Blowing the budget

On March 16th., Budget Day for HM Government,  Defra released its 2015 figures for zTB casualties, and as we predicted in this posting -[link] the numbers of cattle slaughtered are some 32 per cent higher than were forecast.

Farmers Guardian has some nuggets - [link] from the annual tally; but as  Defra have offered their EU paymasters 27,440 dead cattle and a downward trend in disease in 2015, that particular budget is well and truly blown..

Wales reports a staggering 27 per cent increase in slaughtered reactors over 2014, and is said to be considering some drastic measures [ link] including reducing to not a lot, compensation for reactors purchased under license. England's increase over 2014 is 6 per cent, with the SW reporting arguably their worst year on record. And the areas allegedly acting as buffers, Defr'a  Edge, are bubbling nicely.
Thus despite a decade of cattle measures and their associated modeled predictions of reduction in disease incidence, nothing was achieved.

It is said that a definition of insanity, is repeating the same action - [link] but expecting different results.
But that is precisely what Defra's mandarins have done by bearing down on cattle with small token culls of grossly infected  badgers in a very few, small areas.

And we have no doubt that some more imaginative schemes to save money, such as dreamt up by the Welsh Assembly government, will surface as Defra's budget is blown apart .