Thursday 29 July 2010

"Tourist fighting for life after being trampled by cattle"

I've only just spotted this one in This Is Staffordshire:

A 55-YEAR-OLD holidaymaker is still fighting for his life more than two weeks after being trampled by cattle as he walked through a farm. The man... was walking his dog in the Forest of Dean, in Gloucestershire, when he was attacked by the livestock...

Ian Cowan, who owns the holiday cottages where the man was staying, said: "Dogs are walked along the footpath through Branches Farm on a daily basis and nothing like this has happened before. No-one saw it happen. It is very difficult to believe this has happened."(1)

... The National Farmers' Union (NFU) today stressed such incidents are very rare.(2)


1) Yeah, right.

2) Yeah, right.

5 comments:

Electro-Kevin said...

A dairy farmer gave me a lift the other day. He told me that 38 farmers were killed by cattle in the UK last year.

Macheath said...

MW, is there a reliable source of up-to-date numbers of cattle injuries and deaths in the UK? (I'm assuming you'd be the one to know.)

Inevitably, a search for this brings up a sign of the times in the form of a Solicitor's website:

"If you have been injured by dangerous livestock due to someone else's negligence you may be able to make a personal injury compensation claim."

Mark Wadsworth said...

EK, that's a bit scary. All the figures I'd seen suggested three or four. Plus a few dog owners.

McH, no there isn't. Yet. There are plenty of stat's for farming related deaths, but they aren't specific enough.

Unknown said...

Health and Safety Executive keep farm fatality stats and total farm related deaths are between 35 and 50 per year, i.e. often getting on for almost one per week, but a relatively small number are caused by livestock - normally less than 10 per year. There were indeed 38 deaths in 2009/10 HSE stats for farm related deaths but only 5 had anything to do with livestock.

Mark Wadsworth said...

C, ta, I try to keep tabs on this and five seems about right.