farmers and TB - a modest proposal
 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7150338.stm:

"Culling badgers in order to control bovine tuberculosis (bTB) can
cause a doubling in fox numbers, UK government scientists have found.
This could impact on livestock farming and conservation, the authors
write in Biology Letters journal. "

Hardly surprising - foxes too eat a lot of earthworms and small
mammals. They are in competition with badgers for a lot of the
food.

Now, there seems to be no reason why foxes cannot spread TB, so maybe
we should organise a regular cull of foxes, probably in the winter
when arable land is not in use. To avoid problems of global warming
we could ensure that the team only travelled on horseback, and to
avoid leaving deposits of lead in the environment we could use an
organised biological control instead of shooting them. And for safety
perhaps those leading this cull could wear brightly coloured
clothing. The police wear yellow reflective jackets, so some other
bright colour would seem sensible to avoid confusion.

I am disappointed by the "modesty" of your proposal. You can be more "modest" than that.

Unfortunately the method of culling foxes you mention is extremely inefficient. Since the fox population is largely controlled by food availability, and the number of foxes dying of starvation is of the order of 100 times larger than the number capable of culled by this traditional method, in practice the traditional culling has practically no impact on the fox population. Such an ineffective solution has very little "modesty" within the meaning of the author of the original "modest proposal".

Now, I have some much more "modest" proposals. When foot and mouth hit, we recognised that it was a disease of farm animals and culled farm animals. Humans could catch it, but there was no thought of culling humans. Bovine TB is above all bovine, and badgers catch it off the cows and are unwitting vectors. We should focus on culling cattle, sufficiently thinning them out that the badgers aren't exposed to bovine vectors of the disease any more. Combined with some vaccination for residual pockets of bovine TB in the badger population due to badger-to-badger transmission, we would soon preserve badgers from this inconvenience man's farming techniques has caused them to endure.

Maybe the red-coated traditional cullers could instead cull the cows. They would then at least be able to eat the object of their cull, a good thing since in general I have a moral and philosophical objection to culling things that can't be eaten (unless demonstrably diseased and deserving of being put out of its misery). Of course not to the point that I would wish to make illegal the culling of uneaten foxes, or catching fish in order to put them back, but I would hope that education would make people realise that such are pointlessly cruel acts.

Obviously we should then apply such effective disease control methods in the human population. We should cull people who have communicable diseases: syphilis, HIV, malaria, colds, etc. In line with proven agricultural methods, we should also cull anyone who might have been in contact with them, whether or not we have proof that they have the disease. If post mortem testing shows the flesh to be fit for consumption, we can begin marketing "long pig", which I understand is a popular meat in New Guinea, etc.

farmers and TB - a modest proposal
 

On 19 Dec, 10:17, echinosum
wrote:
Obviously we should then apply such effective disease control methods
in the human population.

So the red-coated chaps on horses chasing "sabbers" are merely ahead
of the curve, then?