Two badgers and one fox dead at the roadside in a 40-mile journey through Meath the other day. And just after that, one small badger in a Dublin suburban garden scoffing monkey-nuts laid out for such on the lawn each night, while the parent probably lurked in the bushes. The young are slow to appear this spring on this site. And then, by coincidence, The Countryman, an English publication which appears every second month, has a hot correspondence in its current issue. This apparently follows an earlier article on the old controversy about badgers and bovine TB.
A man from Caernarfon writes: "When we lived at an old farm in the 1920s and 30s, where the ground was moist and peaty and not conducive to setts, I do not recall seeing a badger for miles around. Yet the incidence of cattle TB was probably among the highest in the British Isles." And a man from Cheltenham in Gloucestershire informed readers: "I lived in New Zealand for two years a few years ago. There TB was rampant in some areas, but New Zealand has no badgers or foxes. Secondly, having just given up being a herdsman after 35 years, I can tell you that I have been with cows that had two badger setts on the farm and yet we never had an outbreak of TB. But I know of dairy herds which suffered TB outbreaks on farms that had no visible signs of badgers. I still have the same outlook on the problem - the badgers get the blame for the spread of TB, but the cows probably gave the badgers TB in the first place. The Ministry vets have always blamed the badgers but have not proven anything."
A lengthy letter from Cornwall remarks that: "There has grown up a generation of farmers who cannot recall a time when badgers were not held responsible for the spread of bovine TB. They have never been told the beginnings of the saga." He then goes on to tell the story of the time when farmers were "going TT", i.e. getting more money for their milk if the herd, having been tested for TB, had the "reactors" killed off. There were other rules such as double fencing so that clean animals could not sniff at "those of your neighbours, which might be harbouring TB." Other hygienic measures were demanded for TT herds (tuberculin tested). The length and breadth of Britain, herds were testing clean - and not a single badger had been killed to achieve this." The argument goes on and on.
The same writer notes that the Ministry "is the official body behind the BSE debacle and the body that compelled the use of organophosphate sheep dips." Interesting to see if the Ministry knocks some of this down in the next issue. Y