FUW demands transparency
The Farmers Union of Wales (FUW) has objected to an alleged lack of transparency on the part of the Welsh Government and has demanded the uncensored publication of all relevant documentation concerning the legal and scientific basis for the vaccination of badgers as opposed to culling to control the spread of Bovine Tuberculosis (bTB). Documents previously released to the public domain had been partially redacted.
In a letter to Environment Minister John Griffifths AM, FUW President Emyr Jones also objected to the comparison of computer models of the effects of a vaccination program and the actual data gained from the results of real culling trials. “There is currently no scientific, nor, in our opinion, legal basis for making such a direct comparison,” wrote Mr Jones, “since the scientific approaches used to produce such figures are wholly different.”
“One is based upon a simple extrapolation of the outcomes of real badger culls, whereas the other uses a large number of complex and unproven hypotheses to model the actions of individual animals, producing estimates which cannot be compared with real data, because no vaccination field trials have been undertaken.” Mr Jones added.
With Strangles Awareness Week just around the corner (5-11 May), vets are being encouraged to share a survey about the disease with their horse-owning clients.
