OH WHAT a tangled web we weave when we practise to deceive.

Badgers were originally “Zuckered” by the “experts” who were founder members of the Flat Earth Society.

Badgers got the blame as “the main cause of the spread of cattle TB”, with the 1980 Lord Zuckerman Report.

A MAFF vet, John Gallagher, wrongly assumed that only cattle with “Open Visible lung Lesions” could pass on TB, and since such cases were so rare, 20 in 1,000 reactor cows, then cattle must be catching TB from an imaginary widespread hidden reservoir of badger TB.

Astonishingly, it has taken decades for the experts to suddenly realise in four consultations on how to stop the spread of TB that that was wrong from the start.

The highly complex epidemiological Annual Surveillance reports from DEFRA/APHA, for England and Wales, have re-discovered that there have been two - three newly infected reactors/breakdown, so within herd cattle-to-cattle transmission has been happening all along (http://bit.ly/2e6ZC04).

Farmers do not realise that this is normally by close respiratory “aerosol contact” in barns, not from badgers after all.

And the reason that cows test negative at spring turnout is because it takes six months to reach the reactor stage, not suddenly meeting those terrible badgers at pasture after all.

And contrary to Zuckerman, cows have been gently spilling TB over to small numbers of badgers all along too; innocent victim not villain.

And exactly in parallel with CSI/Cold Case true crime reviews, the DNA/Fingerprint evidence does not lie.

These reports include elegant maps showing the “clonal expansion” by local cattle movements of these newly infected No Visible Lesion/Unconfirmed early TB cattle reactors, of cattle DNA type “Home ranges” (Spoligotypes).

Ten main types, producing locally expanding clusters of infection.

Hence the spread by cattle into TB free areas from high TB incidence “hotspots”.

Martin Hancox MA Oxon, ex-government TB Panel

Stroud