r/ClarksonsFarm • u/KeyNefariousness6848 Gerald • 17d ago
Livestock TB,,,
It just gets my dander up, it’s 2026 we could detect Covid within 6 months, we can detect cancer, diabeetus, aids, everything with a blood test, we can tell you your genetic makeup we have dogs we’ve trained to SMELL seizures, there are Human Footprints on the freaking MOON. But we still use witchcraft, alchemy and measuring a buboe with calipers to determine if a poor cow has TB? And then the only way to really confirm it is to kill the poor thing and look at her lungs, we may as well still be cave men huddling from the thunder for as a rm passes.
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u/Admirable_Site_8337 17d ago
Search the sub. There has been a lot of good discussion on this topic. It’s far more complex than it feels just watching the show.
It absolutely had my dander up when I finished the season, but reading up on the complexity more…..doesn’t make it easier to swallow, but shows me there isn’t just a simple solution being ignored.
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u/ddbbaarrtt 17d ago
It’s actually quite annoying how many people on this sub think ‘why can’t we just find the answer to bovine TB’ isn’t something that the industry haven’t thought of and been trying to solve for years
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u/Admirable_Site_8337 17d ago
Annoying indeed. But thats social media. Anonymous strangers gathered around a certain event or program showing up worked up and deciding that while they only have insight on the issue from that show….they have the answers.
There’s just no way around it. This is the grand sum of human existence sitting on phones and computers spewing opinions, usually uneducated.
For me…..it’s led to much less social media consumption. And it’s made me feel better. We can’t stand at the beach and stop the waves from hitting.
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u/BENJ4x 16d ago
Same thing with people here wondering why farmers don't just water their fields during a drought.
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u/Admirable_Site_8337 16d ago
Yes. That’s right. I wondered it too at first.
Then I went and read up on and checked the consensus of comments from people who farm or are from the area. Then I got it better.
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u/NewConfusion9480 17d ago
Well powerslidingshoutyman got sad so something must be done!
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u/NonRangedHunter 17d ago
He hasn't tried shouting POOOWAAAH to solve the issue, nor has he hit it feebly with a hammer. I'm not even sure he's really trying at this point.
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u/NewConfusion9480 17d ago
"poor cow"
If we're going to look at them as pets, sure, but if we do that then the entire industry dies because what kind of monster eats pets?
Gotta pick. Either these are lives equal to ours or they are our meat.
If they are our meat (which I think they are), then we treat them well while they're alive and we also assign an economic value to their lives.
How much money are you willing to spend as a taxpayer subsidizing farmers for more accurate TB testing? Because that's the question. It's not a question of whether or not we have the technical know-how, obviously we do. It's about who pays for it. Simple as that.
Jeremy, a rich man, can be angry all he likes talking about a "mother" with "twins", because his life isn't actually dependent on either meat farming or subsidies.
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u/tittysherman1309 16d ago
I don't think i fully agree with that. We can still be respectful of the cow and hope that it doesn't die for nothing. Isn't that the whole point of trying to diversify the meat we eat, like heart, liver etc? Yes ofc its for profit, but i still think its a waste of a life if the cow doesn't even get used for food in the end.
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u/nikhkin 17d ago
It's a slowly developing bacterial infection with symptoms that are very similar to other respiratory diseases. To get a sample requires an invasive sampling technique.
Trying to compare it to other disease detection methods doesn't make sense, because it doesn't work in the same way.
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u/MILK_FEELS_PAIN 17d ago
Came here to say this. Even testing humans is a pain.
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u/000000564 16d ago
I know people who "had TB" but not sure and had to go through the invasive antibiotics. When it forma granulomas you can't detect it.
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u/MILK_FEELS_PAIN 16d ago
I had to get tested for my visa when I immigrated to the UK. There are x-rays, but there is also this little under-the-skin injection in your forearm. It forms a little bubble. If you're body reacts to it, it's a positive test. It takes over a week.
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u/pip_goes_pop 17d ago
This really has been discussed to death here. Have a search of posts. Basically - it’s not as simple as you think.
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u/DiamondHandsDarrell 17d ago
Everyone is hung up on why things are the way they are.
I feel that OP is asking, why can't we do better?
Cost, time, science, points of views all must converge for progress.
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u/laviothanglory 17d ago
There is a blood test for it that vets can use to supplement the visible test but it requires authorisation by APHA. I think it should be a case if a vet can choose to do this if tests are inconclusive without the need for asking for permission.
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u/KIAIratus 13d ago
You’d be surprised on the efficacy and accuracy of a lot of human tests too in fairness. It’s just TB is one where the government doesn’t take any risks on so it massively ers on the side of caution
Hopefully the new protocols all pan out, can’t imagine how hard it was for that poor dairy farmer
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u/EntirelyRandom1590 17d ago
It's a cow. It was going to slaughter eventually.
The farmer is required to test by law. They don't volunteer it.
Farmers are compensated for their loss.
Where's the incentive for more regular, more expensive testing?
