‘Badger cull companies are deluded’

TRUTH is right? Wrong!

We are in the midst of an out of control attack on one of our most persecuted wild animals, the badger.

Our Government has allowed the lobbying of the NFU and large landowners to hold sway over all the known facts and continue killing badgers in ever increasing numbers, despite the facts showing that it will make no difference to the incidence of TB in cattle.

It is clear that we are now in the position that those in power are not up to being in control and are just going along with this discredited policy to save face. The thing is how do you save face when after a 25 year assault on the badger population you have few badgers left and the TB issue is still here.

A 25 year scenario puts a whole new spin on, “kicking the ball down the road”.

It is to be hoped that in a 25 year time span the problem with TB in cattle will have been solved as there are many family farmers who have suffered, while those who could make a difference have diverted attention from the real answers to all this.

There are solutions to the problem, among them should be a cattle vaccine which has not been forthcoming. A lot of volunteers are vaccinating badgers.

The killing of badgers is a red herring which is taking resources away from the real causes of this continuing problem. There is a quid pro qou for those who are involved in killing badgers in that every land holding involved in this are duty bound to implement and maintain strict hygiene and bio-security measures and physical barriers to prevent badgers from coming into contact with cattle and their food and water throughout the period of killing. This you would think would be normal practice anyway.

This does not happen and there seems to be no enforcement .

When the last foot and mouth outbreak was upon us even then biosecurity was lacking and while some where doing their utmost others were not.

When a vehicle comes into the yard where has it come from and is the driver aware of good hygiene, has it been cleaned inside and out and what about the milk tanker?

Has the neighbour’s cattle got an outbreak of TB and can your cattle make contact? Do you visit or have contact with areas with the disease, does your vehicle tyres have slurry on ?

There are so many factors involved in all this even the cat or dog or humans may carry the disease and pass it on but our Government has allowed the focus to be on the badger and that is unforgivable.

It was supposed to be protected but has been made a scapegoat at great cost to the tax-payer , funds which would have been better spent on actually solving the problem. A good start would be to stop putting obstacles in the way and use the TB test that has been shown to be more accurate .

The cull companies set up to kill the badgers are deluding themselves if they think this will solve the TB problem. It is not a problem caused by badgers!