. The only reason why there is such a palava is because of the rules imposed on the export of cattle which include restrictions on vaccinated stock.

The solution is to narrow down the TB testing to only those cattle destined for export which gives us an option to vaccinate those cattle that remain here. This would allow unfettered trade within our shores and save a great deal of money overall.

Face it – the badger is a scapegoat, a diversion which has masked the fact that market forces are driving this problem and the subject has spiralled away from reality. It’s time to get a grip.

Response: Unfortunately, milk from cattle which fail a skin test for TB is deemed not fit for human consumption, even if it is pasteurised or manufactured, and vaccinated cattle will fail the skin test, or the gamma test, so within the current regulations vaccination is not an option, even though us farmers would quite like it to be.

So why aren’t we arguing that it is a nonsense to exclude milk from these cows when pasteurisation was invented to make milk safe for human consumption regardless? 

The whole point of pasteurisation is that it kills micro-organisms such as bovine tuberculosis meaning we wouldn’t need to test dairy cattle for bTB in the first place if it wasn’t for a set of inflexible, outdated export regulations.

It seems to me we’ve been so busy jumping through the hoops that we’ve lost all focus. We should lay the problem at the feet of those who make the rules and demand that changes are made.

TB in cattle cannot be eradicated and it doesn’t need to be because there are safeguards in the form of pasteurisation and the disease poses no more risk otherwise than, say, e-coli or any of the other infectious diseases which we may deal with in our cattle day to day ( unless of course we’re saying that we should be testing for all these other diseases as well….? )

The EU/export regulations need to be modified and cattle remaining within our shores exempted from restrictions so as to reflect the reality of the situation and put a stop to all this rigmarole.”***

Thank you for this clear voice…

Hopefully its clear wisdom will be heeded, so freeing most farmers from its burden, if not/alongside it there are still a couple of more stressful but good options that can be followed, and could help those farmers who are involved in live export, a few more thoughts then back to the teapot:

The first is better biosecurity….

In Norther Ireland they managed to reduce incidents of bTB from 9.95% to 5.54% with nothing but tighter testing and care of animals over eight years. In comparison a Welsh aim with culling over five years, presuming it met its targets, was 6.9%, so no better, many badgers dead, and there wouldn’t necessarily be the better care of farm animals at the end of it.

We have been shown cctv footage trying to demonstrate us badgers as villains getting into a feed store, yet the answer to this is not to kill more badgers, it is – you’ve guessed it: “close the feed store door.” It’s not like we are going ignore such an easy free lunch….

Speaking of lunch, or actually peanuts, the other Great News that needs to be spread and heard is this:

The vaccine in badgers is being found to be effective, not only in the adult generation but also the positive effect is spreading through to the cubs:

“In a clinical trial, the BCG vaccine reduced the risk of vaccinated badgers testing positive to a test of progressed infection by 76%, and reduced the risk of testing positive to any of the available live tests of infection by 54%. In the same clinical trial, BCG vaccination reduced the risk of infection of unvaccinated cubs in a vaccinated social group – when more than a third of the social group was vaccinated, the risk to unvaccinated cubs was reduced by 79%”*

In other words it is working. Currently badger vaccines are administered by injection, with numerous courageous trained volunteers carrying this out, farmers in many counties can contact them via the Wildlife Trusts amongst others if they would like support. It is a vastly financially cheaper and healthy than culling a protected species with other as yet unknown ecological knock on effects.

A recent breakthrough also means that the vaccine in time will be able to be administered orally, “us badgers have not just very strong jaws,” said Bad, Dex rubbed his bottom nodding, “but also very strong stomach acid. This meant an oral vaccine seldom got through to our intestines, however some dedicated Irish scientists have developed a special coating that can help the vaccine through. This could offer a further way to offer us badgers the vaccine which will cost literally peanuts.” Nb: Badgers love peanuts so they may have a bit of an agenda here, so it shouldn’t stop continued use of the injected vaccine in the meantime. Sorry badgers i don’t like needles either, but it is better than being culled…

Back to the teapot…

“So that’s why we are administering this vaccine, a vaccine against Mad Policy Disease – we eat a dose of madness inducing mushroom, that we badgers can handle but humans cant, we bio-filter it through our bodies, and add it to your tea. This micro dose invokes an immune response which should counter act mad policies, it has other benign benefits too but we wont go into those now…”

“It sounds good to me, dear badgers,” said Dex, “I’m all for it….do you think MPD vaccine will help in other areas too such as Hinkley C and Hs2? and thinking about it there’s a few other policies I’m not sure of at the minute…. I’ll have two sugars please and can we send some to the prime minister and also to Natural England and Defra…”

And so we sat down for a lovely cup of tea and I truly pray we will not ever lose our badgers and those who speak out for them…

*

**note from Wildlife Trusts website https://www.wildlifetrusts.org/wildlife-and-wild-places/saving-species/badgers/solution also where you can find some of the regional trusts offering vaccine support for farmers and referring to this: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-12-vaccination-unvaccinated-badger-cubs-tuberculosis.html

***Here is a more comprehensive recent review of evidence and with reference to cattle to cattle transmission page 4: https://www.zsl.org/sites/default/files/media/2018-09/ZSL_Eradicating_TB_Report_final_24Sep18.pdf

And a May 2020 article summarising cull figures: https://www.badgertrust.org.uk/vaccination-is-the-solution-for-ani

And an article about a leaked document implying a continuation and spread of the cull despite new evidence of the vaccines effectiveness: Here is really Mad Policy: https://www.brockbase.com/post/5-more-badger-cull-counties-revealed-in-leaked-natural-england-licence-document

**** the source of this farmer’s words needs digging out from reams of research but can be added when found.

Action: What can we do now in the face of Mad Policy Disease?? Breathe deep and regather the courage to speak up for our fellow creatures. The majority of people even MPs likely do not yet know of this positive new evidence of badger vaccines effectiveness, so the absolute craziness of continuing with a killing/culling policy in the face of it….so pick up a pen or keyboard and drop a line to your MP and let others know too…at least this government has demonstrated the courage to occasionally take a u turn.

Here also to draw on and packed with evidence is an an open letter to Boris Johnson in the Veterinary Record, signed by Jane Goodall, Chris Packham and others, add your voice to theres.

Best wishes and with a prayer for greater sanity to prevail…