MADAM - The tragedy of TB is twofold; the farmers struggling with this devastating disease, losing long-term pedigree herds; but also, that all the “scientific” advisers, put most politely, are in fact the lunatics running the asylum.

It seems Defra’s chief scientist Dr Ian Boyd told the recent Stoneleigh NFU Conference the laughable scientific view that badgers may be causing six, 16, 50 or even 100 per cent of cattle herd breakdowns.

And Oxford’s Professor Godfray happily told the Royal Agricultural College meeting that maybe farmers should be farming cattle mostly indoors to avoid those pesky badgers, even though his recent 2013 review in the Proceedings of the Royal Society no less (just Google him, “A restatement of evidence base”), admitted that no-one really knows if or how badgers might actually give cows a respiratory lung infection.

The saddest fact of all is typified by J W Simpson’s recent ongoing herd breakdown.

Two IR Inconclusive reactors plus a further eight reactors since March this year.

The official vet view was that “these were all perfectly healthy” since no visible tubercle lesions were found at abattoir inspection.

Even professional vets do not seem to understand that the skin test is 99.99 per cent accurate, ie only one in 10,000 reactors is truly “false positive”, ie does not have TB.

All these so-called unconfirmed reactors have merely been identified in the early stages of the disease.

So, sadly, the 95-100 per cent of new herd breakdowns in TB-free areas are not after all caused by badgers, but are embarrassingly caused merely by unconfirmed cattle.

Reluctantly one must conclude that all these experts scientists are simply not fit for purpose.

Martin Hancox

Ex-government TB Panel