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Readers' comments (9) Anonymous 31 May 2012 2:59 pm LOVE ANIMALS! I AM THE PROUDEST VEGETARIAN ON EARTH!!! 3 Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment Anonymous 31 May 2012 4:20 pm Hidden behind the temperate, cautious language of the scientists isthe cruel reality: the proposed "well managed, well monitored"culls will be a bloody massacre, impossible to adequately monitor,with population assessments no more than rough guesses, based inpart, so we are told, on farmers' estimates of numbers on theirland. Sorry, but farmers are virtually clueless when it comes toestimating badger numbers. Why? The farmer who sits by a sett,watches and counts as badgers emerge play and feed is a rarity. Fewwill recognise a subsidiary or an annexe sett from a main, breedingsett. Even fewer will know whether badgers on their farm breed inone sett and then, later, move elsewhere to another "main" sett, assome do. There has never been a population count of badgers--onlysurveys of sett (with badger numbers extrapolated from those).Government's reassuring claims that the culls will take out 70 percent of the badgers are pure spin-- fiction based on phraseologyintended to mislead us all. The adequate, responsible, reliablemonitoring of a massive night-time slaughter carried out over ahuge area over a period of six weeks would require a huge number ofindependent monitors. How many will there be? Will they be outevery night? Will all shooters be monitored--or just a few? Defrawon't say. And little wonder. Neither the money, nor the manpower(nor the will) is there to do a proper job. Defra and NaturalEngland are strapped for cash. We, the gullible public, are beingled up the proverbial garden path. Every aspect of this"science-led" culling plan collapses when put under any kind ofquestioning scrutiny. Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment Ryan 31 May 2012 4:55 pm Just scrap the cull. It isn't going to work, impossible to monitor,and will ultimately harm the public view of us farmers. This Govthave made so many mistakes and u turns it isn't funny, buzzardslast week, Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment Phil Brindley 31 May 2012 9:10 pm Check out how DEFRA get a great deal for farmers on bTB -philsreport.blogspot.co.uk/2010/10/government-complicit-in-overpaying.html- Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment Newt 31 May 2012 9:26 pm So now these scientists say that they don t know how many badgersthere are per sq kilometre? OUTSTANDING! And yet we are told that the ISG was Gold Standard science? Surely if Christl Donnelley now suspects that there 3.3 badgers persq. kilometre then she is just confirming how poor the originalRBCT really was! And is further confirming the total waste of timethat all that was! The ISG Final Report data showed 5 of the crucial initial 10proactive culls were carried out in midwinter which is well knownto be the least successful time for trapping. Trapping was carriedout for eight days on average and only once a year. The averageannual rate for the removal of badgers was 1.8 badgers per km2 witha variation from 0.7 to 2.91. Dr J Gallagher et al (former stateveterinary officer). www.bovinetb.info/rbct.php Frankly it is a miracle these scientists manage to dressthemselves in the morning! [But 1.8 badgers per square kilometrewas a long way short of 3.3]. My Goodness, what could they haveachieved if they d done the job right! Did Krebs et al want to find any badgers? Nobody, and I mean nobody, working on the trial at the grass rootlevel has ever believed that operating under the too strict andinflexible regime that Krebs put in place could work successfully.All the common sense answers to everyday problems were too oftenignored because "things had to be carried out scientifically" tomean anything. The whole basis of Krebs was to remove badgers offof the ground. For the first four years, that effort was farcicaldue to the restrictions placed upon us. Repeated requests to changeoperating methods were ignored. With that in mind, how much weightdo we give to the latest ISG report, detailing their "robust"findings to the Minister? If it were down to me and my staff, verylittle. P. Caruana, field manager for the RBCT from the start. www.bovinetb.info/docs/RBCT%20problems.pdf Even Christl Donnelly (deputy chair of the ISG) now admits from hersubsequent work, The results demonstrate close positiverelationships between bovine TB in cattle herds and badgersinfectious with M. bovis. The results indicate that TB in cattleherds could be substantially reduced, possibly even eliminated, inthe absence of transmission from badgers to cattle. works.bepress.com/christl_donnelly/1/ Could it be that after all this work at the taxpayers expense, thescience still has a long way to go to catch up with common sense?M. bovis infected badgers are a constant source of re-infection insome areas, and in those areas we will never overcome bTB withoutreducing that reservoir of infection, i.e. culling badgers. But if Christl Donnelley and Rosie Woodroffe don t know exactlywhat we are dealing with, then maybe they should step aside. Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment Newt 1 June 2012 7:04 am The statistical epidemiology scientists were orriginally put incharge of managing foot and mouth problem in cumbria. Those notinvolved on the ground may be forgiven for not understanding thesignificance of this because they were no doubt taken in by thelies or "spin" of the then government, but for those of us withfirst hand experience, we remember the magnificent way in whichthey turned a small problem into a major disaster. So why the Hellare we listening to these anal retentive, self inflated egomaniacsagain? They couldn't organise a p up in a brewery! Oh yes, that's right, I was forgetting, the prejudice that we seeabove in the comments of anonymous, farmers can't organiseanything, we're too thick. Just so that you know anonymous, one could sit by a badger sett allnight counting badgers and still not have the least idea how manybadgers were in it because how would you know that you weren'tcounting the same badger two, three, four times? I know very well many of the numerous badger setts on my farm andthere isn't a single true sett with only one entrance! Bagders willalways open an escape hole some distance and hidden from the mainentance. Outlying holes are treated more like bolt holes or campswhen the clan or spread out on foraging trips, especially in hotdry conditions. As for sitting by a sett to count badgers, only a daft townie wouldthink of trying to count badgers that way! The obviously much moreintelligent badger, would smell them a long time off! Only thebrave would then venture out. Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment Anonymous 1 June 2012 8:20 am The Peasant Please could someone explain the definition of "local" in regard tothe provisions of the Berne Convention? Is it 5 hectares or 500hectares or 50 sq km? Without this information everyone is justthrashing about in the dark. Was this measure in force when thecull of badgers in the Thornbury area of Glos took place? Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment Pat 1 June 2012 8:40 am Peasant - Re the Bern convention: 'local' is a fudge, it's anythingyou want it to be. The density of badgers is variable in GB, although we do havearound 25% of all the European badgers squashed into the W/SW ofEngland and Wales. Population is estimated at around 38 per sq/km in a part ofOxfordshire, and if you use a calculator and divide 55 sq km by the844 badgers caught for the 'Elf & Safety of BCG' vax in Glos, theytrapped 15.8 per sq/km. And interesting that the late Ernest Neal, when framing up theProtection of badgers Act described 1 per sq km as 'abundant'. I hear that Defra are inviting quotes to collect badger bits (hairand stuff) to DNA and estimate numbers that way. Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment evan thomas 1 June 2012 8:41 am The Berne convention mentions the retention of BALANCED wild life,Where badgers predominate there are no HEDGEHOGS and no balance. Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment. 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