MADAM – Cattle ‘consumption’ and badger ‘scrofula’ ?

When you have ruled out the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

The “great badgers and TB debate” has staggered back and forth ever since the first TB badger in Glos in 1971, without resolution, because ‘the link’ has always been a circumstantial ‘coincidental’ association of TB in badgers and cattle.

Who is giving TB to whom?

The Prof Krebs 1997 Review noted “It is not known if, how, or to what extent badgers might realistically give cattle TB.”

The recent review by Prof Charles Godfray, 2014, in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, no less, made the astonishing admission that ( para.15) “Little is known about how M. bovis is transmitted between badgers and cattle.

“Transmission may be indirect; for example, through contamination of pasture, feed and drinking water.

“Alternatively, direct transmission via aerosol droplets at close contact may occur, possibly inside farm buildings as well as outdoors.

“No quantitative estimates of any of these transmission rates or their relative importance are currently available.”

Deciphered into plain English, in actuality, they just don’t know whether badgers really can give cows TB after all, after all this time.

Prof Tim Roper in his 2010 Badger, New Naturalist book was even less equivocal, p.335 “We do not know how badgers transmit TB to cattle”.

So, isn’t it about time to admit it simply does not happen?

And so seemingly ‘improbably’, all the herd breakdowns allegedly ‘due to badgers’ can only have been caused by mis-diagnosed cattle.

The skin test is only 66-80 per cent accurate, so that between 1 in 3 or 1 in 5 actual early and late TB cases are being missed each time (further details in Death of Great Debate. www.badgersandtb.com).

These so-called unconfirmed reactors without visible TB lesions are the actual cause of 95-100 per cent of new breakdowns in areas free of TB in either cattle or badgers, and incidentally there are NO TB badgers found after such incidents.

Badgers are also blamed for repeat or ongoing chronic TB herds, but the latter are due to skin test non-reactors (anergic) cases, which need the fast late TB blood antibody test to identify active spreader culprits; Ireland uses the Chemiluminescent ENFER test but Defra is now using a similar modified ENFERPLEX test, originally introduced because the skin test does not work in alpacas or goats.

Cattle TB is like human TB, a respiratory ‘consumption’ spread by cattle-to-cattle aerosol transmission, so is just like other ‘pneumonias’, colds and flu.

Several studies of the pathology of TB in cattle found that it is entirely respiratory, with lesions in the lungs, or more often just in the lymph nodes draining them, and strikingly, up to 20 per cent of such cases were ‘sputum positive’ i.e. infectious.

Farmers are (unbelievably) sure cattle-to-cattle transmission is not happening, because cows test negative at spring, turn out to pasture, meet those terrible badgers and almost overnight are riddled with TB.

Whereas in fact it merely takes six to 12 months before new cases become test reactors.

In the only proven case where TB badgers gave calves TB, in a very artificial yard experiment, (Little 1982, Vet.Rec.), four calves exposed for under a month apparently did not catch TB.

A calf would need to drink 3 cc. of badger urine to get the minimum dose of 1 million bacilli by ingestion (300,000 bacilli /cc), which is wildly improbable Badger TB is often in the lungs, but in fact the first sign of infection is in the lymph nodes under the tongue (submandibulars), so it is exactly like “dietary” human ‘scrofula’ caught by drinking unpasteurised milk.

It is pretty inevitable that badgers will pick up TB seeking worms, grubs and the big blue dor beetles under cowpats.

Wild boar catch TB by ‘dirty’ feeding too, so a pity experts on the Continent are now blaming them for an intrinsic enduring cattle problem.

Culling or vaccinating badgers or boars is a wonderfully insane solution to a non-existent problem.

Mr Martin Hancox Ex-government TB Panel

Stroud