The commonly cited stats on cow attacks put the risk of being killed at nearly 3 billion to one. Not a very large risk, and so easily dismissed as insignificant.
But these statistics are fundamentally flawed. Find out why the risk is likely to be much larger, at around 35 thousand to one.
Read our opinion piece: AN ALTERNATIVE VIEW ON CATTLE ATTACK STATISTICS
The 3 billion figure is used again and again. It is wrong. Just. Plain. Wrong.
Err. No. They don’t.
This figure is used again and again, by official bodies, by journalists, and by other groups, but it is wrong. Just. Plain. Wrong.
Where does the 3 billion figure come from? It comes from the annual MENE surveys, which consistently show a figure of around 3 billion visits a year to outdoor spaces across England. Continue reading “Myth: There are 3 billion visits…”
What we can learn from 54 separate attacks by cattle on walkers.
Carri Westgarth and Marie McIntyre are both researchers from the University of Liverpool, and both have personal reasons to be interested in attacks by cattle. They recently completed a scoping exercise to determine the extent of the problem.
What did they do? They searched newspaper reports published over a 20 year period, looking for reports of cattle attacks on walkers, including both deaths and injuries.
This is likely to be a huge underestimate of the true scale of the problem, because many attacks go unreported and unrecorded, but it’s a good start.
Here is a summary of their findings, published in 2016. They uncovered 54 separate attacks by cattle on walkers during the 20 year period. Continue reading “Some facts and figures: When cattle attack…”
Cattle Safety 