TB in badgers
Dear Mary,
I'd be most grateful if you would circulate pictures. ... The main stream press refused an offer to publish them, I understand. A case of don't look - can't see?
I hope that you realise that these oft quoted '13 million cattle movements' which are obviously spreading tb is a paper chase, not an actual cattle movement?
When an animal is 'moved', the movement attracts at least two pieces of paper for the British Cattle Movement Service (BCMS).
The consigning farm fills in an 'OFF' movement and posts it either by a card torn from the passport, or on line. And the receiving farm / market / abattoir etc.does the same as an 'ON' movement. So the number of recorded 'movements' of some 9 million cattle does not mean each one has been doing handstands all over the country - only that Royal Mail or the telecoms companies have.
More accurate figures are:
- 13,000,000 divided by 2 (at least) which gives around 6.5 million actual movements of cattle
of which over 4 million were direct to slaughter. (either for the food chain, OTMS or the 30,000 as Tb reactors). They posed no threat whatsoever.
That leaves approx 2.5 million cattle which moved to another farm, which ties in with PQ's answers.
But Defra have also given a figure of around 550,000 for its costing exercise on pre movement testing, which has a spurious cut off age of 15 months this year.