Brian May: The Badgers, the Farmers and Me review – the Queen star could save so many animals’ lives | Television

You know the way Brian Could is now an animal activist – specialising in badgers and the need or in any other case of culling them – in addition to an astrophysicist and the guitarist with Queen? In case you didn’t, I’ll simply offer you a second to make yourself familiar – OK? World recalibrated? Jolly good.

Nicely, Brian Could: The Badgers, the Farmers and Me concentrates, unsurprisingly, on the badgery facet of his profession. Could tells us he has by no means been satisfied by the federal government’s insistence that the creatures are answerable for the unfold of bovine TB, which requires the slaughter of any contaminated cattle – about 20,000 a 12 months – with all of the ramifications for the farmers that shedding animals they look after includes.

The culling of the badgers themselves, after all, has been occurring for about 20 years. And by no means with out controversy, as a result of there have at all times been these advocating for vaccinating somewhat than killing the animals (formally a protected species), however at all times with the backing of these most immediately affected: the farmers. About 200,000 badgers have been killed within the final decade and the endeavour prices the taxpayer round £100m a 12 months.

Could believes that badgers can’t be the primary supply of transmission for bovine TB and units out to show it with the assistance of Anne Brummer, his co-founder of the animal welfare charity the Save Me Belief, and large-animal vet Dave Sibley. Could is such a gently spoken, considerate man that as they start their four-year investigation into the matter on Robert Reed’s contaminated farm in Wales, numerous bits of astonishing data nearly slip previous with out you noticing. Resembling the truth that the TB exams the federal government requires cows to have are garbage. They solely establish about 50% of contaminated animals. The seemingly wholesome relaxation are subsequently free to contaminate and reinfect others. Reed’s cows are given higher exams and all of the contaminated are discovered.

However does contaminated imply infectious and if that’s the case, how? Sure, however solely in dung, is the reply. Dung that’s typically unfold on crops then eaten by cows, or on their grazing land or – get this – on the grazing land of different farmers’ cows. And the slugs and snails that share the land, they get eaten by badgers. Higher hygiene practices are instituted on the farm, they hold utilizing the great exams and the herd turns into freed from illness.

The bigger query of why it’s being left to Queen’s guitarist and his buddies to carry out what appears to be a comparatively easy, if time-consuming, experiment is rarely answered. It’s a movie very gentle on element, akin to whether or not the extra effectual exams are prohibitively costly (it appears unlikely given the ensuing prices of the crap ones, however we have to know someway), and I wish to know whether or not it hasn’t at all times been a good suggestion to maintain your cows’ meals and water as freed from slurry as doable. Additionally, when it’s defined that cows can not merely be vaccinated in opposition to the pathogen as a result of then they might react as if contaminated and should be slaughtered, you’ll be able to’t assist however marvel if this isn’t a deeply solvable drawback of paperwork or if there may be some scientific approach to inform the immune from the contaminated?

Nonetheless, the movie undoubtedly does the job Could intends it to. And that’s not to influence everybody, instantly, of the utter righteousness of his anti-culling stance (he’s far too equable for that) however to introduce doubt, risk and house for contemplating that there is likely to be a greater manner to assist farmers and never destroy any extra animals than we completely should. It’s so reasoned and cheap that it appears like a revolutionary act.

Brian Could: The Badgers, the Farmers and Me aired on BBC Two and is now on iPlayer.