MADAM – Michael Seals, chairman of Animal Health and Welfare Board England, expresses doubts as to whether the TB Eradication Advisory Group will be able to establish a truly independent board to advise on future TB Policy, and take the politics out of it all.

Discussions are frozen until May 7’s election.

But even then, any new board will inevitably contain the “usual suspects”, be they farmer or vet leaders, ‘independent’ scientific veterinary epidemiologists or indeed DEFRA’s own chief ve andscientist.

And none of these are likely to understand that badgers are simply not the problem.

Back in the 1890s, and persisting into the 1940s, with little attempt to control cattle TB, some 40 per cent of cattle were affected.

The classic texts on bovine TB by Francis, in 1947 and 1958, found the southwest was not a ‘badger TB hotspot’.

It only became one when more-intensive dairying was introduced.

And it was purely cattle test and remove/movement restriction controls which brought TB down from countrywide to tiny southwest hotspots.

Nowadays, there are fast tests to find the culprit “anergic” skin test negative cow at the heart of problem herds with chronic TB.

Princess Ann, Meurig Raymond and Minette Batters ought to wake up and smell the coffee.

Vet John Gallagher too found just 20 ‘open visible lung reactors’ in 1,000 cattle, and assumed cattle were no longer the infectious source of TB to other cattle: Irish studies found 20 per cent of reactors without lung lesions were infectious.

Vets made the critically silly mistake then that all TB reactors without lesions were false positive, so badgers got the blame for 60 - 100 per cent of new herd incidents.

Everyone is still wrongly assuming these so-called unconfirmed herd breakdowns must be due to badgers, but in fact culls after such incidents found zero badgers with TB. Again, Prince Charles had such an incident at Highrove in the mid-1980s.

Lastly, vet John Bourne who oversaw the RBCT/Krebs cull famously remarked that there is no such thing as a “closed herd”.

Sure, they may not buy in stock, and supposedly have secure double fencing to stop inquisitive nosing between herds (how many herds actually do have this, my observation is zero).

TB may be brought in, just like foot and mouth, by visitors, and vehicles with slurry on the tyres, shared watercourses, visits to shows, etc.

Martin Hancox

Stroud