Originally from: frances fish
                        
Dear Pat, Yes, I do think its important. The scare we are having up here in Scotland is another instance. About 300 cattle are being(have been ?) slaughtered because about 60 of them reacted to the TB test. This is like the Mantoux test when you are at school and only tells us if the cttle have been in contact with TB at any stage of their lives. There are also other diseases which can give a positive result such as Johne's disease of the gut and human (oh yes!) TB and so-called skin TB. The test is, at best, crude, relying on the skill(or lack of it ) and judgement of the operator in assessing the significance of the size of a lump. In this day and age the vets should be ashamed to be still using such a crude tool. If it is considered that the test is positive, the animal is called a reactor. Many are killed out at this stage, but Defra's own statistics show the very high degree of cattle that prove not to actually have TB. Therefore the test is of extremely dubious benefit(except of course there is good compensation for any slaughtered!) No benefit at all for the poor cows sent to a premature permanent retirement.Also, 60 cattle out of 300 is a very high percentage, the more so when you consider that only breeding stock are usually tested i.e. cows over 12 months and bulls. In a normal herd there woule also be a considerable number of young animals and also calves which would not have been tested. So, it will be 60 out of ? 200 ? 250 ? Nobody has said when this herd was last tested. If it had been long overdue, I would have expected this to be used as a propaganda exercise to say to all those reluctant to offer their cattle up to be tested, "look what can happen, now fall in line". Will it not have exactly the opposite effect ? Why would anyone now volunteer with the thought that if they gat a "reactor", their whole herd will be killed ? The percentage of reactors is MUCH TOO HIGH. That needs investigating for a start. Wher did TB come from. What are they doing about the cattle just over the fence from these? This is slow growing disease. It has been said, there were typical lesions. These do not happen overnight and it is debatable what, if any , are "typical lesions". Fot instance, in March 2000, not a million miles from Dolphinton, where this "outbreak" has occured, a disease called Theileria was being researched at an experimental farm. This disease in unknown in the UK, but it "escaped". The cause was said to be(hang onto your seatbelt, Pat) faulty, shoddy blood testing techniques ! Using the same needle (dirty) on more than one animal etc. It is stated that ALL cattle involved were killed and that ALL contacts were traced,it does not say what action was taken over the contacts. The punch line is, that the signs/symptoms of Theileria would be very similar to TB, enlarged lymph nodes. Why do they want to slaughter the whole herd ? Compensation will be considerable. As was seen when Brucellosis apparently reared its ugly head up here in Scotland a while back, the cattle concerned had been recently tested for Brucellosis, some reports say twice, as they came from Ireland, as I recall. We have to question the validity of these "tests". If they are so unreliable that they do not give the information that is required, that being, does this animal have this disease? Then why are they being used, especially when cattle may lose their lives on this alone? No wonder the people in Worcester who fought during the FMD are still resisting now, more power to their elbows(and that doesn't mean I'm encouraging them to drink themselves to death, Pat !!) Regards, Frances