Surveillance cameras reveal how frequently badgers enter farms
Surveillance cameras installed on 75 farms in the south west have captured footage of badgers visiting farms a part of the Farm Assessment Toolkit project by the Animal Health and Veterinary Laboratories Agency (AHVLA) to help farmers take steps to ‘badger-proof’ farm buildings and reduce the risk of tb spreading from wildlife to their herds. […]
Meat from TB infected cattle – government TB management system failing ‘from farm to fork’ says wildlife charity
Meat from more than 20,000 cattle per year infected with bovine TB (bTB) has been allowed into the food chain by the government, posing an unnecessary risk to human health, according to a report in the Sunday Times yesterday. Acting on information given to a journalist by Care for the Wild, the newspaper has revealed […]
Preseli Pembrokeshire MP hears about farming challenges
Wyn and Glenda Jones, of Pantyderi and Trefach farms at Blaenffos, together with their son Eurig and Wyn’s mother Janet Jones rear beef and sheep plus arable acreage for home consumption on both holdings which run to 1,000 acres in total. Seven hundred acres are permanent pasture, 100 acres are used for short term grass […]
TB rates in cattle hit lowest level for six years
Incidences of bovine TB (bTB) in cattle have fallen again this month – meaning they are at the lowest monthly rate for six years. (1) Today Defra announced that the incidence of bTB in cattle in March 2013 was 3.6%, compared to 3.9% a year ago, and a drop from 4.7% in December 2012. In […]
Outrage as Owen Paterson declares war on the badgers – ‘hard culling for 25 years’
In a frank interview, he said that if the two trials this summer were successful, then 40 more cull zones would be created over the next four years. Animal welfare organisations have reacted with fury, as Mr Paterson’s justification for the culling was dismissed by leading bTB scientist Lord Krebs, who said “If politicians are […]
A case of foot in mouth for Defra as their own evidence reveals true cause of bTB outbreak
Figures show that incidences of bTB soared in 2000/2001, in certain areas. This correlates almost exactly with the relaxation of movement controls after the Foot and Mouth epidemic, which saw large numbers of herds restocked from the UK and across Europe. Philip Mansbridge, Care for the Wild CEO, said: “It’s not been a good day […]
More farmers battle TB as new figures show 3,000 cows are culled in one month
In the latest up-to-date figures released by Defra today 3,215 cattle were slaughtered across Great Britain in January, meaning a 24.2 per cent increase on the same time last year, and the month-on-month figures also show a jump. And in Wales the picture has worsened considerably despite a vaccination programme for badgers which had its […]
New research finds that cattle and badgers with TB rarely meet
Direct contact between badgers and cattle is rare, suggesting that it as a result it may be rare for bovine tuberculosis (TB) to be passed on through the two species meeting each other on pasture, new research by the Royal Veterinary College and the Food and Environment Research Agency published in the journal Epidemiology and […]
Bovine TB still on the rise as thousands of cattle slaughtered
The number of cattle slaughtered in Great Britain as reactors or direct contacts increased by 10% to 37,753 in 2012, and this figure does not include those slaughtered as inconclusive reactors. The latest statistics also reveal that the number of farms tested has increased by nearly 18% as new measures have been put in place […]
