Bovine TB remains endemic in English cattle herds and it’s not clear whether the badger cull is definitively helping or not. Either way there is the tragedy of poor testing producing ‘false positives’, namely uninfected (or ‘innocent’ as farmer Jim Butler put it when we spoke) animals that have to be put down, and then inadequate compensation from Defra; all on top of a farming economy that is beset from every angle, including from the government. I discussed all this with Jim and his team, and the vet, at Manor Farm in All Cannings (see here).