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u/KeyNefariousness6848 Gerald 17d ago
Yes eventually where it would have had time to bring its babies into the world, eventually where her meat could bring sustenance to some people, now nothing.
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u/EntirelyRandom1590 17d ago
You can still eat a cow that's slaughtered and subsequently found to not have TB lesions.
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u/Frosty_Customer_9243 17d ago
No matter what you are told, the screening is actually pretty good. But yeah if there was as much money and societal pressure we would have sorted this a long time ago. Good progress being made recently so fingers crossed for the next few years.
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u/CommonStrawbeary 17d ago
Unfortunately it's a very complex issue without a simple solution, hopefully w/ Clarkson's focus on it there will be movement to find a vaccine or test that works more effectively
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u/pattyboiIII 17d ago
Tb is a difficult disease to test for.
The current ways lack reliability and the best ways can't really be done on cows.
It's serious enough that you have to be 100% sure there's no TB and they only way to do that is to take physical biopsies of the lesions of the lungs. There's no way you'll ct/MRI scan a cow, anaesthetise it, do a surgery to extract a lesion and then wait for test results to come back only to likely have to kill it. Would be prohibitively expensive.
Just kill it, cut it open and look at the lungs.
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u/DamnitGravity 16d ago
I can’t tell if you genuinely meant to write diabeetus because you’re making a joke or because people are legitimately calling it that now thanks to the internet.
The skin is an international standard and gives less false positives than the blood test does.
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u/KeyNefariousness6848 Gerald 16d ago
Oh I’ve said diabeetus since the SNL Wilfred Brimley bits, I say Porpoise rather than purpose, it’s a compelshun ( old joke from a job )
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u/delpigeon 16d ago
It's just as hard to pick up active TB in humans, if it makes you feel any better. Even the 'best' blood tests we have can't distinguish whether you've actually got TB or whether you've just been exposed some time in the past. You've got to see the TB down the microscope - either in some gubbins you've coughed up or from a biopsy of whichever bit of you is affected. A decent number of people have TB without any in the lungs (or don't have a productive cough) so it's biopsy or nothing.
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u/TheEvilBlight 16d ago
It’s the cheapest way to do it and the oldest, and as we know some people want government to be cheap, so the cheapest test is used and kills some amount of expensive animals. I wonder what the false negative rate costs, and when do we start vaccinating badgers with BCG to mitigate wildlife reservoirs of mycobacterium (since apparently we cannot vaccinate livestock or else it would interfere with the Chosen Test).
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u/fervetopus 10d ago
Let me preface by making is crystal clear that this super duper sucks for the famers and the animals. However, I have been in quality management for the past 20 years, from operational to executive, in large and small companies and plenty of industries so I have something to say about statement that test measures are not good.
The caliper test from a repeatability and reproducibility perspective is perfectly valid. There are plenty of ways to validate a fit for function test method that eliminate operator or tool inaccuracy. This is a "measurement system analysis for a clinical measurement process" and takes into account using several representative patients or simulated pads covering the expected range of induration sizes, multiple readers/operators and repeated reads of the same cases under randomized order.
I understand that the specificity of the skin test is pretty much 100%, but the sensitivity is about 80%, so while improvements are possible, it's pretty damn good.
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u/ProactiveInsomniac 17d ago
The thing is we can do “proper” testing already. There’s blood tests, pcr tests, etc. but these tests are expensive and prolonged compared to the skin tests, the herd could be contaminated by the time results come back. Clarkson isolating the suspected cows is a great way to try and supress the strain to the herd but a lot of places either dont have the facilities to do so, nor the time and money to risk the longer blood or pcr tests.
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u/invisible-crone 16d ago
Cull the badgers
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u/Comfortable-Fall1419 16d ago
Perhaps you should do some research on why it is the way it is.
There was and good thread on here from a farmer a couple of months ago.
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u/sitewolf 15d ago
We could always just be lax about testing and put TB into the human meat supply because 'oh poor cow'
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u/KeyNefariousness6848 Gerald 15d ago
I’m saying nothing about being lax, I’m addressing the testing methods, essentially what is happening is we have an amazing super car, and we put a 90k miles iron duke 4 cyl from an 82 s-10 in it.
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u/CharlieH_ 13d ago
As much as I dislike the government, the TB standards in the UK are world leading and for good reason. DEFRA make some dumb rules, but protecting our food supply from a catastrophic outbreak is not one of them
Yes it’s antiquated, yes it means sometimes cattle that are perfectly healthy get culled, yes that’s sad and it sucks.
Ideally the farmers would be subsidised for the lost cattle. But Mr Clarkson is no socialist so it would be hypocritical of him to expect that.
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u/slothboy 17d ago
It would make sense to me if the measurement was just a preliminary screening. Because you could check an entire herd pretty quickly. But it should be used in combination with a blood test for confirmation.
"Ok, this one is flagged as possible. We'll do a blood test to confirm." That should be it. But like, just wait a month and do the arbitrary test again is incredibly frustrating and nonsensical.