The Government has won a case to allow a trial to cull badgers
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Rural Reading: Badger cull is pointless
By Adrian LawsonSeptember 21, 2012
The news on the radio today as I woke up was all about the badger cull. The Government has won a case to allow a trial to cull badgers where my mum lives in Gloucestershire and where a good friend of mine lives in Somerset.
The experts (people who know about badgers) know this is a disaster. The Government, influenced by more powerful but clearly less well informed people, think this trial will eradicate badgers and reduce or even eradicate TB in cattle.
Fortunately the trial is not going to happen here and our badgers are, for the moment, safe.
The argument against the cull is simple. Unless you kill every single badger, the survivors will move into the area where the cull has taken place. They will come from all sides, and will most likely spread the disease even further.
The arguments for the cull are about money and emotion, with the Government adviser repeatedly preying on the sadness of losing rare breed cattle or lots of money when TB strikes a cattle herd.
Right now of course farmers are handsomely compensated, and we all underwrite the bill for this as the money comes from our taxes.
What really upsets me is the way the tables have been turned. It was the cattle that infected the badgers. There has been no effort made to reduce the disease in them, now they are being blamed as if they are deliberately spreading the disease.
I don’t know when you last saw a badger. Almost all the sightings I have of them have been glimpses, as they cross the road, or my path, at night.
Rarely have I been able to sit and watch them. Occasionally they come into my garden but my neighbours get them coming in every night, tapping on the window for food if they have forgotten to put some out.
I recently found a new badger sett. Over the last year or so I have watched as they have dug out the sandy soil into huge mounds outside the burrow. I have followed their tracks across the meadows but, as yet, I have never been lucky enough to actually see one, despite trying many times.
I hope that one day they will come to lose their shyness of me and I can watch them. But the way the Government is going about it, there won’t be any left to see.
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25/09/2012 at 14:16 Offensive or Inappropriate?
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24/09/2012 at 12:01 Offensive or Inappropriate?
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Suggest lobbying the supermarket where you shop saying you disapprove of the cull and will switch buying to supermarkets not buying from farmers permitting the cull (Co-Op, Waitrose and Marks & Spencer, at present). Point out to their top managers the PR costs of not acting to use their influence against the cull.
Consumer power works much better than it used to - it's already persuaded Tesco and Poundland to pull out of another counter-productive government scheme (whereby the taxpayer met the costs of supplying them with unpaid shelf-fillers, reducing the number of paid jobs).
22/09/2012 at 11:29 Offensive or Inappropriate?
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22/09/2012 at 00:17 Offensive or Inappropriate?
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