Badger culls are mistake

Me in badger outfit!

So now we know two badger culls will take place this August - one in Tewkesbury and the other near Taunton. The government claim these will be followed by another ten new 'cull zones' every year. This is a complete nonsense - as this blog has pointed out there is no scientific case for the cull - even Professor John Krebs says that he "can't understand how anybody who's looked at the science would say this is a good idea." In the trials conducted under Kreb in 1997 they found that badger culling often made the situation worse by disrupting badger colonies and causing further spread of TB.


Local to Stroud there is currently a vaccination trial of badgers and there is also, as pointed out, evidence to suggest it is cattle that give badgers the TB, not the other way around (see also here).....indeed in the UK cattle outnumber badgers by about 40 to 1. Even if all badgers were killed in these culls it is unlikely to effect rates of TB. The Isle of Man has no badgers yet it does have bTB, while Scotland - which has badgers and hasn't culled any - has no bTB. An astonishing 30,000 cattle are prematurely killed each year after testing positive for TB, a further 75,000 are slaughtered for not being 'in calf', 7,000 because they are low yield, 120,000 because they are infertile and 3 million slaughtered for meat.

The vaccine might help with Tb but most of all we need to bring back the strict regulations regarding movement of cattle - or go vegan as a friend said.

Lib Dem Cheltenham Councillor Klara Sudbury has also been making the case for not culling badgers - see here blog here. Locally there is also a campaign, Stroud 100, to get local landowners and county councillors signed up to refusing to cull badgers - see here.

Update: Stroud 100 blogspot is at:
http://stroud100.blogspot.com/2012/01/join-stroud-100-and-help-stop-proposed.html