“Well actually CornishArbor I have a few years experience of dairy farming and I got out because it is such an unnatural environment. YOU are in fact being presumptuous.

Artificial insemination, still births and milk fever are the norm! Cows with the biggest udders are prized and excessively over-bred purely because they produce the biggest milk yield regardless of the fact they live a life ridden with pain because they can hardly walk! Their calves are also usually the least healthy, in my experience.

I'm not saying farmers are intentionally treating their livestock badly. On the contrary, most are incredibly caring individuals. But, they have to make a profit and as an inevitable result, and with all the best intentions, the cattle are treated as machines.

It is the industry as a whole that needs to rethink it's priorities. I have to admit, I don't personally see an easy answer as demand for milk is not going to go away.

Supermarkets should do something because it is they who put the most pressure on the farmers, and they who have the most power to make changes.

The bovine gene pool is I suspect very small and that is possibly why cattle are so unresistant to disease. Ok I'm not an expert, but I have seen enough to have an opinion.

The whole pedigree culture is bad news. Simply leaving a generation or two in between does not work. Ask Darwin!

I believe that simply killing badgers to fix a problem that humans have created is actually the height of laziness and will only work for a couple of years anyway.”

“Once again a story comes out concerning Bovine tuberculosis and out to come the farming experts. These are a rare breed who do nothing to but bleat about how terribly farmers treat their livestock and the countryside in general. I hope that i will never be so Presumtuous about a subject, or indeed a whole way of life i knew nothing about. It is shocking how people can assume they know what is best for livestock, wildlife and the Countryside, even though in most cases they have not got the slightest clue but just a few miss guided opinions. As a farmer i have never seen or heard of a single incidence of inbreeding. A farmers life revolves around working with nature, i would not get very far if i tried to fight it!”

“Well said Michael. I'll second that. I've only seen one of the reports, where he tested his herd and found a couple of pure breds who were infected. and I did feel a bit sorry for them. But, the reporting was very biased and didn't give anything like the full story.

The reality with cattle farming is that it is totally unnatural. Constant in-breeding over many generations has led to an overall inability of these animals to fight disease.

Killing badgers will only serve to increase farmer's profits in the short term, whilst the future will hold a resurgence as the badger population increases back to it's natural level and begins the cycle all over again.

What is needed here is a total revamp of the cattle industry. Start working WITH nature and it will look after you!”

“Threats of violence against farmers and their families are totally unacceptable and will be rejected out of hand by all who want a fact-based solution to this complex TB problem. But Adam Henson and the BBC's Countryfile team need to take a long, hard look at the way they have presented the TB issue over months and months. It has been overtly emotional, subjective and lacking objective balance. The BBC has chosen to focus --through a farmer's eyes--on the problems, the worry, the distress caused to farmers by bTB spread. The inference too often is that he, Henson, is unable to rid his farm of the disease because of the Government's "ridiculous" failure--his description --to deal with the problem, and that can only mean their refusal to cull badgers. Not once has he (or Countryfile) concentrated on the measures the farming industry needs to put in place--improved biosecurity, better, more effective testing, tighter controls over cattle movement, a refusal to buy in cattle from herds of a lower disease status. No mention, either, of well publicised breaches of bTB regulations by farmers. So often the unspoken conclusion in the presentations is that the remedy lies not with farm management but with badger culling. The programme dealing with the progress being made on a cattle vaccine (the ultimate silver bullet) was introduced not with an explanation of the way cattle infect cattle, not with a reminder that the most thorough research programme ever concluded that bTB could be resolved by effective testing and tight cattle controls etc and no badger culling, but with with an emotionally loaded introduction that turned the spotlight, once again, on badgers. The only reference to farming's role in disease control was provided not by Henson but by a short comment from the Defra specialist. And that imbalance is not a one-off, it pervades Countryfile's coverage, Henson's herds are anything but "closed". That means they are vulnerable to bought-in disease. His father will have lived through the 1960s epidemic which was all but eradicated without badgers being culled or implicated. That's not mentioned. So where's the balance which allows the ordinary viewer to take on board these facts? When will scientists be given as much time as Henson to put their unemotional research-based perspective on this complex issue?”

“Lafrowda, you are correct but do not go far enough. Some would commit serious crime against a human being to save a patch of bog moss - on the other hand they would install Windmills and Solar Energy Farms wherever space was available. Their logic escapes me!”

“There are elements in the "green brigade" that would go to any extreme against a human being to save a patch of bog moss.”