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April 11th, 2013 
Peter Nolan
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Britian’s Secretary for Environment Owen Paterson has reaffirmed a controversial widespread cull of badgers will take place in the United Kingdom this June.
Britain’s wild badger population harbours bovine tuberculosis and spreads the bacterium that spreads the chronic disease into the nation’s cattle herd.
Lost production and control measures cost the British Government and the nation’s beef industry more than £100-million annually.
During a visit to Melbourne, Mr Paterson said if the incidence of the disease escalated, it could cost the nation more than £1-billion.
The Environment Secretary, whose portfolio also includes Food and Rural Affairs, has been in Australia and New Zealand this week to examine bio-security measures and Australia’s world-leading approach to agricultural disease control measures.
Last summer, in the face of staunch opposition from animal rights’ campaigners, the badger cull was postponed to this year.
Mr Paterson says a vaccine for treating both cows and badgers is in development, but regrettably is still about a decade away from reality.
So he says in the meantime, disease containment is key.
“So in the UK, I’ve got to use the current tools, tubercular test, slaughtering cattle, movement controls and I am determined that until we can get a vaccine we’ll have to also address the reservoir of disease in wildlife which in our case is the badger,” Mr Paterson said.
“I’m not anti-badger, you’re talking to the only member of Parliament, probably that had one pet badger, guaranteed you’re talking to the only member of Parliament that had two pet badgers, but I want to see healthy badgers living alongside healthy cattle and if there’s a pool, a reservoir of disease, a pool of disease in wildlife we’ve got to address it,” he said.
Mr Paterson says a badger cull in Northern Ireland has reduced the incidence of bovine tuberculosis to its lowest level yet recorded.
During his visit to Australia, the Minister visited a cattle farm near Geelong to inspect a system of electronic identification for livestock and toured the nearby Australian Animal Health Laboratory.
The CSIRO-run facility was responsible in 1994 for identifying the Hendra virus, which spread from flying foxes to horses and has since fatally infected four humans.
The UK currently faces a major disease which is threatening its eighty million ash trees.
“We’ve got a frightful problem in the UK, we’ve suddenly got a new disease that’s come in from Europe called Chalara which is a fungus, which attacks ash trees,” he said.
“At the moment we have no cure at all and I’m very, very interested in the robust controls you have on plant disease.
“I think there are real lessons for us in the UK, which is another island, to work within the constraints of the European Union.
“I’m absolutely convinced there are lessons we can learn from Australia and New Zealand and we can tighten up the control of our borders to keep out what appears to be an increasing wave of very dangerous plant and tree diseases,” he said.
You can see more on this story on “Landline” on ABC 1, this Sunday at noon.
Topics:
animal-welfare,
livestock,
animal-science,
animals-and-nature,
livestock-welfare,
veterinary-medicine,
hendra-virus-infection,
united-kingdom,
melbourne-3000,
geelong-3220
Source Article from http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-04-11/britain27s-badger-cull-to-proceed/4623672
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