Badgers and Govt "scientists"

[matgb]

Despite being vegetarian and broadly in favour of animal welfare attempts and being opposed to cruelty and unnecessary slaughter of animals, I've always been slightly ambivalent about badger culls and similar. When the reports earlier in the year indicated what we'd always suspected, that it didn't actually make a difference to the spread of bovine TB, I thought that might possibly be the end of it. It appears not.

My parents get The Telegraph. They used to get the Independent, but then I moved out and it went tabloid, plus Alex is in the Telegraph (or at least was). This mornings picture story is this: Cull badgers to fight TB, advises top scientist, and it's followd up by a comment peice on page two using that failure of a good argument, the appeal that Common sense demands badger cull. Fortunately, I have tyrell paying attention, and he's done a nice little demolition job on the idiocy surrounding the story and the wonderful idea that a Govt advisor (specialty: chemistry) can spend a few months and thus dismiss a report by a professor of animal health, director of the institute of animal health and a study that took him ten years to complete.

Now, obviously, I might be missing something and I haven't had time to do much research, but, um, who would you believe? Oh, wait, it's DEFRA, they'll go with not-annoying-the-farmers approach rather than the slightly harder let's-tell-the-farmers-the-truth approach. Gah!

Comments

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

* applauds you for saying that with much less swearing than I said it with when I saw the paper this morning *

[matgb]

Aye, well, trying to avoid swearing is a hard thing to do at times.

[paulatpingu.livejournal.com]

You know my opinion on the matter - I just can't believe how much attention one man has got over a study that was said quite a while back to be pretty definitive.

I mean, it's not the like the government usually does what people want, so why is it so concerned now - to the point where it seems to be advocating something against the advice of it's own, very expensive study.

And yes, they are once again coming up with the lunacy of an idea that is 'promoting animal welfare by killing a load of animals' - if that isn't fucking for virginity, then I don't know what is...

[matgb]

I looked up the bager posts you made earlier TBH, but they were older than I thought so I left them out.

It's doing what the vocal people want—most people are against, but it won't change their vote, but farmers blockading and protesting causes them problems, and farmers seem convinced it's a badger issue—my Dad seems fairly sure as well.

[paulatpingu.livejournal.com]

I don't think there's much doubt that badgers transmit TM to cattle, just to what extent they're responsible for the 'crisis' levels of it. They have TB in badgers in France and they don't have a TB problem there, for example, which would suggest that badgers aren't the main issue.

But then farmers see badgers all the time, see they have TB, associate it with TB in their cattle and want to do something bout the problem on their doorstep rather than the problem with cattle movement or bio-security or vaccinations. In some ways understandable, in some ways really, really stupid.

Of course I'm more than willing to see the UK animal farming industry crash and burn, but that might be the best option for everyone else...

And yeah, my old posts must have been ages ago, and IIRC they were aimed a specific something that had happened at the time I wrote them. Probably of no relevance here.

[strangefrontier.livejournal.com]

Oh *facepalm*. Why is a chemist (badly and wrongly) advising on a biological topic?

[matgb]

Because he's a skientist, and all skientists are the same, aren't they? Bunch of arts degree types (and I'm someone with an arts degree) that think the ability to manage is more important than the ability to actually DO.

The blog I keep linking to, chris_dillow_fd? IT's one of his biggest ongoing topics. Well, that and how marxism is best served by a properly functioning market economy...

[anisiriusmagus.livejournal.com]

Egad. Where is the sense in suddenly needing to cull around is it 80%? of the badger population? What is it, one rule for Foxes and another for Badgers? WTF??? I just don't understand.

[matgb]

Actually, to be effective, you need to cull 100% of them. But they're not trying to solve the problem, they being seen to be Doing Something, which is all that matters from what I can see :-(

[pmoodie.livejournal.com]

My feelings on the matter are easily expressed:

Fuck the farmers, save the badgers!

:)

Actually, we should really have a cull of farmers. Surely they are more directly responsible for the spread of bovine TB than any number of badgers could be?

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Oh, wait, it's DEFRA, they'll go with not-annoying-the-farmers approach rather than the slightly harder let's-tell-the-farmers-the-truth approach.

Like they did when they unnecessarily slaughtered several million cattle over a nonexistant chance of a Foot and Mouth epidemic back in 2000?
Yup, the farmers weren't annoyed by that in the slightest.