UK.gov tries to close site giving home addresses of badger cull figures The British government has unleashed a legal threat against a website hosted in the US that is currently displaying the names, home addresses and personal telephone numbers of MPs, farmers and others who are said to be in support of the controversial UK badger cull. The Register spoke with a man going only by the name "Jay", …
"Are badgers coughing in the cows faces?....." They don't even need to do that. The bacterium can be transmitted by direct contact or aerobic means. Badger poop or urine can be the transmission agent, either through the cows sniffing or eating contaminated grass or just by stepping in it. Badgers biting cattle is a rare cause but seeing as badgers are territorial and aggressive it is not unknown for them to bite cattle, and many other wild and tame animals they see as a threat (foxes and dogs especially). The main concern with the virus is how it can jump species with only sheep seeming to be least likely to be infected. Infected badgers in the late stages of the disease are prone to seeking warm building and often see cattle sheds as a nice place to lay out and die, unfortunately spreading the disease by their mere presence. Cattle are pretty inquisitive creatures and will often wander over and sniff a new creature appearing in their surroundings, so the badger doesn't even need to be aggressive for the disease to be passed on.
One of the proven facts the anti-cull crowd like to forget is the New Zealand experience with possums. In New Zealand they used to cull possums for exactly the same reasons, but for a period in the early '80s they stopped and the number of cattle TB cases jumped massively, by a factor of four IIRC. In Devon at the time we had warnings not to let visitng New Zealanders near farms because our farmers were so paranoid about the disease getting to their herds.
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