Self-study activity:
Watch the video clip by clicking on the picture below or the BBC link above, and say whether the statements are true or false.
The activity is suitable for intermediate students.
1 Badgers can infect cattle, but not the other way round.
2 Farmers object to the cull.
3 Cows marked with a cross are healthy.
4 Restrictions on British milk and meat have already been imposed by the European Union.
5 Environmentalists welcome the cull.
6 Vaccination seems to be a reliable alternative to the cull.
You can check your answers and read the transcript below.
Cattle and badgers, a toxic mix. Each can infect the other with bovine TB. Now thousands of badgers are to be shot in a bid to stop the spread of the disease, a development welcomed by many farmers. We caught up with David Barton on his Gloucestershire farm last autumn. The vet was carrying out skin tests for bovine TB, and time and time again the news was bad.
22 to reactor.
A reactor means a positive test and a sprayed cross, dozens of his herd marked out to be killed within 24 hours, and still today bovine TB continues its impact on David’s herd. For him a cull of badgers is essential.
This is a pure bred … calf eight weeks old, her mother went as a TB reactor yesterday, so this is now an orphan. We can get rid of it in the cattle very quickly, you know, I can keep getting clear of TB and I can get reinfected, the badgers re-infect the herd. So without being able to control the badgers, we’re never going to get rid of TB and it’s a very necessary thing to do.
A long-term worry is that the health of the entire national herd could be compromise, with meat and milk subjected to European restrictions. But the badger cull is opposed by a majority of MP’s, groups including RSPA and those prepared to take direct action.
As soon as the first shot is fired, it will be the start of a bloody war, and I don’t think any farmers will get out of it unscathed.
What do you mean by that, it sounds like a threat?
No, it’s not a threat. I think the farming of the livestock industry is going headlong into a PR disaster.
There are growing cause for more of this, vaccination. Here they take issue with the government view that it is too difficult and expensive and the results, unreliable.
There’s never going to be one silver bullet to solve the terrible impact of bovine TB in cattle but we wanted to show that perhaps culling wasn’t the only way. There are other techniques that could be tested and could be used.
Few would argue that the bovine TB is a crisis but the response of culling thousands of badgers is exposing deep and bitter divisions, and scientific opinion, political opinion and public opinion, too.
Key:
1F 2F 3F 4F 5F 6F
