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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858 |
Dear dxb: a hort excerpt from recent BBC News:
February 08, 2003 - 12:11 GMT
The closed season for killing badgers has finally
arrived after the relentless slaughter over the past 9
months. Now that activists have 3 months before the
killing resumes, much needed funds are being raised
in time for the next onslaught of killing.
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Joined: Mar 2002
Posts: 1,692
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2002
Posts: 1,692 |
after the relentless slaughter over the past 9 months
Yes, I knew about this but I feel the item from the BBC is somewhat emotive, even though I favour the badgers! I don’t agree with the culling – or killing if we don’t want to mince words – but to call it relentless slaughter is to over-egg the pudding. My concern is what happens after this phase is finished; that it could then degenerate into something worse.
As I understand it, there is a government funded £34 million, 3 year programme targeted to 30 areas to establish if badgers do indeed spread tuberculosis to cattle. The intent of the programme is to kill 10,000 badgers and carry out a post mortem on each, plus any road-kill they can get, to determine whether the animal carries the disease. This needs to be put in the context of a total UK badger population currently around 400,000 and growing, of which about 50,000 a year are killed on the roads (seems a hell of a high proportion, if true, but I think I have commented before that I do see a lot of dead badgers on the road).
Some views:
Sir John Krebs, the scientist who drew up the original plans for the cull, says the killing is vital to find out first of all whether or not badgers are responsible for transmitting TB to cattle, and then whether culling badgers is an effective way of controlling the disease.
Dr Elaine King, from the National Federation of Badger Groups, claims that the experiment is simply too grandiose and too complicated to work, partly because many landowners are refusing to cooperate. The National Trust, the Wildlife Trusts and the RSPCA, for example, are against the culling and have said that they will not allow it to happen on their land. The Federation is actively urging Ministers to spend the £34m instead on cattle vaccine and improving cattle health.
Jeff Rooker, the Food Safety Minister, has said the idea of eradicating the badger species "would not be countenanced" (glad to hear that!!) but added that the problem of TB in cattle was growing. He says that the problem of preventing widespread disease in cattle herds that are used for milk and meat to feed human beings must be tackled now before it becomes unmanageable. (Well, amen to that.)
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858 |
Dear dxb: Thanks for the information. Ye Gods, if 50K badgers are road kills, I should think
that would provide an entirely sufficient sample to determine percentage of badgers infected.
I have also seen warnings that the cute little hedgehogs all have tubercle bacillus in their stools,
and are a genuine hazard to children playing where they may get their hands soiled.
A hell of a problem, so large even drastic and expensive solutions are liable to fail.
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Joined: Mar 2002
Posts: 1,692
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2002
Posts: 1,692 |
Gosh, WW!
Thanks for that wealth of information - I shall save it, because it is nicely condensed. I did learn about that lot when I was in my mid-teens. Not at school, but as a hobby that involved frequent visits to London Zoo to take photographs. It was a bit depressing to see how much I had forgotten - including that prairie dogs did not eat other critters! I was putting them in with weasels and stoats (mustelidae). Haven't been to a zoo, per se, for years and years. Think I would find them depressing places now for all but the smallest animals, and even then...I remember the hamsters my girls had; always looking for a way out of the cage, and then out of the room, and then out of the house.
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Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542 |
badgers? we don' need no steenking badgers! http://www.darryl.com/badges/[the book, the movie, and everything..]
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858 |
Maybe the movies should have a steenkin badge cull.
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