“Oh dear - Charles Henry, Somerset - here we go again - and this is how laws are made in GB today - the minority groups with the loudest voices - who go on, and on and on -until they get their own way.
I sense this is about to come to an end.”

“I do not think you are giving a clear indication of the problem Tess Nash. You would have been checked for Mycobacterium tuberculosis and would have presumably had the Mantoux test with an X Ray if there were concerns. . Today there are world-wide concerns with the increase in multi-drug resistant TB particularly Mycobacterium bovis. . A quote from the World Health Organisation. . ."The report highlights two aspects of the epidemic that could further slow progress on TB. The first is multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB), reported by WHO last month to have reached the highest levels ever recorded. To date, however, the response to this epidemic has been inadequate. Given limited laboratory and treatment capacity, countries project they will provide treatment only to an estimated 10% of people with MDR-TB worldwide in 2008."”

“It worries me to see a government governing on the orders of a group of people, who, for some reason, appear to be using their "protection" of the badger, to harm another group of people, namely farmers.

The pro-badger campaigners do seem to hate farmers ¿ or is it perhaps their communist idea that no one can be ¿allowed¿ to own anything themselves?
As to infection - when I was a girl at school, they used to come with a mobile x-ray and in x-raying every girl in the grammar school of 600 pupils, only 1 child was found to have TB.
The truth is that we all have the propensity to develop this disease - but not everyone does so. Many of us just become "carriers".
So isolated cases where it seems that children have not caught TB from badgers, really is meaningless - even if they have been tested and x-rayed for it - which I very much doubt the children spoken of in these comments have been.
That doesn't mean that they do not have the disease, or are not carriers.
The little know displayed here, has always been dangerous.”

“(To explain my previous post.) . . . . A bacteriophage is any one of a number of viruses that infect bacteria. The term is commonly used in its shortened form, phage. . . . . .
Bacteriophages are much smaller than the bacteria they destroy - usually between 20 and 200 nm in size. . . . .They have been used for over 60 years as an alternative to antibiotics in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. . . They are seen as a possible therapy against multi drug resistant strains of many bacteria. . Wikipedia.”

“I would agree F.W.K., But please remember, TB respects no borders, and the bacillus is continually evolving. . Here is a piece from the World Health Organization studies on bacteriophage typing of mycobacteria. Subdivision of the species Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

"The ability of lytic mycobacteriophages to subdivide the species Mycobacterium tuberculosis reliably has been studied using a series of 100 strains isolated from cases of tuberculosis in the Netherlands. Techniques for the propagation and application of the viruses have been standardized, as have the conditions for growth and preparation of bacterial strains. On the basis of lytic results with 11 mycobacteriophages, it is proposed that the species Mycobacterium tuverculosis may be subdivided into at least 3 major phage types, A, B, and C, and into 2 subjects, Ax and A2. The reliability of the individual bacteriophage lytic result has been assessed, and the relationship between phage reliability and the degree of certainty with which a strain may be assigned to a phage type is described. The effect of rigorous standardization of techniques on the reliability of bacteriphage typing is demonstrated, and a standard protocol is proposed." .

Mycobacterium TB is a very complex problem with which very clever minds have been wrestling with for generations. . It is on the march again. . We ignore it at our peril. . . A friend of mine has recently become severely infected with the MRSA virus after a short outpatient procedure. . This would have been unimaginable 25 years ago.”

“Charles, I am not ignoring anything, least of all a very large amount of well-corroborated scientific evidence. Just saying black is white does not make it so. We'll have to agree to differ because we could go on arguing ad infinitum!”

“FWK, not only are you repeating uncorroborated unreliable government statistics,(As with MRSA and C.difficile), but your knowledge of, and recollections of badger behaviour and badger numbers is clearly flawed, and bears no relation to the actuality of the situation on the ground that the majority of farmers have experienced since badgers have been protected, to the extent that I now doubt your have any real experience of same. . As with all who treated the badger as an endangered species; which it clearly wasn't, you unfortunately choose to completely ignore the fact that we once had this problem beaten.”

“Henry, what part of what I was quoting is "the government's discredited line"? The statements that the incidence of bovine TB as a proportion of all TB cases has not increased and is similar to the proportion in other developed countries comes from independent scientific sources. Or was it the earlier reference to badger culling and their ranging behaviour etc, also based on extensive scientific studies including some dating back long before the 10-year government funded research project, which itself has been reported in several peer-reviewed scientific journals. And on the subject of the 1930's, I simply quoted this as an example of the difference that milk pasteurisation (mainly) and the slaughtering policy have made to the risk of humans contracting bovine TB. I make no comment as to whether the latter is a good policy or not. The fact is that despite Dr Jerome Harms' predictions in 1997 (presumably for the US?) there has not been an epidemic of bovine TB in humans in the UK or in the US. You may be interested to know that I come from a farming family and live in a rural area where badgers have been "defacating and urinating" in my garden for about 20 years and in the gardens of my neighbours. I don't know anyone in the village who has contracted TB, bovine or otherwise, although I don't deny there is a risk. You can't call something discredited just because the NFU don't like it. And incidentally the inconvenent behaviour of badgers I was referring to was their tendency to cause physical damage and uproot plants that George Bedford was complaining of.”

“Question:- Did the veterinary nurse catch Bovine TB from her dog? . Or did the dog catch Bovine TB from the nurse? . . . I'll wager the former!”

“May I once again be allowed to draw yours and everybody else's attention to some quite prophetic quotes from Dr. Jerome Harms. University of Wisconsin-Madison back in 1997. . . .

"Recently, there have been many outbreaks of M.bovis caused tuberculosis in humans, especially HIV+ patients. . Most have occurred in countries where M.bovis is endemic in the animal agriculture population. . Multi-drug resistant strains of M. bovis are now appearing as well. . The significance of this TB threat from M. bovis has not been taken as seriously as the threat from Mycobacterium TB.". cond.

"However, the scientific and medical community must not ignore the potential of an M.bovis TB epidemic."”