Veterinary Medicine kills Badgers as a Treatment for Bovine TB. How sensible is this?

How effective is veterinary medicine? Well, consider this; Badgers are being culled in order to reduce the incidence of Bovine TB.

So clearly veterinary medicine believes the mass slaughter of Badgers is an effective medical treatment for cows with tuberculosis.

Care 2 Petitions have a petition "The UK just declared open season on tens of thousands of badgers after it promised to stop the killing". Whether you wish to sign it, or not, depends on how sensible/rational you think this 'medical' response is the the problem of bovine TB. This is their message.

               "Culling, or the mass slaughter, of badgers has been practised in the UK for a bloody 7 years. The government says it's the only way to stop the spread of bovine-TB, for which badgers are vectors. But the government is lying. A ten year long study prior to the cull's beginning concluded that "badger culling can make no meaningful contribution to cattle TB control in Britain." Since the beginning of the cull, the number of cows per year that contracted bovine TB rose by nearly 8,000.

The bloody badger cull is as ineffective as it is inhumane, thus the government vowed to phase the practice out in favor of vaccinations as well as improving farm biosecurity. 

               "But now, in a horrifying U-turn, the government is doubling down on its previous murder crusade: they just announced that 11 more areas of the UK will be included in the badger cull, adding another 60,000 badger lives to the kill list. 60,000 more badgers that can now be gunned down, left to bleed out for minutes or even hours of suffering. This is senseless cruelty.

Alarming. yet this is a simplistic view of the government's culling policy which fails to recognise the reason for the policy, namely the failure of conventional veterinary medicine. In other words, the root of the problem is that vets have not effective treatment for bovine TB. This creates the problem. 

• Government pay out £millions every year to compensate farmers for the loss of their cows. They quite understandably want to reduce this outlay.
• Farmers are devastated by the loss of their herds, they seek medical help - but there is no veterinary help available. Instead, they have to make do with government compensation.
• The veterinary profession then feels under pressure. They have two alternatives - to admit they have no treatment (which is embarrassing, and undermines their competence) - or come up with desperate and crazy measures to cover up their failure be seen as doing 'something'.

In other words both farmers and government are relying on the advice of a grossly incompetent and failing medical system. Similarly, the crazy and desperate measures that have been put in place for 'treating' the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic have the same roots - and incompetent medical system that (on its own admission) has no available treatment.

So alternative, natural strategies are not considered. Industrial farming practices, in which cows are kept indoors, artificially inseminated, kept in a permanent state of pregnancy / lactation, and then fed on food they do not normally eat, might be seen as a cause of the problem. Yet this is rarely discussed, and if it is it is usually ridiculed and dismissed out-of-hand. In much the same way, conventional medicine has rejected the natural immune system, supporting and strengthening it, as a more effective alternative to washing hands, social distance, lockdown, destroying jobs and social relationships, undermining education, the justice system, and the economy generally.

So alternative, natural strategies are not being considered. So the nonsense endures. It is badgers that cause the problem, and they pay the price. Animal husbandry has nothing to offer in terms of an explanation for the problem, or suggesting more effective alternative treatment.

Homeopathy is also rejected, both by government and veterinary medicine, despite having had success for many years in the treatment of tuberculosis. However, there are an increasing number of farmers, perhaps those who understand that both government and veterinary medicine is incompetent, are moving to homeopathy. Many more farmers should consider doing the same. 

The organisation 'Homeopathy at Wellie Level' has been organising and running homeopathy courses for farmers and smallholders for many years. Homeopathy provides a rational and sensible way of dealing with all the livestock illness currently experienced on the farm. And homeopathy is safer, more effective, and cheaper than conventional veterinary medicine.