The skin test on its own when used on deer is at best 50:50 in accuracy. Defra know this but in the past have chosen to ignore the fact because they would prefer deer farming not to exist. They can no longer ignore the growing TB problem in all categories of deer so have to do something (or be seen to be doing something). Various blood tests are being used in other counties in conjunction with the skin test with a lot of success and the blood tests are now being trialled in the UK. I am no vet so don't take my explanation to be totally accurate but the skin test needs to be done to prime the animal so the subsequent blood test picks up the reaction and so far the results seem to indicate about 90% or better accuracy. In one case I know of 220 reds were skin tested and everything passed ok. When they had the blood test done about 70 of them failed and the vast majority were confirmed TB at slaughter. The skin test I believe is done at the discretion of Defra, I don't think it is done automatically even if you have had a confirmed case of TB in your deer.
Ok so this is primarily a concern for us deer farmers but it definitely has implications for "park" owners who are in fact deer farmers even if they choose to disagree. Suppose you want to improve your "park" stock by introducing new animals and you don't want to run the risk of bringing in disease with them, even if you assume your own animals don't have TB, and just because you have never seen signs in culled animals doesn't mean they don't, how would you be sure to buy in healthy new stock? How many deer "parks" would be willing or able to subject their deer to TB testing, and you would need to do the whole herd, just to sell you a couple of breeding stock. As somebody else pointed out there are some "parks" that have handling facilities and could do it and therefore by definition they are deer farms.
The whole situation is total mess and needs resolving. Just to be selling venison and using that name as generic term is no longer good enough. There must be a distinction between wild and farmed. Farms have to keep medicine records, even if they use none routinely there will be the odd occasion when an animal may need treatment for an injury etc. All the Farm Assurance scheme costs money with annual inspections in order to provide a paper trail so the public can have a degree of confidence in the product. On the contrary a wild deer can have no such provenance, it may well have chomped its way through the most heavily sprayed crops before being shot; crops that no farmer would be allowed to graze stock on after such spray treatment. The stalker doesn't know, the customer doesn't know but it can all be signed off by the "trained hunter" as showing no adverse signs at the time of shooting. What a farce.
I have said this before on here, I am not knocking the fact that people eat wild game, I do so myself but please understand the difference. If a customer chooses to think that wild equates to organic that is their problem and just demonstrates ignorance, I am not trying to take away people's choices, the more choices we have the better.
