Paul Millard of the CLA writes . . .

BOVINE TB has plagued our part of the country and our livestock industry for nearly three decades.

We have seen the incidence of this horrible disease accelerate to an alarming rate yet the action to combat it has never been equivalent to the scale of the problem.

We have had prevarication, further studies and excuses – but the economic and animal welfare arguments are overwhelming.

The true cost to the industry has never been fully understood because all that has ever been published is the cost of the compensation paid to livestock farmers by Government – but that bears little relationship to the real cost to the industry, or to the families involved.

The bitter irony of the situation is that we almost had the disease eradicated.

From the late 50s until the mid 1980s the number of cattle slaughtered because of bovine TB fell from somewhere around 25,000 a year to well below 1,000 a year – yet a sustained failure in government policy since then has led to a situation where we are now slaughtering some 40,000 cattle a year because of TB.

Bovine TB is destroying livelihoods, blighting lives and pushing people towards bankruptcy and depression.

The strenuous efforts being made to control the disease in cattle, at great financial and emotional cost to farmers, are not mirrored elsewhere and the disease is being allowed to continue to spread through wildlife unhindered. It has now been found in domestic cats and dogs, in pigs, alpacas, lamas, goats and deer as well, of course, as badgers.

What we in the CLA – and others involved in the farming industry – have argued is that this is not about wiping out a species – it is about and saving an industry and tackling infection.

Current policies of restricting cattle movements have failed to tackle this disease so we want a policy that will eliminate the infected badgers, so that we have healthy badgers and healthy cattle.

What was a minor animal health issue become a serious animal health crisis.