THE news that the Ministry of Agriculture has resumed its controversial cull of badgers on the Herefordshire/ Gloucestershire border fills me with sadness and frustration.
Badgers are being trapped and shot in a discredited attempt to prove a link between them and bovine TB. A link which has not been proven despite 25 years of research and the death of 30,000 badgers (80 per cent of which were healthy and of the remaining 20 per cent very few were infectious). Indeed TB has increased whilst badger culling has been the strategy employed.
This wave of killing is beginning just two weeks before the closed season which runs from February 1 until April 30. A closed season which was only introduced because of pressure from concerned groups such as The National Federation of Badger Groups. A closed season which is far too short. As the killing starts heavily pregnant sows and those with dependent cubs below ground will be killed. Once killing resumes in May there will still be cubs who are dependent on the females and will be left to starve. If this cruelty was knowingly inflicted on a domestic animal the perpetrator would be quite rightly prosecuted. We can only hope, for the sake of our badgers, that MAFF will indeed honour the closed season.
The situation for badgers in the Forest of Dean trial area, 100 sq Km around Blaisdon, is that they fall into the 'reactive' area. This means that badgers will be killed around any farm which experiences a TB breakdown during the trial period. It is likely therefore that MAFF will be targetting our badgers once the closed season ends, again assuming that the closed season is honoured.
This emphasis on badgers has led to a simplification of what is increasingly accepted as a very complex disease. The campaign against the cull is not an 'anti farmer' campaign. The distress caused by a TB breakdown cannot be over emphasised. Those campaigning against the cull simply believe that the £34 million of taxpayers' money should be spent researching into vaccines, the effect of husbandry and farming techniques, a better diagnostic test for cattle, the transmission and epidemiology of the disease, other wildlife carriers, the effect of soil deficiencies and climate.
Twenty five years of badger killing has not solved this problem, this trial is widely discredited, unlikely to produce meaningful results and ethically unacceptable as we enter the twenty-first century.
If you disagree with this trial please write to Diana Organ, Tony Blair and the Secretary for State for Agriculture, Nick Brown. We know that letters are an effective way of expressing public opinion. – Tracy Lambert, secretary, Forest of Dean Badger Patrol.