From Martin Hancox
Everyone seems to have forgotten, but the UK used to have a tuberculosis-prevention scheme for cattle that reduced the prevalence of the disease from countrywide to small hotspots in the south-west by the early 1970s (17 December 2005, p 8). Cattle-to-cattle spread was curbed purely by annual testing of cattle and movement restriction, without any badger culling at all. A similar scheme succeeded in Ireland and Northern Ireland. The latter has always regarded badgers as a spillover host of TB from cattle.
The present cattle TB crisis is, in my opinion, a direct result of the 2001 foot-and-mouth disease outbreak. The disruption of testing and movement controls has allowed TB to spread.
Cattle TB is in any case a respiratory disease affecting the lungs – a pneumonia – and after 30 years of trying, no one has been able to show how badgers supposedly infect cows. They can get TB by ingesting contaminated food or water, but need a dose of at least a million bacilli – so they would need to drink 3 millilitres of badger urine (about 300,000 bacilli are present in a millilitre), which is improbable.
Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK
