There's this term 'dirty hands' which gets thrown around in politics. The idea that an effective leader must get her hands dirty at times... that sometimes the end justifies the means, that sometimes you have to do bad things to secure good consequences. And a politician can't be too queasy or puritanical.
(I remember reading the Sartre play Les Main Sales when I was doing French A Level. Or at least I am sure that I read it... the plot synopsis sparks absolutely no memories. Anyway, that was tangential because it doesn't seem to bear much relationship to what I am saying here.)
Now, let's imagine that in order to cure the dreadful ill that is bovine TB, we have to kill badgers. That could be a case of dirty hands, couldn't it?
What harm does bTB cause? About 30,000 cattle are killed annually in the UK as they have contracted it. It can pass to humans - through breathing up the bacteria or through unpasteurised milk. That seems very unlikely. In fact, a brief search suggests no evidence of spread to humans. It does though make cattle sick. They lose weight and may be feverish. There is a vaccine but that leads to cattle sometimes testing positive for bTB and so far they don't seem sure how effective it is. Treatment, I think, is very expensive. So, the cows are killed - for which the farmers get compensated. But they cannot move their cows once there is TB in the herd and the farmers don't like that. Seems it costs the UK taxpayer £150m annually.
Let's get the numbers in perspective.
1.9 million cattle are slaughtered annually for food. What's 30,000 out of that? If we didn't eat meat... or use dairy products... (BE VEGAN, SAVE BADGERS!)
In addition, biosecurity dramatically limits the spread of TB. the report commissioned by the Government and published in 2018 - which does recommend badger killing - also says the farmers need to take ownership of their side of the issue. It suggests that the biosecurity is lax and that farmers are more concerned about the freedom to move their cattle that the regulations. And as they get compensated for cows killed, they are not highly incentivized to invest in biosecurity. Killing badgers costs them nothing. Biosecurity is a pain.
While that independent report claims that badger culls are effective, a more recent analysis says they are not:
Interestingly, Scotland is bTB free... but has plenty of badgers. Not sure how that came about.
One of the reasons why killing isn't effective is that badgers then breed more as there are more resources available. Another reason is that you may well be killing a load of badgers who do not actually have bTB. The cows are sick; the badgers are, often, perfectly healthy.
So, not only are around 30,000 healthy badgers killed in a cull year, but they are also killed inhumanely. One in six do not die from a perfectly positioned bullet in the brain. They crawl off to suffer.
It does seem that vaccination is quite effective. There are schemes to trap and jab badgers. I guess it's easier and cheaper to kill them. But I suppose if you no longer compensated farmers for the cows, thus encouraging them to care better for their animals you would have money available.
A further problem with killing badgers is that the survivors are harder to trap in the future and thus harder to vaccinate.
Apparently, the public is opposed to badger killing. But badgers aren't loved like pandas or red squirrels. In fact they don't have good PR. Mention badgers and someone will always say, 'Badgers are vicious.' As if they were grizzly bears or something. Now, this is actually quite interesting. Badgers are in general very shy. Most people have never seen a live badger. And I can find no reports of attacks by unprovoked badgers except one - Boris, who had been hand-reared and was traumatised. Not only that, badgers regard humans as 'super-predators' - they are incredibly stressed by the sound of human voices and will stop foraging. So much so that the presence of humans is likely to be decreasing badger welfare far more that would the presence of their predators, wolves and bears. Whom we have killed.
As there are no wolves and bears, it's like the common psyche has to fill the 'dangerous animal' role - and thus, badgers are vicious. There has to be a bad guy.
Farmers don't hate badgers for the viciousness, but for the bTB and claims that badgers eat their crops. Others might also discount badgers on the basis that they kill hedgehogs and eat song-bird eggs. All of this is true, but to such a small extent and when contextualised so irrelevant as to be laughable.
Badgers mainly eat worms and insects. They also love elderberries. But, the worms and insects (which can make up about 60% of their diet) - not only do badgers have access to less habitat due to urbanisation and so on, but agro-chemicals have dramatically decreased their available food in the places where they can live. And yet, if they eat let's say 1% of a maize crop they deserve to die??
Hedgehogs and songbird eggs make up an even smaller part of their diet. The decline of hedgehogs and songbirds is caused not by a small amount of badger predation but by habitat loss and lack of food (insects and native seeds etc). Let's recall that hedgehogs and songbirds have been living on this land with badgers for far, far longer than we have. And the birds and hogs managed to survive pretty damn well.
In addition to all this, badgers are meant to be protected. For hundreds of years they have been, frankly, tortured by humans. So much so that it seems plausible they have got smaller. And now, not only do people still block their setts and try to did them out, but they also get run over by the thousand - literally - more than 50,000 a year.
So, we have stressed badgers, with few places to live, less to eat, still victimised by humans who try to torture them, losing family members to careless drivers and now being targeted by men with guns.
The hands are not dirty, they are fucking FILTHY.
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