Saturday 6 August 2011

AgriCullture

Very good article in the Guardian today, which describes the badger vaccination programme being deployed in Gloucester over the next five years. As well as starting with a thrilling mini-adventure about a badger called 007 (lured into a cage with peanuts, hence the cartoon) the  article discusses the pros and cons of using vaccination to deal with bovine TB, instead  of culling. On the one hand, it is humane and doesn't cause perturbation, which is a major drawback with the culling method. On the other, vaccination will not result in immediately dramatic improvements in TB hotspots (it's a vaccination, not a cure: there will still be infected badgers) and it is prohibitively expensive.

The coalition government is characteristically uninterested in planning for long-term solutions when it can butcher budgets: five vaccination schemes were cancelled in 2010 on cost grounds, though one potential contractor claimed that estimated costs were inflated by 'red tape and bureaucracy.'

The thing to remember is that bTB is a disease that badgers caught from cows, and cows (or rather, the farming industry) are the reason that we all have to fuss about badgers being poorly in the wilderness. The obvious solution, and one that is much more practicable than taking potshots at a protected, wild, nocturnal animal, is to vaccinate the cows.

Bureaucracy really is the villain here: cows that have been vaccinated against TB may have a positive reaction to the tuberculin skin test, which the EU uses to identify infected livestock. I can identify with this experience - when I was at school I wasn't given the BCG vaccine because when they gave me the skin test I  came up with a rash like a plate of salami. It meant that I was already immune. Because they get these reactions, immunised cows cannot be declared TB-free, according to EU law, and cannot be exported. It's all pretty stupid.

I am in favour of vaccination programmes like the one in Gloucester. I am even more in favour of developing an oral vaccine. But for the speedy easing of a crisis that can cost farmers up to £3.5 k a month, and has demanded hundreds of millions from the taxpayer over the last ten years, changing the EU testing method so that it can distinguish immunity from infection, thus enabling the vaccination of cows, is by a long way the most sensible solution.

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