Sir – In answer to the questions raised by Joyce Rose (Worcester News, October 4) regarding bovine tuberculosis.
Cattle and badgers can carry this disease.
Cattle are regularly tested and culled if sick and the farm shut to cattle movement.
On the other hand, badgers with bTB are left to suffer and die out of sight and out of mind. Farmers have not “gone gun-happy in shooting” thousands of badgers.
The present cull of is a government-led experiment in two small areas, looking at the overall viability of culling as part of an attempt to eradicate bTB. There is no intention to ‘wipe out’ badgers. We will not get another outbreak of bTB in 12 months as this is a constant problem.
Sadly cattle cannot be immunised as there is no vaccine legally available in the EU and probably won’t be for 10 years.
Far from going extinct, we have expanding populations of deer, badger and fox.
Our farmers have a growing human population to feed and some beautiful countryside to conserve, a narrow tightrope to walk if ever there was.
Jon Burgess
Malvern
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