In reply to toad:
> Do you actually know the purpose of the two recently postponed badger cull pilots?
I didn't, but now I am.
It's an absolute disgrace.
Can anyone here confirm that the Isle of Man has no badgers, but does have herds with TB?
If so, it's a total f*cking disgrace that badgers are being blamed as a cause of the spread of TB when an isolated island which is not going to have badgers wandering in from outside unless they've learned to swim huge distances still has bTB.
I'm not sure of the status of the Isle of Man, it appears in reality to be governed - when it comes right down to it - by the UK
Well, if it has no badgers, and has bTB, it seems a perfect place to find out exactly what farming practices are also spreading bTB
I've seen it mentioned that badgers are only thought to be responsible for 1 in 6 cases (16.6667 %) so the IOM seems an obvious testing ground for finding out what the more significant 83,333% of causes are.
I note the Dick Roper case of adding salt licks with added Selenium and vitamin E
Well, why not just do that in the IOM, and see whether bTB drops by a massive amount? That's really not going to be expensive, since we pay over £100million per year in compensation to farmers in the UK
There's a badger free environment already there to see whether that will make a difference.