from Envirowatch NZ
An interesting read given NZ is obsessed with bovine TB and possums, all a prelude to justifying the 1080 carpet bombing we’ve had for 60+ years. See this related article on topic. –EWNZ
“A long time ago, when one country wanted to control another country, they sent soldiers. Today they do it differently. They make rules about who can sell what to whom, and the rules do the same job that soldiers used to do. The puffing test [the needle] is one of these rules. It looks like it is about sick cows. It is really about who gets to tell other countries what to do with their land and their animals.“
Take a healthy cow. Clip a patch of skin on her neck. Measure the thickness with calipers. Inject 0.1 milliliters of bovine tuberculin purified protein derivative into the skin. At a second site a few inches away, inject 0.1 milliliters of avian tuberculin purified protein derivative. Wait 72 hours. Return with the calipers. Measure both sites again. If the bovine site has thickened past a set threshold and the bovine reading exceeds the avian reading by 4 millimeters or more, the cow is classified as a reactor and sent for slaughter.
That is the test. That is the entire procedure on which the modern bovine tuberculosis eradication regime rests. In the Republic of Ireland in the twelve months to June 2025, approximately 43,000 cattle were removed from herds on the basis of skin reactions to this test.¹ In the United Kingdom the figure runs to tens of thousands annually. Behind each number is a small farmer pushed closer to insolvency by the loss of stock he had no power to refuse.
Jeremy Clarkson watched the procedure run on his own farm. The cameras were rolling. One of his cows was taken away. He used the platform of his television program to express disbelief at what was happening, while accepting the explanation he was given. The cow had tuberculosis. The law required her death. What he did not interrogate, because few people do, is what the test actually measures, what is in the syringe, and what relationship that procedure has to anything that could meaningfully be called disease.
Very interesting. This information needs spreading widely.