Badger Cull in Wales
Yippee! Cattle farmers have found a way of crossing the species barrier and causing suffering and death to other animals. Yes, it’s time to blame bovine TB not on poor animal husbandry and the movement of cattle but instead on badgers. Why spend effort on putting your own house in order - or even stop earning blood money altogether - when you can lobby the governemt to cull a protected species instead.
Badgers are set to be killed in an attempt to stamp out tuberculosis in cattle.
They are a protected species in the UK but have a bad reputation with some farmers.
Bovine TB is proving a big problem in Wales with over 8,000 affected cattle having to be killed over the last yearBovine TB is proving a big problem in Wales with over 8,000 affected cattle having to be killed over the last year.
Farmers are blaming the spread of the disease on badgers and in response the Welsh Assembly has made a controversial decision to test how widespread the problem is by setting up a pilot cull zone.
While many farmers have welcomed the decision, the RSPCA described it as going against sound scientific judgement.
Officials say bovine TB is out of control in Wales, but conservation groups insist a badger cull will not stop it spreading.
The method and a site with suitable natural or man-made boundaries have not be chosen. Other areas could be considered after the pilot is reviewed.
In a statement Wales’s Rural Affairs Minister Elin Jones said: “This is a difficult decision to take and it has not been taken lightly. I am very aware of the strong views on this issue.”
She made clear that badgers would remain a protected species and said she had given “due consideration to the divergence of scientific and political opinion”, adding “illegal action will not be tolerated.”
Ms Jones said she wanted to reform the compensation system for farmers whose infected cows were slaughtered to “encourage herd owners to comply with legal and best practice requirements”.
Last year, 7,905 cattle were put down in Wales, up from 669 in 1997. A compensation bill for affected farms of £15.2 million in 2007 would grow to more than £30 million by 2012 if it continued at the present “unsustainable” rate, she added.
Please see stopwaronbadgers and badger-killers for arguments aginst the cull of badgers.
A sample argument is given below.Badgers are being scapegoated by DEFRA (formerly the Ministry of Agriculture) to placate the farming lobby, whose own intensive production systems are the direct cause of increasing levels of disease in cattle, including bovine TB. There is no plausible evidence to suggest that badgers are transmitting bovine TB to cattle. The reverse is probably the case.
The persistent focus on badgers distracts from the serious health problems faced by intensively managed cattle in Britain. Many other diseases, such as pneumonia, E. coli, coccidiosis (a fatal diarrhoea), salmonella and mastitis, are also increasing in British cattle herds.
Bovine TB is caused by intensive farming methods, >NOT badgers!
Background - In 1973 a dead badger was found on a farm in Gloucestershire that had recently suffered an outbreak of bovine tuberculosis (bTB) within its cattle herd. Upon post-mortem examination the badger revealed a large number of lesions throughout its body, which tested positive for bTB. MAFF (now DEFRA) first started to kill badgers (using cyanide gas) as a means of ‘controlling’ Bovine TB (bTB) in 1975. But since 1982 badgers have been cage-trapped in Britain where they remain until operatives return to shoot them. In Ireland they are caught in cruel snares.
Since then the badger has become a farming and government scapegoat for what is a bovine disease and over *30,000 badgers have been killed in unfruitful, pointless ‘experiments’. (*Up to 1995) And once again starting in 1998 badgers were killed…
Farmers insist that badgers transmit the disease to cattle, and yet not even farmer-friendly DEFRA has produced any convincing evidence. During the past 28 years, DEFRA (and formerly MAFF) has up to now killed more than 40,000 badgers in a failed effort to halt bovine TB outbreaks. In fact, TB in cattle has been increasing since 1986, including in areas where badgers have been eliminated, or where they have been shown to be free of the disease.
