TB beef may be banned from food
THURSDAY NOVEMBER 16 2000
BY VALERIE ELLIOTT COUNTRYSIDE EDITOR
BEEF from
cattle infected with tuberculosis could be banned from the food
chain. Even though 6,890 cattle with TB were slaughtered last year,
meat from the diseased animals can still reach the dinner plate - mainly in pies and burgers.
Ministers are uneasy about such meat being for human consumption
and have asked the Food Standards Agency to review the risk
assessment. The Government is also facing enormous pressure to speed
up its programme of culling badgers, thought to be the main
transmitter of the disease to cattle.
Baroness Hayman, junior Agriculture Minister, said yesterday that
the cull had so far claimed 2,000 badger lives and had cost £6.9
million a year - the equivalent of £7,000 a badger. She believed
that
12,500 badgers - out of Britain’s 300,000 - would have to be killed
before scientists could prove definitively whether badgers had
caused the increase in bovine TB.
The Commons Agriculture Select Committee is holding an inquiry
into the badger cull and other possible ways to address the problem
of bovine TB. Copyright 2001 Times Newspapers Ltd.
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Badgerland Comment:
On these figures MAFF have spent £14,000,000 of taxpayers money killing
2,000 badgers. Firstly, it could have saved a great deal of money, if it
examined badger corpses killed on the roads and railways for TB.
Secondly, might it not be much, much cheaper to go to a recognised
expert body on badgers and cattle, and say here's a couple of million
quid, make a close study of a handful of farms with badgers and see who
catches TB and from whom? Thirdly, why not spend another couple of
million finding out why organic cattle hardly ever get TB (even when
they are exposed to it in large doses)? Of course, this might prove that
cattle give TB to badgers; and it might prove that so-called high-tech
farming is neither clean, efficient or good for animals or the
environment. It might also result in some serious criticism of Ministry policies or their friends in the agri-business
which would rather embarrass the MAFF.
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