Hmm so those that have HIV/Aids who are capable of passing on such diseases to others should be culled too ? Um no, these are humans right ? So ofcourse we cannot cull them. So those that pass on such a disease knowingly can be given the death penalty right ? Wrong again because its a human, get the picture… ?
Badgers ofcourse know they have TB and enter areas of cattle so they can knowingly pass it on! Sorry for the sarcasm but its getting quite tiring when humans win hands down and all cos of the green buck! Once again rules for humans and death penalty easily awarded to the animal. They can be injected too to eliminate TB or the vaccine can be added to their bait.
So you may argue that this is difficult since you need to find every infected badger. Correct. But you need to find each and every infected badger to kill it, so what’s the difference other than in the first instance you are not harming/killing! I personally do not want cattle to get infected, they do not deserve a cruel death either, but lives can be saved by vaccines, so why cull them ?
“Bovine TB causes tens of millions of pounds of damage annually, with affected farmers forced to discard milk, meat and other products from infected beasts, and sometimes to abandon livestock farming altogether. ” once again down to money!
A badger cull would be highly controversial as they are a protected species. Alternatives have to be adhered to.
Lord Krebs, who as a government adviser in 1997 was the architect of a 10-year experimental cull, recently rejected culling as “ineffective” and said other measures would be more productive, such as improved security for cattle to prevent them coming into contact with badgers, and the use of a vaccine when one becomes readily available. He said: “You cull intensively for at least four years, you will have a net benefit of reducing TB in cattle of 12% to 16%. So you leave 85% of the problem still there, having gone to a huge amount of trouble to kill a huge number of badgers. It doesn’t seem to me an effective way of controlling the disease.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/ – latest decision to cull next year in England – July 2011
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ – A vaccine against tuberculosis that can be fed to badgers – Sept 2010
http://www.farmersguardian.com/ – interesting comments to read. Once again from the countryside, farmer loving, gunho idiots and ofcourse those that want what’s fair.
Animals Do Have A Voice Blog 