A hotly contested decision to spare badgers in the fight against bovine tuberculosis

IN 1908 the newly-formed National Farmers' Union called on the government to eradicate bovine tuberculosis. Pasteurisation of milk, introduced in the 1940s, means that humans now rarely catch this serious wasting disease, but it remains a miserable constant for cattle farmers. On July 8th the union marched on Whitehall, making the same demand as their forebears a century ago.

The immediate target of modern farmers' ire was Hilary Benn, the environment secretary, who had told Parliament the day before that he would not be relaxing a ban on culling badgers in England. The animals were made a protected species in 1973, mainly in order to prevent badger-baiting--setting dogs on badgers for sport. Farmers, though, could get licences to kill them, because badgers can catch bovine TB and transmit it to cows--by contaminating pasture with urine and faeces, and by drinking and eating from cattle troughs. Absent a vaccine, it was hoped that cutting badger numbers would reinforce such measures as restricting cattle movements and slaughtering cows that test positive for the bacterium which causes the disease. ...



More... (http://www.economist.com/world/britain/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11707225&fsrc=RSS)

http://tinyurl.com/6qftr3