'Solving the Bovine TB Problem' by a Glos Farmer

Dave Purser owns a 48ha pasture farm in Glos. He comes from a local farming family and has kept his own cattle since the 1980′s in a TB ‘hot-spot’. The business has included a commercial beef and calf rearing unit but the herd has never been under TB2 restrictions. Here he gives his views on the bovine TB problems.

I've kept cattle in a Gloucestershire 'TB hot-spot' since the 80's so I'm no stranger to the rigmarole of annual bTB testing. But the dread I feel at testing time comes from the threat posed by Defra's 'test and cull' policy rather than concern about the disease itself.

In every other instance where disease threatens our cattle, we have vaccination in our armoury. We know that vaccines reduce the incidence of disease in our cattle and this gives us scope to use our own skills to manage the health and welfare of our herds to suit our particular circumstances.

We are only denied this essential approach with bTB because of an outdated EU directive governing export which insists on 'accelarated eradication' of the disease and simultaneously bans the use of cattle vaccine, which predictably leads to carnage in all directions.

We are a well informed society, especially since the advent of the internet, so even the casual observer can see that the answer to this issue is to challenge the EU and get the rules changed to allow cattle vaccine - hence the huge and justifiable public outcry in opposition to a massacre of our badgers.

It's not good enough these days for those in favour of the cull to use sensational headlines and hope the public will simply accept what they read.

"26000 cattle were slaughtered in 2011 for TB control" - yes, but Defra's own figures tell you that there were 5.4million cattle in England in 2011*. This is a loss of less than half a percent of the national herd which is easily outnumbered by those cattle routinely slaughtered every year because of ailments such as lameness, mastitis etc.

"11.5% of herds were restricted in 2011" - yes, in other words, 88.5% of herds were NOT restricted in 2011 demonstrating that only a small proportion of herds are affected by bTB.

And restricted herds can carry on trading despite TB restrictions, as described in detail on the website of the TB Farm Advisory Service at http://www.southwest-tbadvice.co.uk/ which includes case studies showing the many options available.

So facts, figures and science show that bTB is not "the main threat to the cattle industry" but is actually a problem for a minority of herds, mostly in the West country. Cases of bTB have not risen dramatically, there is no epidemic, there is nothing different about 2012 to explain any hysteria so there is simply no justification for the rush to shoot badgers now.

The NFU, NBA and other farming bodies should avoid a PR disaster by abandoning the badger cull and start putting their weight behind forming an accreditation scheme under which UK farmers can be given the option of vaccinating their cattle and each animal's passport can be stamped to show that they are then excluded from export.

Members of the scheme could be exempted from the 'test and cull' policy which would give the pedigree and dairy herds an opportunity to avoid the needless slaughter of their breeding stock and protect their gene pools by using vaccination and accreditation instead.

The scheme wouldn't have to include all counties because we can't expect farmers in the two, three and four year testing areas, who form the the vast majority of herds in the country, to share the burden with those of us in the 'hot-spots'.

But before the doom merchants say it can't be done, let's remember that this approach isn't new. It's exactly how we eradicated brucellosis, another infectious cattle disease, some twenty odd years ago**. Aren't we meant to get wiser with age?

　* for cattle numbers in England in 2011 see http://www.defra.gov.uk/statistics/files/defra-stats-foodfarm-landuselivestock-june-statsrelease-englandcropslivestocklabour-111024.pdf , page 2.

** for Brucellosis see Defra publication: "Options for vaccinating cattle against bovine tuberculosis", Annex 1- 'Examples of vaccination policies for other diseases, Brucellosis Vaccination' http://archive.defra.gov.uk/foodfarm/farmanimal/diseases/atoz/tb/documents/vaccine_cattle.pdf