"....where is the commonsense. I am not sure if I have told you this before - age and exasperation is rendering me slightly repetitive! However I have heard from a retired MAFF
Wild life Advisory Officer who says that in the 1950s and 60s where TB was identified on a farm the second badger out at night from the suspect sett was shot and tested for TB. If positive then that sett was gassed. Gassing is apparently painless and the sett filled in. Well this method did not do away with the badger population but TB was virtually unheard of - at least in this part of England.
Testing was 4 yearly and nobody had any problems. We had a few badgers and they were healthy.
Surely someone in DEFRA is aware of how it was dealt with in those days. We must now assume that the amount the Animal Rights Groups are paying to the Government is controlling their decision.
DEFRA should insist that everyone in the country is on 12 monthly testing and then deal with the badgers as in the 1960s.. TB is destroying healthy cattle and healthy people. We have friends in Devon who are on 60 day testing - and that is a strain not only for the humans but cattle as well - and are losing 12 pedigree cattle at a time. This is a closed herd of pedigree cattle started in the 1940's.
It is heartbreaking seeing what this is doing to the whole family, not to mention the cattle.
Who are all these people who do not realise that badgers are not cuddly friendly things - but quite vicious and cruel and will take and kill anything. Who is speaking up for the hedgehogs and all the ground nesting birds the domestic poultry and even cats that they will take if hungry.
I suppose when you are dealing with a Government that thinks giving people £12. per week to stop smoking and £200. to look after their children properly and extra pay to Doctors to do a good job - this is really all small beer!
Last Friday I visited a Royal Show bereft of cattle because Defra couldn't move their line on the map a few days earlier - a line which is not even controlling a compulsory vaccination programme.
I just hope I have not lost the plot and am missing something sensible in all this.
"
Fields of Fire witness accounts of 2001