The Easy Life

The easy life

 

How often is the apparent easy fix the correct course of action? Sometimes, I grant you, but only very rarely. I ask this, as today I heard the unsettling news that Government scientific advisor, Sir David King, has decided that an easy fix is the answer to an intricate and substantially misunderstood problem.

 

It’s a bit of a can of worms, so if you are easily exasperated look away now.

 

TB.

 

Bovine Tuberculosis. Mycobacterium bovis. A very local problem and, for the poor farms that suffer an outbreak, a devastating and potentially livelihood-ending problem. Do not get me wrong – in no way do I wan to underplay the impact of this disease on the rural economy.

 

But, is it so devastating because of its catastrophic impact on bovine health? No. Its catastrophic because Governmental Policy decrees that it should be. Just as Foot and Mouth is a non-fatal disease, TB is a terror-inducing illness because of what it means for the farm, not the health of the stock or the local population.

 

Back in the 1930s it was estimated that about 2,500 people a year were dying from tuberculosis contracted from drinking untreated milk, from infected animals. The cattle in question were kept in confined conditions in poorly ventilated cattle sheds often near humans and this was just the set of factors that TB needed to spread. The policy was drawn up to slaughter cattle showing symptoms of TB and years later, when a tuberculin test was available, slaughter cattle that reacted to this test. It is this archaic policy that frustrates me every time lobbyists bump TB up the political and media agenda.

 

I am a realist and if culling an animal is for a scientifically PROVEN benefit, then so be it. This issue however has never been satisfactorily tested, ironically because it is such an emotive issue, and F&M got in the way! Consequently there is no evidence that suggests the disease will be curtailed by the removal of just one stripy-faced co-sufferer of consumption. Reading through Sir David’s October report, virtually no statement is made without the qualifier that the data to which the statement pertains is not statistically significant.

 

The Governmental Advisor was quoted as saying that if a cull of badgers was not implemented soon, the disease would inevitably spread UK-wide. Why? Badgers are common throughout the British Isle and have been for the last 10 years or so, since benefiting from strong legal protection; protection that was brought in to save the badger from extinction at the hands of human persecution.

 

So why has the spread of TB not mirrored the nation-wide spread of the badger population? Surely it’s because badgers are co-sufferers of the disease, not the cause of the disease. In other words, when the TB bacteria is present in the local environment, badgers can pick it up, as can cows.  

 

There is a staggeringly significant statement in the report: “It is not possible to be certain about the route of transmission between badgers and cattle”.  

 

So in other words; no one is sure how badger-to-cattle infection takes place; none of the data about badger culling meets statistical significance; and the TB infection map does not mirror the badger population map! and still widespread culls of badgers are claimed (hoped?) to be the answer?

 

If you look at a map of TB hotspots in the UK you will notice a trend. The hotspots are largely confined to the South West of England, South Wales and Herefordshire. Two of these areas are linked by climate and habitat type, while the other is the UK centre of the bovine industry.

 

“So what?” you might ask. Well, this climatic factor has a potentially huge and uninvestigated impact on the issue than perhaps is first obvious.

 

 

Here are the facts: In 2005 23,500 herds were tested in the south west, which equates to 25% of all tests carried out in Great Britain; 3,759 farms were put under TB restrictions (67% of GB total) and 20,237 animals were destroyed (67% of GB total). So although the South West only has a quarter of all the herds tested, it accounts for two-thirds of all cows destroyed in 2005.

 

It was a similar story in 2006 with 26% of all tests in Britain being performed in the South West, with 61% all cattle destroyed in Great Britain being from the South West. Significantly disproportionate? I reckon so.

 

I’d like to make a suggestion at this point; climate is a significant factor here, and it makes sense when you think how bacteria work. TB is spread by droplet infection; coughs and sneezes to you and me. In warm, dry parts of the country if a consumptive heifer sneezes on the ground the bacteria very quickly die off. However in parts of the country typified by long, lush grass and mild, wet climate – just like the South West – the bacterium can subsist in the environment for a longer period and the disease is present in an environmental reservoir.

 

So what can we do about it?

 

Human tuberculosis has not been eradicated by culling every individual who shows a positive antibody reaction to an archaic skin test. Nope, otherwise I wouldn’t be here today!

 

When I was 12 years old I cued patiently outside the nurse’s room at school, ashen faced with fear of what lay within: The BCG. Rumour was rife in school that you were stabbed by a needle like a stiletto knife, and if you reacted to the first jab you were liable to loose an arm.  What I was actually nervously cueing for was a weakened but live culture of the Mycobacterium bovis (bovine TB) bacterium.

 

As ever with rumour and hearsay the playground gossip was wrong. A little 6-point jab showed that I needed the full inoculation and I have lived the rest of my life free from the fear of becoming consumptive. Interestingly, as public fear and distrust of mass inoculation has grown, so the incidence of human TB has also begun to reappear.

 

The October report, which suggests badger culling should be an immediate course of action, also states that culls should only be implemented alongside development of a vaccine for cattle. Yes! Its that simple – vaccinate, and protect cattle from this disease and potentially stop cattle from infecting native wildlife, a radical yet strangely compelling argument – well done Sir David. We no longer drink untreated milk, we are in no danger of contracting TB from cattle – in fact we use the bovine strain of TB to protect ourselves from the disease!

 

Some say that we shouldn’t vaccinate against illnesses such as TB or F&M as it would then be “present” in the national herd. So what? We import beef from South America, where Foot & Mouth is endemic, and no one over here bats an eyelid, if Tesco stocked a little more East Devon beef, rather than Buenos Aires steers, our local producers would benefit – not loose out.

 

So why not put off spending millions of pounds trying to control badger numbers, and put the money into developing a vaccine, while compensating farmers who are disadvantaged by this pre-war policy. Surely it is this ancient wisdom which is at fault here, not the badger?