COULD THE WAY BRITAIN HAS BEEN DEALING WITH ITS TB PROBLEM WORK WITH THE CORONA VIRUS

Dear Fellow Humans,

          Even though this delightful little animal has been protected in Britain since 1973 under the Badger Act more than 100 000 have been killed since a Government sanctioned cull began in 2011.

          They were eliminated because badgers got the blame for spreading bovine TB in cattle that causes huge losses to farmers each year as they have to slaughter thousands of animals once this gets going in a herd. The cost to farmers exceeds 100m pounds a year.

          Much like the way Corona is being dealt with, the so called experts and other interested parties disagreed on the validity of the success of this culling as a means of containing bovine TB.

          According to Lord Krebs, whose study of the science of bovine TB resulted in the 10 year culling trial: “Research shows how important it is to find out about badger behaviour. Culling them can cause the survivors in areas to move around more resulting in them coming into contact with infected cattle and so spread the TB.

          “The ill-thought-out plan to control TB by culling Badgers could therefore backfire,” he added.
           Below is my dog and the badger I rescued See:Killings that divide a nation

          Unlike Corona there is a vaccine against bovine TB. Badgers can be captured and vaccinated. Those that test positive however are destroyed. Unfortunately farmers are not convinced that this is nearly as effective as widespread culling.

          Dominic Dyer, head of the Badger Trust, described the cull as “the largest destruction of a protected species in living memory.”

          It is comforting for badgers to know that the Government’s killing guidelines stipulated that “all reasonable precautions must be taken to ensure that no badger is subject to unnecessary suffering.”

          After approving this wholesale slaughter of almost an entire species, the Government seems to have had a change of mind. Last month it announced that culling would be phased out in favour of vaccinating.

Carrie Symonds being badgered

          Was this perhaps due to the influence of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s partner Carrie Symonds, an animal rights activist and patron of the Conservative Animal Welfare Foundation?

Meanwhile man has a far bigger problem that is entirely self made to worry about than whether or not badgers spread bovine TB, and he’s making just as big a mess of it as those who signed the death sentence for these extremely active animals that have the softest fur imaginable.

          THE ILL-THOUGHT-OUT PLAN TO CONTROL THE CORONA VIRUS BY SHUTTING DOWN THE WORLD HAS COMPLETELY BACKFIRED. THE DISASTEROUS ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCE WILL DEVASTATE FAR MORE LIVES THAN ANY VIRUS, WHILE ONLY A TINY FRACTION OF THE WORLD’S 8-BILLION PEOPLE WILL ACTUALLY DIE.

What’s a badger when man has all but shot the African rhino to extinction for its horns with elephants following them into oblivion for their tusks? He is busy fishing out oceans: killing the marine life that’s left with tons of plastic waste and fogging up the globe so that if people don’t need to wear masks because of COVID-19 they will still have to wear them to breath.

Is man’s approach to the Virus so suicidal that it will be the only antidote to global warming? Since the lockdown people in India reported seeing the Himalayas on the horizon for the first time in many years. The artificial smog that had been hiding the snow capped peaks miraculously disappeared once its producers were safely locked away.

YOU KNOW WHO SHOULD REALLY BE CULLED ON A MASSIVE SCALE, AND IT WOULD NOT BE JUST IN THE HOPE OF SAVING OUR SPECIES, BUT EVERY OTHER FORM OF LIFE.

Regards,

Jon, who once rescued a baby badger from certain death while working as a journalist in Exeter, Devon SEE:Killings that divide a nation

P.S. Badgers are about the size of an average cat. They live in a network of tunnels known as a sett in woodland areas and come out mainly at night to feed on worms; other insects; berries and small mammals like mice.