New bovine TB policy is a welcome sign of hope

THE reaction of the farming community to Lesley Griffiths’ announcement on bovine TB has been mixed.

Farmers continue to accept a key principle, just as they have done for decades – animals which test positive for bovine TB need to be culled in order to stop the disease being spread to other animals, and animals which have been in close contact with those animals must also be culled, as they also pose a risk.

The FUW has long argued that the same principle should apply to wild animals, in particular badgers, which have been shown to be the cause of 50% of TB outbreaks in many areas.

Proactive badger culling in Ireland and the UK has been shown to reduce TB levels significantly, but in 2012 the Welsh Government decided not to implement a planned cull in north Pembrokeshire and to vaccinate badgers instead, despite warnings by scientists that the approach was unlikely to work. The project cost £3.7m and the latest scientific review of its impact reveals that “consistent trends in indicators of bovine TB incidence have not yet been seen”.

For decades, Welsh and UK governments had been persuaded by wildlife and animal rights groups not to cull badgers, but in 2013 the UK Government instigated a cull in areas of England. And now the Welsh Government has announced it intends to trap and test badgers on farms with persistent TB problems, culling those which test positive.

While there are concerns that the Welsh Government’s new policy is half-hearted, and will not be carried out at anything like the scale needed, it is a certainly a step in the right direction.

Since January, the RSPCA has run a petition effectively opposing the culling of badgers which test positive for TB, while the Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales also objects to the new proposals. Yet both organisations support more aggressive cattlecontrol policies which would lead to more uninfected cattle being culled.

This should come as a clear message to politicians and the general public about the extreme views of bodies which have had such an influence over government policies – policies which have led to an explosion in badger numbers which has decimated populations of ground-nesting birds and other wildlife, and created a massive reservoir for a disease which last year resulted in almost 10,000 Welsh cattle being culled by the Welsh Government.