I can kill a mole but badger still off limits

ble for and the way their burrowing can wreck hedgebanks and even dangerously undermine places where a tractor may at some point pass, with the risk of the ground collapsing when it does.

At the moment, of course, I would rather be given an 80 per cent grant to cover part of the losses I have sustained from the milk price collapsing during lockdown – circumstances which have been, of course, entirely beyond my control. But at the time of writing that doesn’t appear to be on the cards.

However, the real question I should be putting to the public – possibly in the hope of getting a sensible answer – is this: if I am being encouraged to kill grey squirrels, moles and rabbits which are regarded as pests, why am I being prevented from killing the biggest pests of the lot – badgers?

They were never, ever a problem when I started out in farming. But thanks to some effective lobbying by misguided, misinformed and largely urban-based campaigners this country has now elevated one of the worst of the wildlife pests to the status of a saint.

The trivial amount of damage and nuisance attributable to grey squirrels, moles and rabbits is utterly insignificant when compared with the damage that badgers inflict when they wander across a farm spreading TB. Damage which extends to some 31,000 cattle having to be slaughtered every year, to farmers (despite token compensation) suffering massive financial losses and in some extreme cases being driven by sheer despair to take their lives.

A picture which suggests that the Government and the pointless badger support groups place more value on a badger’s life than on a cow’s – or indeed a farmer’s.

Or am I missing something? If I am I should be happy to be corrected.

The pointless badger support groups place

more value on a badger’s life than on

a cow’s