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Welcome to the forum and thank-you for this Thread.
I am glad that they have determined that cats are not a common source of rabies. Rabies is a very serious disease and all bites should be taken seriously, however it is clear that we do not need to fear cats.
Even better, cats are not the direct source of toxoplasmosis infections. It makes sense that it would be infected meat or contaminated soil that is the contact point with the parasite. It is good to know that cats and people develop immunity to toxoplasmosis after an infection. It should be easy to protect a pregnant woman and therefore her baby. She could get the infection before and develop immunity. She could also be very careful about meat and gardening. Good hand washing would probably be enough.
Cats are so clean anyhow that I never believed they were sources of disease.
Catherine
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The vaccinations work. If they find a rabid raccoon they saturate the area with vaccine. That creates a wall of immunity around the area so the disease can't be spread.
Culling never works. More animals move into the area to replace them. There is more chance of disease transmission when animals are on the move. Your badgers could have been vaccinated and they would have created a disease free zone.
The TB is coming from the cattle. Testing and vaccinating the cattle would have been an effective solution and it would have been more humane.
If the solution is cruel (like a cull) it is not the right solution, it is never the right solution.
Catherine
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I watched a number of videos from your link. It seems to me they haven't improved testing methods since the days of James Herriot. The results are very subjective so it would be easy to report false positives and false negatives. That in itself is enough to make testing ineffective.
Since TB is such a serious issue why haven't they developed a better vaccine and better methods of testing.
Since local wildlife, mainly badgers can catch the TB, why have they failed to develop an easy way to vaccinate them. These things should have been done 30 years ago. We have the technology and the labs to work on the problem.
We both know they have continued to work on Biological weapons. If they have the facilities and money to do that, then they can certainly do something about TB.
I think the cost of vaccinating the badgers is outrageous. I am sure they could find a cheaper way to do it. They lack the will to do it. They would rather kill the badgers.
Catherine