THE most original Christmas card of all was the ginkgo leaf laid on a sheet of gold leaf, the whole resting on a red background, lightly sprinkled with gold paint. It was a delicate and imaginative contribution from Angela Tinney of Badgerwatch.
The most eye catching in a gallery of fine productions.
With the card came an issue of An Broc. Among other things, it announces an afternoon of badger talks and debates at ENFO. St. Andrews Street, Dublin, from 1 p.m. to 4.30 p.m. on Saturday January 27th, 1996. They hope to have a wildlife ranger with them and Martin Hancox.
Not all public authorities are hostile or indifferent to the badger. The Fingal County Council "deserves a green award" the journal says.
And the Wexford County Council has agreed that under road passages would be installed in sections of the New Ross Wexford road, under construction.
But reports come in regularly of badger digging, which should be a slur on the whole population. Many points are made for the TB argument which goes to and fro. This journal says flatly that "there is no test to diagnose TB in live badgers they are shot and examined post mortem and the vast majority of badgers killed are perfectly healthy."
The beef industry, the cattle industry in general, is hugely important to this country. But so is the truth. Do we get the whole truth from officialdom?
There are many who believe that the TB eradication scheme has failed, time and again, due to human error and indifference and even skulduggery, rather than to disease caught from badgers. Badgers do have TB, this journal acknowledges.
About 10 to 20 per cent of them but only a minority of them are infectious, it avers.
And do badgers infect cattle or do cattle infect badgers?
Just a thought. A year ago fifteen badgers shot on the Prince of Wales's Highgrove estate were found to have no trace of disease. A spokesman for him said he was bound to accept the advice of the government department responsible for animal health. So it's not just in Ireland