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Badger cull to go ahead ‘to protect cattle’

THE TIMES
Ben Webster Environment Editor
4 July 2011 

Thousands of badgers are likely to be shot next year under a Government plan to approve widespread culling to protect cattle from tuberculosis.


Ministers are expected to announce that the cull will proceed
Ben Birchall/PA 

Ministers are expected to announce within days that the cull will proceed after a review of the science showed there would be a significant fall in infections in cattle.

However, farmers campaigning for the right to shoot badgers will be disappointed that no licences will be granted this year. The culling is expected to commence in June next year, after badger cubs have been weaned and there is less risk of leaving them orphaned underground.

The decision to proceed with a cull of up to 5,000 badgers a year in England contrasts with last month’s announcement by the Labour-run Welsh Assembly Government that a planned cull would be placed on hold to allow for another review of the scientific justification for killing a protected species.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs yesterday published a two-page report on the outcome of a meeting it hosted in April of senior scientists to examine the issue of bovine TB.

Nine independent scientists met Professor Bob Watson, Defra’s chief scientist, and Nigel Gibbens, chief vet, to review a decade of research into culling badgers.

They said the evidence showed “co-ordinated, sustained and simultaneous” culling could be expected to lead to a net reduction of 12-16 per cent in the number of herds infected with bovine TB.

A trial of badger culling from 1998 to 2007 showed “an overall beneficial effect”.

While there was an initial rise in infected herds in the area surrounding the cull, as the badgers’ social structure was disrupted and they moved around and spread the disease, that impact mostly disappeared in the years after the trial.

The scientists said the culling had to take place over an area of at least 150 square kilometres and be sustained for a minimum of over four years.

“Culling conducted in line with the minimum criteria could be expected to lead to a relative reduction of confirmed new incidents of bovine TB in cattle herds in the local area,” they said.

But they also said a cull should be in addition to, rather than instead of, existing measures such as tight controls on moving infected herds.

Opponents of a badger cull questioned the authority of the April meeting, pointing out that two of the scientists had participated by email and a third by telephone.

A spokesman for the Badger Trust said: “We are hardly surprised that a key report of a meeting on April 4 has only appeared now as the Coalition Government is finalising its policy on killing badgers to control bovine tuberculosis.

“This report is rightly full of reservations and qualifications about the difficulty of precise estimates. Ironically, annual figures for 2009 and 2010 have shown a 15 per cent fall in cattle slaughtered in England and the Welsh toll halved over the same period — without killing badgers.”

The trust argues that better management of cattle herds would be more effective at reducing the number of TB cases than killing badgers.

Several farmers are being investigated after ear tags from cattle infected with TB were removed and attached to less valuable animals, which were then sent for slaughter.

A Defra spokesman said: “Bovine TB is having a devastating effect, with nearly 25,000 cattle in England slaughtered last year because of it.

“It is a complex and sensitive issue and we will announce a comprehensive and balanced TB Eradication Programme for England by the end of July.”

DEFRA
Bovine TB - Key conclusions from the meeting of scientific experts, held at Defra on 4th April 2011 

 

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