FARMERS let down by muddled science?

Having been on the old badger TB panel, I'm struck forcibly by how often farmers and indeed society in general are being hampered by pseudoscience.

A few examples might be usefully highlighted:

n Calf exports – the skin test for TB doesn't work until calves are some six weeks only, hence export of a few TB cases and the current ban by Holland and Belgium. The whole point of the IFN test is that it finds very early cases, and coupled with export from TB-free areas might help resolve the problem.

n Anergic cattle – the very simple reason why many big dairy herds have been under restriction since foot-and-mouth (FMD) or longer, is that current TB tests are not removing the real culprits of anergic or non-reactor active spreader cases. These could be quickly identified by either an antibody blood test such as the Brock test, or DNA PCR on faecal swabs.

n ISG pseudoscience – it is a tragedy that neither the ISG nor Defra managed to rediscover the simplest and most basic pivotal fact about successful cattle TB eradication schemes. That is that the EU rule of intensive annual testing is essential in hotspot areas, precisely because it removes cases before they get to the infectious stage, thus minimising within-herd spread, as well as putting herds under restriction so no TB carriers are exported to start new breakdowns.

Lack of testing due to FMD is why TB exploded by both within and between cattle spread. And prioritising annual testing since in trial areas is why there has been a drop in these areas as well as outside proactive areas.

It is pure nonsense in the ISG's latest Internat J Infectious Disease paper that these effects are somehow after-effects of culled/perturbed badgers. If Defra/ISG bother to look, they'll find a six years' worth of intensive testing drop in all 30 trial areas (including no cull ones).

n Scared to death – North and Booker 2007 reveals that we've all been conned by pseudoscience as regards global warming, salmonella, passive smoking etc.

Particularly noteworthy is that it is nitrites which might cause cancers and blue babies, so pointless to ban nitrates and bring in nitrate vulnerable zones – harmful asbestos is brown/blue, not white.

M. Hancox

Stroud