FASCINATING new “light” emerged by serendipity in ministerial answers over the cattle TB crisis, both at last week’s NFU conference and the Badger Trust meeting on March 3, with Liz Truss.

In fact, the ongoing confusion clearly stems from the unbelievably blinkered stupidity and incompetence of everyone involved.

Badgers are mistakenly blamed for three different things but the two years of pilot culls cannot possibly be the reason for progress here.

Only 2,494 badgers culled and, based on ISG data (badgersandtb.com), about 400 will have had TB and only about a dozen super-infectious ones which might have been a risk to cows, via some still unknown transmission route, from c. 300 sq.km. combining the Glos & Somerset Pilot data.

A. Problem herds with chronic TB.

Delighted that Gloucester farmers James Griffiths and Bob Davies have gone clear after 11 and 15 years of restriction respectively.

Even vets wondered if there was a hidden cattle source of TB in the 1,700 strong Griffiths herd, since there were six to seven reactors at the two monthly tests, but stupidly tried the interferon test for that.

No wonder they went clear, IFN identifies early TB cases, in Ireland they routinely use a fast late TB antibody Enfer blood test to find the culprit active spreader skin test “anergic” non-reactor.

The similar Enferplex test is now used for alpacas which also show poor skin test reactivity.

This is what vets ought to be using for the 2,000 or so chronic herds which arose as a result of non testing during foot and mouth 2001, Dave Barton, Meurig Raymond, Adam Henson etc.

Chronic herds now going clear have merely, at last, removed these “anergic” cows at the end of their working lives.

The Gelli Aur university farm, restricted 10 years, had one such cow riddled with TB which had passed all skin tests.

Amazing that vets such as Roger Blowey, and Minette Batters of NFU seem unaware of this in your columns.

B. The mythical wonders of Badger Vaccination still being perpetuated. Drs R Woodroffe (Institute of Zoology) and Mark Chambers (VLA) ought to be ashamed of themselves.

Their crass idea of perturbed infected badgers and Edge effects being curable by vaccination has been trumpeted by Queen’s Brian May and Badger Trust CEO Dominic Dyer for the last five years, even though they know it won’t work.

Which, inter alia, raises questions of scientific and moral integrity.

Owen Paterson got a bit annoyed with geriatric rock stars bleating from the sidelines, Liz Truss gave it short shrift, Defra’s chief scientist Ian Boyd said it was “pie in the sky”.

It seems customary to sack football managers if their team loses, perhaps Team Badger ought to sack their inept advisers too.

If the badger contribution to cattle TB is now “guestimated” at 5.7 per cent by Prof Donnelly of Imperial College, then the other 84.3 per cent must be by cattle movements.

So no wonder the National Trust Killerton Estate had six herd breakdowns last year, despite vaccinating 569 badgers in 20 sq.km.

An utterly mindless waste of money.

The true result of the RBCT/Krebs cull of 11,000 badgers was no difference between accumulated herd breakdowns 1,562 in cull versus 1,668 in no cull areas, ie.

Nil beneficial or detrimental perturbation effects.

C. Reduction in numbers of reactors has occurred because tighter cattle controls minimise cattle-to-cattle respiratory spread within herds, and also the resultant number of new breakdowns.

Vet Roger Blowey’s claim that the drop over 18 months amongst 4,000 Gloucester cattle from 55 to seven reactors must be due to the cull is crass; likewise NFU’s Meurig Raymond’s claim of a Somerset drop from 34 to 11 per cent.

In fact in Gloucester the drop from 2008 to 2014, 2,500 reactors to 1,600 (mostly before the bungled cull) proves cattle controls work.

Ditto, in 2014 in Wales a drop from 9,000 to 6,000 without any badger culls.

Martin Hancox MA Oxon,

ex-government TB Panel Stroud