Badgers

There is a lot of fuss down here in Wales right now over a proposed cull of badgers in West Wales. There is even more fuss now that the Court of Appeal has declared the cull unlawful.

On the one hand you have the farmers who believe that they carry tuberculosis and infect their cattle. On the other hand, you have the usual bunch of greens and conservationists who simply shout ‘No.’ Truth is that badgers carry TB and so do cattle and they cross-infect each other and I cannot get a straight answer out of anyone about which is the main culprit. Indeed, there may not be a main culprit; maybe they infect each other in equal measure.

Then you have to ask yourself if the problem is really serious. Of course it is serious for the farmer who has his herd quarantined but let us look at the wider picture. In 2009, in Wales, 1.8 million cattle were tested for TB and there were 1,175 new incidents. Of cattle taken to slaughter, 9,951 were classified as reactors meaning that they showed a positive response to a TB test. But guess what? If you like me had a TB vaccine as a child, you would be a reactor because you carry the antibodies all your life.

I spoke to a vet about this and uncovered the real problem. We could inject all cattle with a TB vaccine although more trials are needed. The problem lies in the subsequent testing. All cattle will then show up as reactors and as yet we have no way of knowing if they really have TB or are just reacting to the injection. No solution expected until 2015.

I have another problem here. We in the West berate the poorest people of the world not to harm their wild life even when a child has been killed by a tiger or gorillas have raided the banana crop. Yet we seem unable to tolerate a little attrition of our domestic livestock when even the cause is in doubt. Hypocrisy, I call it.

But I am biased. I have sat in a little dell at sundown and watched them all around me.