MADAM – The Great Badgers and TB Debate has been going on ever since the ‘first’ three TB badgers were found in 1971 in Glos and Glamorgan; but has been characterised by much heat and little light amid the darkness.

Having been involved for some 25 years, I’ve at last realised why farmers and vets have been so absolutely ‘certain’ that Old Brock is ‘the main cause of the spread of TB’ and so absurdly, been almost single handedly responsible for the current cattle TB crisis.

(Please see Death of Great Debate, www.badgersandtb.com ).

It all boils down to the incredibly silly mistaken belief that all the cattle herd breakdowns for which there is no obvious infectious cattle source must be ‘due to badgers,’ since TB badgers are often found after bad herd TB outbreaks.

In fact, the skin test for diagnosing TB in both cattle and humans is only 80 per cent accurate.

It has been that 20 per cent missed by current diagnosis which has been the cause of all of these herd TB incidents.

So, sad to see that recent media coverage, eg. as regards reports of mis-diagnosed herds which have been under TB restrictions for six to eight or even 16 years having ‘suddenly’ gone clear.

Farmers and vets who should know better claim this proves badger culls work, but the recent pilot cull in Gloucestershire only removed 253 badgers from c. 150 sq.km., only a handful of which might have been the super-infectious cases which might have posed a risk to cattle.

With some 2,000 such chronic herds, it is tragic that high-profile farms such as Adam Henson of Countryfile fame, Brian Barton, Meurig Raymmond etc etc are so far unaware that there is a very simple quick cattle solution to their traumatic ‘badger’ problem.

Over in Ireland, they have been equally certain that the problem in these chronic TB herds has been a skin test NON-reactor (anergic ) active spreader cow.

So they simply use a rapid late TB antibody chemiluminescent ENFER test to find these culprits.

Defra has recently started using a similar ENFERPLEX test for alpacas and goats where again the skin test does not work.

Alas, poor brock.

Badger culls and vaccines are a wonderfully insane solution to a non-existent problem.

Victim not villain.

Martin Hancox MA Oxon

Ex-member, Government Consultative Panel on Badgers and TB

Stroud