Caring about our future

The Elephant in the Room: the Bovine Tuberculosis Bacillus (bTB)

  Once again the prospective cull of badgers is almost upon us!  Every society needs its lepers, for, at whom else can we throw stones, with collective justification?  I still feel very strongly that badgers are true victims in the circle of bTB in the countryside.  If, as I suspect, the bacillus has become more virulent and infective, we will see more and more species involved.  Already deer, alpacas, goats and cats have been affected by bTB, but a pandemic may just be waiting to happen.  Killing badgers will be a distraction and not a cure.

In order to eradicate, or at least reduce, the incidence of bTB we need to breed genetically resistant cattle and vaccinate widely.  Artificial insemination on a huge scale has opened the door to reduced bTB resistance in the national herd.  Cattle to cattle spread has encouraged more virulence inthe bacteria, which have gone back into the wildlife pool to infect more badgers.  These animals will themselves now hoave to evolve new resistance by the slow process of natural selection.

If modern farming practice has been responsible for BSE and thereby CJD, why not bTB as well?  I wonder how much denial the farming industry can exhibit?

Dr John

Equine Metabolic Syndrome

 Recently, i was invited to an evening lecture on Equine Metabolic Syndrome (EMS).  This is the condition that ppredisposes some ponies to laminitis, and is thought to be the result of downright obesity in our well cared for stock.  In their respective species, humans and horses may have the size of their abdominal girths as common predictors of metabolic syndrome.  Increased morbidity and premature mortality are associated with the condition, and certain people (probably some types of equine, too) seem to have a genetically inherited predisposition to metablolic syndrome, possibly as many as 10% of us.  These folkd ona chronically high proportion of dietary proteins get into avicious circle of resistance to their own body's insulin (Type 2 diabetes), an increase in abdominal and liver fat deposits and develop high blood pressure.  They can end up on pills for every feature.

Good hay may have 9-10% protein in its composition, but haylage may contain over 40%.  In my opinion humans feed themselves and their horses too much protein.  Indeed, our diets should be more balanced with carbohydrates and unsaturated fats.  I wonder if Tony Bevington could give us more insight into the culinary use fo starchy foods in the Far East?  We smallholders may need to look at our own diets, and could this be a topic for a winter discussion, perhaps?

Dr John

Conundrums - Quin Bosca Farm 2010

Balsam Blues

The yellow-flowered Touch-me-not Balsam, Impatiens noli-tangere, is a native balsam that grows in damp woods in mid-west Wales and the western edge of the Lake District.  Up and down British waterways its non-native cousin the Himalayan Balsam, Impatiens glandulifera,
has 'invaded' and pushed out native undergrowth flowers that support native invertebrates.  While we might be hard pushed to go out and find the British plant, the masses of pink/purple flowers on two metre high Himalayan Balsams are in huge swathes and even intruding into many corners of Cornwall.  However, it is a time of austerity in the bee world - so is the Himalayan Balsam a sinner or a saviour?

Impatiens glandulifera is an annual plant.  Rapid growth, profuse flowering and very effective seed dispersal demand huge resources from the environment, although in return these nutrients do go back into the ground in the winter.  During the flowering time, however, the plant produces copious amounts of nectar, and the heavy body weight and strong legs enable the bumble bee to reach the nectaries in the spur at the back of the flower.   In competitive terms the Himalayan Balsam is an Olympic champion, but would growing small clumps of well-controlled plants maintain viable propulations of bumble bees until the world wakes up to the plight of rapid loss of bee habitats?  Can we risk any further invasion that has been out of control for more than the fifty years with which I am familiar, or can we accept its 'naturalisation' as part of our ever-evolving landscape?

Dr John Bergin