Lancashire badger group accuses farming union of misleading members (From Lancashire Telegraph)
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Lancashire badger group accuses farming union of misleading members
7:00pm Thursday 27th September 2012 in News
A LANCASHIRE badger group has accused the National Farmer’s Union of misleading its members and the public over badger persecution.
The NFU are backing Government plans to start a national badger cull in the hope of stopping the spread of bovine TB to cattle.
The first culls will begin in the hotspot areas of Gloucestershire and Somerset.
Jo Bates-Keegan, chair of the Lancashire Badger Group said: “In the last week the NFU has made comments in the local press suggesting that a cull in the southwest will prevent TB reaching here.
“This could not be further from the truth; the majority of badgers never leave their home territory in their own lifetime. The only way TB in the South west can affect Lancashire is through cattle movement.”
Comments(13)
jogalot
says...
9:26pm Thu 27 Sep 12
goz wrote:Cattle certainly are. They eat sh1t, their bodies are toxic when they are killed but you eat them.
disease ridden dangerous animals.
goz
says...
10:02pm Thu 27 Sep 12
Skookie
says...
10:22pm Thu 27 Sep 12
goz wrote:Do you believe every piece of cr@p you read! our wildlife must be protected.
disease ridden dangerous animals.
Mass slaughter is not the answer.
goz
says...
10:41pm Thu 27 Sep 12
Skookie wrote:I might ask you the same question ??
goz wrote:Do you believe every piece of cr@p you read! our wildlife must be protected.
disease ridden dangerous animals.
Mass slaughter is not the answer.
Rimbus
says...
10:46pm Thu 27 Sep 12
Skookie wrote:Yes it is.
goz wrote:Do you believe every piece of cr@p you read! our wildlife must be protected.
disease ridden dangerous animals.
Mass slaughter is not the answer.
Skookie
says...
10:51pm Thu 27 Sep 12
goz wrote:I certainly don't, thats why i do not share your view.
Skookie wrote:I might ask you the same question ??
goz wrote:Do you believe every piece of cr@p you read! our wildlife must be protected.
disease ridden dangerous animals.
Mass slaughter is not the answer.
goz
says...
11:13pm Thu 27 Sep 12
Catherine Ryal
says...
1:29am Fri 28 Sep 12
Izanears
says...
10:42am Fri 28 Sep 12
goz
says...
4:34pm Fri 28 Sep 12
Catherine Ryal wrote:Fair point, if the local badger groups were to pay for it all then am sure most farmers would agree to vaccination and trapping. For a farmer with limited time and a full workload already then a cull or removal of protection to enable the pest to be controlled by third parties is always more cost effective.
............ I would improve my bio-security and treat my non-intensive, organic, Freisian cows as humanely as possible. I may even ask the local badger group for help and advice in trapping, testing, innoculating (and possibly euthanising infected) badgers.
goz
says...
4:40pm Fri 28 Sep 12
Izanears wrote:Nobody has ever denied that cattle don't also spread BTb, of course they do but cattle can be dealt with, the Badger is an uncontrollable wild
Now here's a funny thing. There are no badgers on the Isle of Man, and yet there is Bovine TB. Makes you think doesn't it?
animal that can wander miles in a night spreading from farm to farm.
Badgerland_Co_UK
says...
2:48am Sat 6 Oct 12
animal that can wander miles in a night spreading from farm to farm", he is being somewhat disingenuous. Although badgers do walk around at night, they generally remain in their home range, with rare trips into the neighbours for food or mating. Badgers are born, live their entire lives and die within 1 mile of where they were born. The idea that they roam across distant parts of the countryside infecting cattle is completely incorrect. The way in which cattle from the south-west will infect cattle in the north-west is when infected cattle are put on trucks and brought north; to provide a serious risk of infection to the clean cattle herds of Lancashire. If this isn't bad enough, an infected bovine can then pass TB on to cats, rats, badgers, deer, moles, foxes, alpacas and, of course, people. This transfer of the TB infection between widely different species was proved when the bovine TB isolates were genotyped by spoligotyping - showing that the same strains of TB followed the cattle as they were exported from the Republic of Ireland to Northern Ireland. To come back to the article, the ONLY risk of TB getting into Lancashire's cattle is importing infected cattle from other areas. The best way to mitigate against the rsik of TB infected milk and meat is to use the bovine TB vaccine; which is currently being used by a dozen or more wildlife trusts (for badgers) and several African governments (for bovines).
goz says...
9:21pm Thu 27 Sep 12